Time Machine External Hard Drive Back Up

I am wondering if there is a way to back up on time machine an external hard drive connected to my airport extreme.
Here is my set-up:
iMac with a 2TB external hard drive connected via firewire to the actual iMac in the back
airport extreme connected to the iMac via ethernet cable
640GB external hard drive connected to the airport extreme which is used for sharing with PC Laptops throughout the home
I am simply wondering if I can back up the 640GB external hard drive connected to the airport extreme to my 2TB external hard drive connected to my iMac which is being used as my time machine for the iMac itself.
Thanks.

I would simply do this:
-Connect the 2TB drive to the computer via USB or somehow.
-Open System Preferences > Time Machine > and set up the 2TB one as your primary backup device.
-Connect the 640GB drive to the computer with the 2TB still connected.
-Copy everything from the 640GB to the 2TB (select, drag, and drop).

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Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

What kind of repair?

Time Machine: External Hard Drive with Additional Files + Back-up

Hi-
I am hoping someone can clarify something for me. I use a 500GB external drive (WD-My Book) to back-up my macbook periodically (2x month). I also use this same external drive to store additional files from an old computer.
I just spoke with some folks at Apple and they confused me and made me think that I might have inadvertently deleted some of the original non-back-up files. However, I have scoured the drive and everything seems to be there IN Addition to the backups.backupdb folder.
Can someone reassure me that I have not somehow corrupted/lost either the original files or the back-up files?
I have read the tutorials posted in 2009 - and realize that I should have partitioned the drive, but I didn't. Moving forward I will purchase a dedicated drive just for back-ups - but want to be able to sleep tonight and not worry . . .
Thanks!

claisb wrote:
Wow-Thanks again.
Apple Support was marginally helpful. After the rep told me I probably lost data, my anxiety rose . . .
My original Time Machine question to Apple Support =
My MacBook cannot handle all the media I have. So, I bought a Seagate 1TB to hold movies, photos, and music. If I have the 1TB Seagate plugged in to my MacBook at my designated back-up time, will Time Machine back both the HD and Seagate 1TB to a new (yet-to-be-purchased) 2TB External drive (which will be purchased solely for Time Machine files)?
Yes, as long as both are formatted for a Mac (see #1 in Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks).
The Seagate might have been automatically excluded from backups; if so, it's easily removed, via Time Machine Preferences > Options. If it's listed in the exclusion box +*in black,+* (while it's connected) just select it and click the minus sign at the bottom. If it's listed in gray, it's not formatted properly -- Time Machine can't back it up, and you can't remove it from the exclusion list.
I'm having a difficult time knowing if I'm utilizing Time Machine properly. Since I have a MacBook it doesn't make sense for me to have Time Machine continuously running in the background. So, I only back-up 2 or 3 times a month. And, each time - I seem to get nervous that I'm not doing something correctly.
Time Machine was designed to back up hourly. On a desktop Mac, it's best to let it do just that.
On a laptop, of course, that's rarely practical. But you probably should back up more often -- when your internal HD fails (they all do, sooner or later), or something else awful happens to your Mac, you risk losing everything you've done since the last backup. Think of your Address book, browser bookmarks & history, documents, and especially your media files.
You might want to consider backing-up over your network. It doesn't sound like you also have a desktop Mac, but if you do, you can back up to a "shared" drive on it.
It's a lot more money, but Apple designed the Time Capsule as a combination wireless router and hard drive specifically for Time Machine backups. Most folks do the initial backup while connected via an Ethernet cable, but subsequently Time Machine can do those hourly backups wirelessly, as long as your Mac is awake and in range of the Time Capsule. See http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC344LL/A/Time-Capsule-2TB?fnode=MTY1NDA0Mg&mc o=MTMzNzU2MjI
But as long as you're diligent about doing your backups regularly via an external drive, a TC may not be worth the big bucks, especially if you already have a wireless router.

Time machine external hard drive in windows not working.

I recently bought a Western Digital external hard drive to use with time machine so that I would have my laptop backed up. When I set up the time machine, it had to format my hard drive, erasing the WD files that were on the drive. I was able to continue using it as an external storage device on the Mac side of my laptop, but when trying to use it on the windows side, it wont show up in My Computer. I'm starting to wonder if I will be unable to use this external drive on anything other than a Mac now that it is set up as my Time Machine.
If that is the case, is there a way that I can reset my drive to not show up as my Time Machine Disk.
Thanks,
JT

If you're going to use the drive on both platforms, does it need to be set up first on the PC, allocating 1/2? to Windows NTFS format, then disable/reset/delete Time Machine backups doing the Mac HFS format thing on remainder of External?
Setup on my Acomdata 7200rpm External is Mac 150GB HFS, Windows 150GB NTFS. On Windows side, is Vista, W7 (32 &64Bit) and recently my daughter's HP Laptop XP which posed a problem until I found that NtBackup.Msi was in VALUEADD folder on the Windows XP install CD. Also available from Microsoft if no install CD. NtBackup makes a .BKF string of the hard drive, runs maybe a little slower than Vista & Windows 7 Backup/Restore Maint. Long time since I restore a .BKF but think it requires an OS - unlike Vista + Windows 7 where the install Disk will retore from External in ~30 minutes.
I have not figured out how to get Leopard restored short of format, then complete (re)install with Time Machine restore kicking in at the end of that process. Takes a great deal of time and some things need fixing after completion. Wondering if Snow Leopard/Disk Utility has any improvements on this score. Refuse to pay for anything that I consider to be intrisically necessary to use of product.

How to stop my Time Machine external hard drive preventing iMac from sleeping?

I have a late 2012 iMac, and have discovered that sometimes (I haven't noticed a pattern of when it doesn/doesn't happen) the computer will immediately wake up after I set it to Sleep (Apple Menu>Sleep). Through elimination I have found that it is the the USB 3.0 external hard drive I use as a Time Machine back-up that is the culprit; unplugging it then allows the computer to sleep. If I unplug it, then plug it back in later on, this normally solves the problem for a while, but not forever. This same Hard Drive didn't cause the wake problem on my previous '08 iMac.
A big issue is that when the machine immediately wakes from sleep, the display stays off (until I move the mouse) - this is good from a power saving point of view, but means I don't know if/when the machine is immediately waking from sleep (I have to listen to the fan when setting it to Sleep mode to hear if it has actually woken back up).
I've searched the forums, but can't find another poster with the same problem as myself. Can anyone advise a course for me to pursue to prevent this from happening?
Thanks. Jamie

Hi Frank. Nope, I'm still having the same symptoms; the plugged in external drive (TIme Machine) will wake the machine up a couple of seconds after it winding down when put to into sleep mode. Ejecting the drive and then sleeping the machine works. After plugging it in again to do a Time machine backup, it will allow the computer to sleep soundly for the first few sessions (eg a few days of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, etc), but then it will then suddenly start preventing it from sleeping again after a while.
It seems I'm fortunate in my case that the display stays dark (or off?) when the machine has been woken from sleep, but this was actually preventing me from knowing the machine wasn't in fact asleep for quite some time; I only eventually cottoned on because there wasn't any delay when 'waking' my machine (which there normally is). I would then have to carefully listen to the spinning fans to know if in fact it had gone to sleep or not.
So, to summarise, unfortunately no, I haven't solved this yet. If anyone else has a solution, please let us know?
Also, I've noticed occasionally after waking that there is a relatively quiet 'crackle' sound (kind of electrical sounding) from the bottom-right area of the machine. This goes on every so often for about 30mins. I see this is also an issue with other people's late 2012 iMacs, but I've not seen if anyone has a solution to it?

I just had my hard drive replaced and restored everything from a Time Machine external hard drive backup and now my "note" widgets won't load. Any ideas ?

I just had my hard drive replaced. I restored it using a Time Machine backup on an external hard drive. When I open Dashboard none of my "note" widgets will load. The other widgets open, such as weather, weather radar, calculater, dictionary, stock... Even the iPhoto Mini widget works, just not the notes ( Sticky Notes and K-Notes ). Any ideas on how to fix this ?

I did some research and found the solution to my problem. So I hope it's okay to answer my own question.
When you reinstall the OS, your Preferences go back to their default settings. Apparently Preferences is where this widget information is stored. This Preferences folder is located in the user Library folder which is hidden by default. You can access it using "one, or the other" of the following actions.
Action 1:      (1) In the Finder, choose Go > Go To Folder
                     (2) In the Go To Folder dialog, type ~/Library
                     (3) Click Go
                                                      -- OR --
Action 2:     Hold down the option (alt) key when using the Go menu. The Library folder is listed just                            below the Home folder.
After opening the Preferences folder, the file that you want to locate for k-notes is named
widget-com.rakoth.lichlord.widget.k-notes.plist
After you locate it make note of the byte size of the file. Now, with the Preferences folder still open, open Time Machine and go back in time until you see a big jump in the file size. That will be your uncorrupted plist. Restore it and close Time Machine.
Then Restart your computer.
After following this procedure I brought up Dashboard and my blank k-notes were now refilled with the previous text and color that occupied them before I had to restore the OS.
This procedure also worked for Sticky notes, which in the Preference folder are named
widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist

Time Machine, external hard drive and more

Guys, I am very excited about the release of Leopard and in preparation, want to obtain separate external hards drive for use with Time Machine. I've got a Mac Pro 3Ghz with 3 Terabytes of hard disk space, 4Gig Ram. What would I need in terms of size for an external hard drive (I'm not sure if I will need all the extraneous stuff, maybe just want to back up most of the system files, etc and perhaps some other directories).
Questions:
1. What commercial external USB hard drive should I look at? (I'm not a build-your-own kind of guy.)
2. Should I obtain separate external hard drives for my 24" iMac as well as my C2D MacBook?
3. Should I have the external hard drive in place prior to the Leopard upgrade so Leopard finds it right off the bat?
4. Should I upgrade my RAM on the Mac Pro to 6 or 8 Gig? Is that necessary or needed?
5. When I receive Leopard (I bought the family pack because I have so many Macs) will it install over my current Tiger system leaving everything in place or do I have to start from scratch (I can't believe Apple would do that to us!).
Thanks. You guys are always the best Tech support!
John

Hi Adam Jackson, nice site you have and thank you for taking the time/effort to provide the information. It is very informative and valuable!
1. I notice that other people have good luck with LaCie products so I bought the 1Terabyte external. I see it on Google for $322 and not real concerned about the cost.
2. The 24" iMac is the C2D version as is the MacBook. I actually sold my earlier models on eBay to buy the C2D models because I wanted 802.11n. Both machines are pimped out to max, including the MacBook w/3Gig of RAM. Now my Mac Pro came with Airport Extreme built-in and I have it turned on so my other machines can share the connection via WiFi. That is very cool.
I was wondering if I would have to buy separate externals for Time Machine (TM) backups on those machines but you answer is great! I'll partition up the external hard drive. A new question about doing that is: do I move the external hard drive to each machine each time I want to backup? If so, I assume TM will allow me to backup manually and I could plug in the external HD on the iMac, and then move it to the MacBook and return the external to the Mac Pro as home base, backing up to the appropriate partition. Does that sound right? Or can I do it all via WiFi (THAT would be way cool!).
Another question. You recommend installing Leopard to a clean drive. I hesitate there because I have so many programs already installed under Tiger from Final Cut Pro, Aperature, and many that are either too hard to find or no longer available or it would be painful finding the reg or serial numbers. Is it possible to back up all of those programs and their associated preferences/library/passwords/reg codes/ and just add them back after I have Leopard installed?
My thought here is to make sure all of my apps are up-to-date then, back up all of the applications to the appropriate external hard drive partition, make a bootable Carbon Clone Copy as you suggest for safety purposes, wipe out the Mac Pro/iMac and MacBook hard drives and install Leopard on each machine. Once all machines have Leopard then copy back the working applications. I just don't know how to do that successfully, i.e., which user folders to backup.
And thanks again,
John

My Time Machine external hard drive is not recognised anymore under 10.9.1

Hi,
I am running 10.9.1 on my MBP13" mid 2010.
I plugged in my external hard drive (Western Digital Elements 500GB portable drive) and it is no longer recognised.
This has been going on for a couple of weeks.
TM says its not connected.
Icon not on desktop
not seen in disk utilities.
I have tried it on another machine (iMac 2006 10.6) and it is not recognised either.
Tried rebooting with the drive plugged in and without.
attempted to install WD Quick Formatter and this saw the drive but was unable to reformat as it said that it was 'in use'
I thought that this might be TM so I disassociated it from TM - Still No Go.
Any Ideas appreciated.

katlandsf wrote:
I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.
You don't have to do anything.
When Time Machine is out of room, it will automatically delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones. If you have the +Notify after old backups are deleted+ box checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, you'll see the message in the blue box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If you do want to manually delete some backups, you can do that, but only via Time Machine. See #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time machine external hard drive stalls start up

I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
I have been using a 1TB Iomega Select external hard drive which I use with Time Machine. All has been well for the first few weeks. However recently I have noticed when I switch on my iMac it freezes at the white screen. I also noticed that the hard drive was spinning so I disconnected the power (there is no on/off switch). Immediately the Apple logo appeared on the screen and the iMac started up as normal. However on reconnecting the power to the external hard drive, though the disc starts spinning the iMac does not recognise it. The only way to resolve the latter seems to be to disconnect and then reconnect the USB cable.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Any ideas how I can resolve this? On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Sorry for the long post
Chas

Chas F wrote:
I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You might want to upgrade to 10.6.4; there have been some fixes since 10.6.2 that might help. You can go directly to 10.6.4 via the "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Good.
Any ideas how I can resolve this?
Are you shutting your Mac down daily? If so, it's probably better to let it sleep instead. See Sleeping your Mac vs. Powering it Down.
Does the same thing happen when your Mac wakes from sleep? If so, and if the upgrade doesn't help, try removing the check from the +Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...+ box in +System Preferences > Energy Saver.+ Some externals respond to that setting, some don't. See if yours does, and whether it still doesn't power up properly.
You might also want to check with Iomega, to see if you can disable or adjust it's internal settings, or if there are any firmware upgrades.
On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Time Machine was designed and optimized to do that, and will protect you best that way. When your internal HD fails (they all do, sooner or later) or something else awful happens, you won't lose more than an hour's work. Plus, if you accidentally delete or change something, or a file gets corrupted, there's a much better chance of recovering a previous version.

Time Machine, External Hard Drive question

Hello,
I am formatting my OWC External at the moment and it asks me if I want to back up all my data with time machine on my external hard drive, do I need to do this? I plan on only using this external for recording my music directly to the external hard drive, and store my music library's?
Also how many partitiones would I need for my needs? just 1?

Say 'No" to the dialog box that asks you if you want to use the drive for time machine.
If you plan on using it as a record drive.
1 partition is fine

HT201250 How to use time machine external hard drive on other devices

I have an external hard drive which i usually use to back up my macbook pro via time machine but if i put pictures or songs on the external hard drive and connect it to a gaming concole or a pc nothing happens. The concole and pc doesn't recognize the device. Is there anything i can do to make it so i can access files from other devices while still using it for time machine?

The external drive is Mac formatted for Time Machine. Your gaming console and PC won't be able to read its format.
If you are determined to use it for both purposes, you can partition the drive in Disk Utility. Format the PC partition for MS-DOS or whatever is required for your gaming console. You may or may not have sufficient space for both partitions. If you do not you will have to erase your Time Machine backups.

Transferring data from Time Machine external hard drive to band new mac

My husband bought me a brand new Mac but then powered it up to play with it and bypassed the magic transfer option at the very beginning which would have allowed me to transfer my backed up info from my old mac to this new one.
Is there a process that I need to go through now to make sure this information transfers correctly or do I just plug in my external hard drive and let it do its thing.
My worry is that I do something wrong and Time Machine doesn't know that I need to transfer to a new mac, it sincs with the new mac and the old data gets somehow erased.
Paranoid? Oh yes!
Thanks for any help....

Time Machine transfers of backed up info to any Mac are not automatic, nor does any backed up info get erased from the Time Machine backup when you do a transfer. You have two options for copying Time Machine backup files to the new Mac:
1. Use Migration Assistant (found in Applications/Utilities) to migrate (copy) items to the new Mac. Select "From a Time Machine backup or other disk" as the migration method, then select the Time Machine backup of the old Mac, then select the items you want to transfer. You can select some or all of the user accounts on the old Mac, Applications (all or none), Settings files (Time Zone, Machine, and/or Network), & "Other" files & folders (which are any other root level files & folders not included in the above).
If you have already set up your network, time zone, etc. settings while playing with the new Mac then there is no particular need to migrate the old ones. If you migrate Applications, Migration Assistant will not replace newer versions with older ones, but it may transfer some old apps that don't work with Snow Leopard. This won't do any harm, but you may want to delete the incompatible apps as you discover them to save space on the new hard drive.
If you have created a new user account on the new Mac with the same name as some account on the old Mac, you will have to either give the old account a new name for the transfer or replace the new account with the old one, which will erase any user files you have created in the new account. Thus, you should save any such files to a backup if you want to keep them.
2. Use Time Machine itself to restore selected files or folders from the Time Machine backup of the old Mac to the new one. Open Time Machine from the Dock, choosing "Browse Other Time Machine Disks…" from the popup options. Again, choose the Time Machine backup of the old Mac, & then select whatever dated backup you want to restore items from.
All this is harder to explain than to do in actual practice -- for the first method you get on-screen guidance for each step & for the second the interface is pretty intuitive.

Fixing Time Machine/External Hard Drive

My Time Machine stopped working in April, and I couldn't get it working again. I thought I was going to have to buy another External Hard Drive, but I've been putting that off. Anyway, I finally decided that I had to either fix it today or buy another External Hard Drive. I called Apple. TOGETHER (It took both of us), we stumbled across the solution: REPLUG THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE CABLE INTO ANOTHER USB PORT. That did it, and Time Machine is working again. Not only that, I then did the same thing with my on-strike printer and it is now back on duty. So, I now have a list of three things that should be tried before panicking: (1) Turn the computer OFF and then ON again. (2) Replug the cable into another USB port. (3) Try another browser [Sometimes website incompatibility is the problem].

I finally bought another external hard drive. No more problems now.

Time Machine External Hard Drive (primary storage and backup)

Hi all, Recently purchased a 500G Mac Mini as a dedicated HTPC and have a question regarding Time Machine (I didn't see a dedicated forum page for TM). I have 2 1.5TB external hard drives (Free Agent for Mac). One houses all my iTunes and Movie files (connected to the Minin via FireWire 800), the other is for back-up of the first drive (connected to the Mini via USB). Can Time Machine be used for automatic back-ups from drive 1 to drive 2? Also, Time Machine also back up the Mini's 500G internal HD (assuming there is space/I don't max out the primary 1.5TB drive) as well as the primary external HD (in other words, back up from 2 sources)? Are there any special settings I need to apply for this set-up?

Hello! From my playings around with Time Machine I do not think you can program it to backup 1 external drive to another. Its main purpose is to backup your internal hard drive to an external source. Be careful however because it makes hourly, daily, weekly and i think monthly backups of different sizes, so after a while, if you take something off your computer and forget it, you could loose it. That said, you can drag and drop from one drive to another and still use time machine. For example 'backup' external drive 1 to drive 2, then use drive 2 as a time machine. You just wont have as much room, and time machine will not mess with whatever folders you drag and drop because its not apart of the time machine 'folder'. Hope this helps a bit.

Time Machine- External Hard Drive Format

Hey, so today i got my first external hard drive. So to make sure it worked i plugged into my mac, and time machine popped up saying if i wanted to back up my machine onto it. I thought alright sounds good, and did a back up and made the External HD the time machine disk.
But then i plugged this HD into a windows machine, and it doesn't even acknowledge its there. So i looked at the format and realize its Mac OS Extended.
So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
Thanks for the help

So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
You need to partition the drive into Mac OS Extended and FAT32 or NTFS partitions, or install a tool such as MacDrive or HFSExplorer into Windows. Time Machine will only back up to a Mac OS Extended disk.
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Time Machine External Hard Drive Back Up

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