Time Machine drive erased, won't backup

My iMac HD is 1 TB. I have an external 2TB drive that I have been using without problem for TM backup. Today error message said that the TM backup was full, to get a larger drive. Until I do that I'd like to continue using the 2TB drive. I erased the external drive with Disk Utility, and selected it as a TM drive. It shows 2TB available, but when selected as at TM drive, it says I need a 4GB drive. How can I continue to use the 2TB drive as I have been doing?
Thanks!

Hi Stephan,
Have a look here...
http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa;jsessionid=CD1BAC9A8348A9296209CDA 39416B6DC.node0?messageID=11605537
-mj

Similar Messages

Moved Time Machine drive - can't see backup.

I was having trouble with my Time Machine drive, which was connected by USB to my Airport Extreme. I moved the drive to a USB connector on my MacBook Pro to improve the speed, and after formatting the drive, made a complete, new backup with Time Machine, which took about 8 hours.
Then I moved the drive back to the AirPort and told Time Machine to use it for backup. Time Machine doesn't see the earlier backup (I can verify that it's there using the Finder) and is now doing another complete backup of my MBP.
What's wrong here? How can I tell Time Machine to use the backup it made yesterday instead of starting over?
Walt

Actually, Tech Support told me that they support only Apple Time Capsules connected to the Air Port Extreme. They most certainly do NOT support using Seagate drives such the ones I have been using successfully for over three years, on two MBPs.
I firmly believe (but Apple does not want to hear this) that my problem originated with the erratic WIFI connections since I upgraded to Lion, which has been discussed at length in the forums. Time Machine reported backups failing when the WIFI connection could nto be restored after waking from sleep.
My wife's MBP, running Snow Leopard, is working just fine on the same hardware.
Walt
EDIT: I tried "Inheriting" the backup that was made via the direct USB connection, but it still doesn't show up in the TM history. The tmutil program is interesting - it does distinguish between the "machine_directory" - the backups.backupdb folder that was made by the direct USB backup, and the sparse_bundle file that was created by the AirPort backup.

Time machine restores a really old backup!

Time machine makes regular backups of my system. Last night, I had to restore my system and used the installation discs to do this (and selected restore from Time machine, and selected the latest backup).
When the installation was complete, a number of files and applications were missing, though I can still see them on the Time machine drive under the latest backup. When I looked through the backups, the latest backup (23 June 09) says that the date modified was 2007! This 2007 date matches up with the applications I got upon installation.
Any ideas on what happened? The plan is to start from a fresh installation and grab the applications I need from the lastest backup, but I would really like to know what happened so I can avoid it in the future! How can I restore my system from the latest backup?

Hello again:
That would be the only way to see if a corrupt preference file causes your problem.
FWIW, I have not seen any other post with a problem like the one you describe. Something in your system is causing the issue - what, I do not know.
There are other things that could be attempted, but they would take quite a bit of your time.
Barry

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

You are both right.
Time Machine can backup FROM:
It cannot back up a USB thumb drive.
Time Machine can backup TO:
•A USB thumb drive (but most aren't large enough, and are very, very slow)

I have an external Time Machine drive that I want to reformat. I can't remember the password. How can I do this. Disk Utility won't let me. Thanks.

I have an iMac that had drive problems last winter. Took the iMac to the Apple Store and they reinstalled everything and now it works again. Only thing is that my external Time Machine drive is screwed up now. Its 1.5 TB.
I had the Time Machine drive partioned into two parts. One partion was for an emergency bootup using carbon copy cloner. That partion I can open and mounts on my desktop. The other partion was Time Machine. It once upon a time opened and mounted without a password.
It requests a password to unlock even though I never had it password protected before the iMac drive problems. And so now it won't mount the drive.
I can go to Disk Utilities and I can see Time Machine with both partions. The Carbon Copy partion is mounted. The Time Machine partion is not mounted. For this reason I can't select it and erase it.
What the heck am I supposed ot do now to erase it and start over. Any help would be appreciated. I really don't want to go and buy another drive.
Kevin

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
{ diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list; } | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Post the contents of that window, if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

HT3275 EMERGENCY!!!!!!!! NEED TO RETREIVE AN ACCIDENTALLY DELETED BACKUP! BACK UP FROM MY TIME MACHINE DRIVE???? In other words, I emptied out a folder on my main MAC to make space and the next subsequent backup backed up the EMPTY FOLDER and then delet

EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!
IS THERE ANY WAY TO RETREIVE AN ACCIDENTALLY DELETED BACK UP FROM MY TIME MACHINE DRIVE????
In other words, I emptied out a folder on my main MAC to make space and the next subsequent backup backed up the EMPTY FOLDER and then deleted the "old backup" that actually contained the contents of the very important folder.
Now only the emptied folder exists on my MAC and in the two backups on my Time machine backup drive.
This was clearly a big mistake on my part not realizing that the "old backup" being deleted by Time Machine would include backed up files that I had no intention of getting rid of....
What can I do now?
Is DATA RETREIVAL even an option?
I am sure that the Folder of files that I need are on the most recently deleted "OLD BACKUP" but how do I get to this, if even possible?????
Super desperate situation here...
M

inna-help-me wrote:
Is DATA RETREIVAL even an option?
It may be possible to recover some of the data, if it hasn't been overwritten, but it won't be cheap or easy.
You've posted in the Time Capsule forum, but you mention a "backup drive." If your backups are on a Time Capsule's internal HD, instead of an external HD, it's even worse.
See Data Recovery.
Good luck.

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you think it is? It won't recognize any hard drive I put in the machine, so might it be the sata cable?

Boot the Recvoery USB, use Disk Utility to select the internal drive makers namea and size on the left.
Now select erase and select the midde option and click erase, it will take a bit to complete but it's best for the drive.
Now select Partiton tab, click the big box and Options: GUID and then Format: OS X Extended journaled and click apply.
Quit and you should be able to install OS X now with your Apple ID and password.
see
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/

Online Backup for Time Machine Drive?

I've been looking around at the major names in online backup and most of them won't let you back up external drives, but I found BackBlaze and it looked good till I found out that it specifically won't allow you to backup a Time Machine drive to its service.
Does anyone know of a good online backup service that will let you back up your time machine drive?

i second Thomas' remarks.
you may want to consider Dropbox for that redundant backup.
JGG

Time Machine Drive won't mount, mounts on windows

Hi guys, I have a Seagate GoFlex Desk for Mac, it's a 2TB external Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 drive.
My machine is a 2011 iMac 27" i7 16GB RAM 2TB HD
I use the external drive for my Time Machine Backup, my mac had to be brought in to have the display replaced so i did a backup before i brought it to the service center.
After getting the mac back i noticed my time machine drive was not showing on the desktop so i tried doing a time machine backup but i got an error that there was not TM drive.
I ran Disk utility and it shows the drive with the Time machine partitioned grayed out and at the bottom "Mount Point : Not mounted", i tried mounting it from DU but nothing, i did a verify disk and right away i got a message that the disk needs to be repaired. I ran the repair but DU would get stuck trying to unmount the disk.
I tried restarting my computer, and i changed to other firewire cables i had using the firewire port and using the thunderbolt to firewire adaptor but no luck, also i tried USB.
Then i tried it on my windows partition with USB and it showed on windows, i was able to recover my data but i couldn't delete any from the drive, when i tried deleting anything i got a message that said "the files are too big" or something like that, I also tried formating the drive on windows but no luck with that.
I have no idea what's going on, the drive won't mount and it can't be ejected even though it's recognized (the time machine partition is grayed out)
Any suggestions? i really don't want to throw it away and if do i would at least like to wipe it out.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions

Other than the Disk Repair from the Disk Utility, I would suggest resetting the PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11243.
Tha's kind of a last ditch effort though. Can you put it in another mac computer with the mac os? Does it show up there?

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

I remove my hard drive from time machine,now it won't recognize hard drive

i got a delayed error on my time machine backup saying Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to my back up hardrive, so what i did i removed my hard drive in time machine "select disk" , thinking if ill plug it back it'll recognize but it didn't.. now it wont show anymore on my time machine, but it shows on my mac computer and disk utility.. how do i fix this? please help... i have the late macbook pro 2010 running osx mountain lion

Try repairing it:
Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. Select your Time Machine drive in the list on the left. Click on the First Aid tab in DU's main window, click on the Repair Disk button.

Using Time Machine to restore an *older* BackUp drive

Here's my situation - I have currently been backing up my 2 computers (A Macbook Pro and a Mac Pro tower) to two separate external bootable drives (not Time Machines). I then take the drives off site in case of theft or fire, and know that if I need to I can always restore from these bootable backups.
However, because of the time and effort of bringing them in from their offsite location, I only back up once every few weeks, sometimes a month or more. So I just purchased an internal drive (separate from my system drive) to use as a Time Machine drive, for both of my computers (only one partition). Since they will be backing up every day, I will retain much more recent material in case of drive failure.
My question is this - if I have a drive failure on my current internal system drive, and the internal Time Machine is intact, is it possible for me to take my external bootable backup (say 3 weeks older than Time Machine in how recently it was backed up), make a cone of that on a new internal system drive, and then use Time Machine to restore that drive to what is most current on Time Machine?
Does this question make sense? I'm essentially trying to use a combination of external bootable drives and Time Machine in order to have peace of mind, knowing that I will have a complete, bootable restore, but it will then be able to become as up to date as the last Time Machine backup.

Daniel Greeney wrote:
So I just purchased an internal drive (separate from my system drive) to use as a Time Machine drive, for both of my computers (only one partition). Since they will be backing up every day, I will retain much more recent material in case of drive failure.
Let Time Machine back up every hour, as it's designed. That will protect you best.
My question is this - if I have a drive failure on my current internal system drive, and the internal Time Machine is intact, is it possible for me to take my external bootable backup (say 3 weeks older than Time Machine in how recently it was backed up), make a cone of that on a new internal system drive, and then use Time Machine to restore that drive to what is most current on Time Machine?
Does this question make sense?
The question makes sense until you realize that Time Machine backups contain everything you need (unless you do something silly, like exclude your system files).
Once the new drive is installed and formatted, you can restore your entire system from the TM backups faster than you can copy the clone to the new internal HD. See #14 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum. Note that you use the Snow Leopard Install disc only for the Installer on it; you don't install OSX from it.

Installed GoFlex 1.5 TB external drive on my iMac running OS X 10.7.4 and error says Time Machine can't create a backup folder. Any solutions?

Installed GoFlex 1.5 TB external drive on my iMac running OS X 10.7.4 and error says Time Machine can't create a backup folder. Any solutions?

Well, to unmount the drive, you can use the Terminal application.
Start in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
When the Terminal window opens, type - without the quotes and with the space at the end - this:
"diskutil unmount "
Then drag the icon of the unmounted drive from the desktop into the Terminal window - the drive location will be added to the end of the command above. It should look something like this:
diskutil unmount /Volumes/volumename
Then press enter (return).
That should unmount the drive. Now you can try the Time Machine process again with perhaps a different interconnect cable for the GoFlex.

I keep getting this error message "Time Machine could not complete the backup. 'The backup disk image "/Volumes/FreeAgent Drive/MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use." What should I do to remedy this?

I keep getting this error message: Time Machine could not complete the backup. 'The backup disk image "/Volumes/FreeAgent Drive/xxx MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use.
How do I remedy this so it starts backing up again?

Maybe this http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C12.html can help you.
Stefan

Time Machine drive erased, won't backup

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