Time Machine Failure and Reuse/Recovery of its Hard Drive
My Time Machine would start up after a total reset, but then it would just shutdown (orange light would go out). I was not sure whether it was the power supply, as noted in several of this community's postings, or the hard drive. I had additional information that I wanted to recover from the hard drive if possible.
I used a hair dryer to loosen up the rubber backing, pulled it off, removed the ten screws from the back plate, unplugged the hard drive, and removed it from the Time Capsule (being careful not to destroy anything with static shock). I then ordered the cheapest 3.5 inch hard drive enclosure that I could find, since I was not sure if the hard drive had failed, or was still okay. I found one at OWC on sale for $9.99 + ~$8.00 shipping. When I got the enclosure, installed the hard drive into it, and found that everything I had stored on the Time Machine hard drive was there!! I am very happy that I was able to recover my data, plus I now have a 500 GB external hard drive.
Therefore, if your old Time Machine fails, maybe you can end up with a large capacity external hard drive for additional backups/storage.
Or you can repair it for as little as $20 if you have some handy man skills and use an external power supply.
https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repair/repair-type3
Similar Messages
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I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.sydababy wrote:
and then deleting them off of my computer.
BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous. One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
follow here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret. -
Is it possible to use an external hard drive for time machine backup and also as a regular hard drive?
I am using an external drive in the exact way that you described. You just keep it plugged in to the computer when you want to access the movies and files. In order to put files on it, just go to finder open up the drive under devices and drag and drop files onto the drive. It is just like using a usb drive with a terabyte of space.
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How to use Time Machine before and after installing a new hard drive
So basically I'm buying a new hard drive for my Macbook pro and I have a lot of files on my computer that I would like to save. I have never used Time Machine before so I need help on how to set it up before AND after installing the harddrive so my files get transferred onto the new hard drive. Thanks in advance
wjosten wrote:
Me, I would never use Time Machine to do this. What I'd suggest you do is get an exterior enclosure for your new drive. Then use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your existing drive to your new drive. Once done, verify your clone is bootable & all of your data present. Then swap drives & use your old drive for Time Machine backups(after erasing it). Then get another drive & exterior enclosure to regularly clone your new drive to.
Unless he was swapping for a lower capacity HDD or to a lower capacity SSD, then the old drive would make a lousy Time Machine disk. However, whenever I swap out a disk I do exactly what you do. CCC to get the ol drive onto a new one. Test by starting up to the new (but still external drive). Then replace the internal drive.
I usually just sell the old drive on eBay. My Time Machine backup is always 2X the size of the internal drive, which I believe is a bit above recommendations, but works for me. The price of large external drives is almost the same as smaller internal ones. -
I upgraded to Maverick and now Time Machine will not connect to the external hard drive to back up files. The external hard drive is a Western Digital "My Book Live" 2 TB. How do I solve problem?
I also had problem accessing my WD MyBookLive after upgrading to Maverick.
To resolve the problem, I used Connect To Server (Cmd K) to specify the IP address.
Then I enter a user id and password I created in the MyBookLive.
You can also verify that you have admin access to the MyBookLive using Safari or Chrome.
Just enter the MyBookLive IP address as the URL. -
I run time machine on my iMac using an external hard drive. I just bought a MacBook Pro and want to know if i can run time machine on it using my wireless network on to the iMac external hard drive
How do I set up Time Machine to a shared drive on another Mac?
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I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?
Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there. -
I cannot load Maverick on my iMac HD. It reports that my HD is used for Time Machine backups and will not load to that drive. I do not use this drive for backups. I use an external 1 TB WD My Book for backups as well as Super Duper Backups. Can anyone offer advice. Thanks.
Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You have got the "Backups.backupdb" folder in the root level of your hard drive. This is the folder used by Time Machine to save backups to, and the OS X Mavericks installer thought that your hard drive is being used to store Time Machine backups
To fix this, open a Finder window, select the Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type:
Then, delete "Backups.backupdb" and empty the Trash. Finally, open the Mavericks installer from the Applications folder and follow the steps -
I have just installed a 2TB time capsule on my iMac i7, it see my second 1TB hard drive but the 256 SSD doesn't come up in the list of hard drives I can back up. How can I enable the time machine to see my first SSD 256gb hard drive?
iLife is preinstalled on all the Macs. If you purchased iLife in the App Store or your computer came without DVDs, open App Store > Purchases and download the applications. If your Mac came with discs, insert the Applications DVD and install iLife applications
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How to stop Time Machine backing up on a specific external hard drive?
I work on a iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use two external hard drives that are the exact same model, 2 TB WD My Book 1110 Media: one is intended for back-up, the other for storing video editing files. They're both connected through USB 2.0.
I set the "back-up" hard drive as back-up disk for Time Machine, through the Time Machine preferences. Now, everytime I connect the "video" hard drive, Time Machine recognizes it as a back-up disk, and starts backing up on it. I could delete the "Backups.backupdb" file that Time Machine had created by connecting the "video" hard drive to another Mac and moving it to the Trash, but as soon as I reconnect the "video" hard drive to my iMac, Time Machine backs up on it again.
Is there a way to "de-select" a hard drive from Time Machine's list of back-up disks?
Note: I should mention another thing that might indicate a conflict. When both hard drives "back-up" and "video" are connected to my iMac, if I open Final Cut Pro X, I can only see my "back-up" hard drive. To access the files I am working on, I need to eject the "back-up" hard drive, and suddenly the "video" drive appears.
If you have any idea of how to solve this conflict... I am a bit lost.
Thank you!Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Give them unique volume names using Disk Utility.
Then set Time Machine back up to that unique volume name.
For example, I regularly use 4 external drives (though they're not all the same model).
The descriptions quickly tell me which drives I have connected to my MacBook when open Finder:
My Time Machine backup volume is named 'Time Machine 1TB'.
My iPhoto backup volume is named 'iPhoto Backup 320GB'
My iTunes backup volume is named 'iTunes Backup 120GB'
and the last is 'Windows 7 Backup 250Gb' but since it's a Windows volume, it is formatted NTFS.
This likely means that you will have to erase and repartition one of your drives to name it.
You MIGHT be able to rename it using Finder, right-clicking on the volume, and selecting Rename (current volume name).
WARNING: I can't be certain of what just renaming it that way could screw up in the way of permissions and file links.
Within Disk Utility, it seems it is absolutely not possible to change a volume name without clicking the Partition tab, and that involves erasing.
Given the choice, I'd probably choose to rename (erase and repartition) the Time Machine drive. A current backup or two on Time Machine, and I'm good. I don't really need to go 'way back' to recover files, because I really don't ever erase anything. I just keep buying bigger drives!
And I still burn the 'absolutely critical, priceless, can't ever be without this stuff' files to DVD or CD at least monthly or quarterly, in case one of my TM or backup drives fails at the same time as my primary hard drive. Call me paranoid, but I worked in Information Technology for many years: Murphy was an optimist!
Message was edited by: kostby -
When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option. How do I change this? My external hard drive is a FreeAgent GoFlex Drive.
Hi, what Format is the external Drive?
They usually come PC Formatted for Fat32/MSdos, or NTFS... is there anything on it now?
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html -
I have the new 2011 macbook pro, with lion preinstalled. I want to change the harddrive. I have backed up everything on time machine. when i put my new blank hard drive in will the lion screen startup.How do i get the lion dmg when i am already using lion
NicholasLiban -
When you use the Lion restore as described, it does a fresh install on the hard drive that you can select at the beginning of the process. This provides a complete install of the very latest version of Lion, including the recovery partition. The drive that you choose for the installation destination winds up like what you would have on a brand new computer from Apple.
- Randy -
Can time machine back up a computer with multiply hard drives?
I have a MacPro with three hard drives in it. I have been very impressed with how Time Machine works on another iMac I have and want to try using Time Machine on the MacPro - BUT - I want to know if Time Machine could handle backing up three different hard drives, and, if so, in the unfortunate event that one of those three hard drives fails, could I get Time Machine to restore just that one drive and leave the other two untouched?
Thanks - RobRobRR wrote:
I want to know if Time Machine could handle backing up three different hard drives
Yes, if the drive is large enough.
See #1 and #2 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
in the unfortunate event that one of those three hard drives fails, could I get Time Machine to restore just that one drive and leave the other two untouched?
Also yes. OSX drives are restored per #14 in the FAQ, other drives per #15 and/or #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting -
Time Machine Failure and Firewire Drive Disappears
I have been using Time Machine without any problems with a 1TB external drive connected via USB. I recently changed to a firewire cable to speed things up, and it works great. UNTIL... I sporatically get errors where the time machine icon is just spinning and spinning. When I click on the mounted external backup drive, I get no response. I cannot eject or get any response from it, or find it in Finder. If I maunally kill the power on the external, I get an error for disconnecting without ejecting. When I start it back up, all is fine. I notice the error when waking up the mac, sometimes after other users have been on with their own accounts.
My guess is that sleep or switching other users somehow interferes with the firewire connected external drive from communicating with the mac?
Time machine buddy shows:
Starting standard backup
Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Backup failed with error: 19
And here is a snippit from console:
Jul 23 16:48:23 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[475]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 16:48:23 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[475]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 16:48:33 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[475]: Backup failed with error: 19
Jul 23 17:01:59 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[493]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 17:01:59 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[493]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 17:02:09 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[493]: Backup failed with error: 19
Jul 23 17:17:15 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[500]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 17:17:15 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[500]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 17:17:25 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[500]: Backup failed with error: 19
Jul 23 18:17:16 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[607]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 18:17:16 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[607]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 18:17:26 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[607]: Backup failed with error: 19
Jul 23 18:59:51 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 18:59:51 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 19:00:02 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Backup failed with error: 19
Jul 23 19:00:12 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Starting standard backup
Jul 23 19:00:12 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Jul 23 19:00:22 the-glicks-imac com.apple.backupd[678]: Backup failed with error: 19
Thanks for the help!Some "Eco" or "green" drives are known for this behavior. The following steps may help:
Select ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.
If the drive is connected to a hub, connect it to a built-in port on the computer.
If a firmware update is available for the drive, apply it.
Contact the drive manufacturer to see whether there's a firmware setting you can change.
If you installed vendor software for the drive, uninstall it.
If none of the above steps resolves the issue, try another drive. -
First - I live in a tiny fishing village in Belize, so getting support here is virtually non-existent. There is no one else in my village who even uses a Mac. Recently, my hard drive in my 2012 Macbook Pro 13" went bad (said it suffered a "shock"?) and I was traveling to Cozumel, Mexico, so had it replaced there. We used an external hard drive backup to restore the data to it's last time machine backup (October of 2014). Everything was working fine, until I returned home, added some pictures, and wanted to do a fresh backup. Now, time machine will start the backup, but gets about 113,000 of 181,000 done, and it locks up. I can do nothing - everything freezes, and I have to eventually power down the computer. I even tried deleting the old backup from the external hard drive, erasing it completely, and reformatting the external hard drive using disk utility. Still locking up. It is a 5 GB external hard drive, so space shouldn't be an issue, and it was backed up to the same external hard drive previously with no issues. I'm still running Mavericks, and don't want to try to upgrade to Yosemite until I can be sure I have a backup of my old data and pictures. I am a writer, and use that to make my meager living LOL
I'm stumped. I've looked through the files endlessly but can't find anything similar to my issue. Any suggestions? I know just enough to be dangerous, and don't want to lose everything we worked so hard to retrieve when my hard drive crashed last month.
Thanks!SMH5206 - I tried letting it sit and crank overnight twice. First time I thought it was my error causing it to lock up. Now I know better. I haven't changed any of my time machine settings - and actually never used time machine regularly. Only reason I had a fresh backup from last Oct was because I did one before I upgraded to mavericks. Everything worked fine then - and we used that to restore when the hard drive crashed and was replaced. I have actually deleted hundreds of pictures off my hard drive and one entire user, so it should actually be a much smaller backup - so if it did it before on the same external hard disk, I don't understand why it won't now. I'm really confused.
Kahjot - the external hard drive is the same one I backed up to previously - and I have completely erased it and reformatted, and the information I'm backing up now is less, so there should be no reason why it doesn't have enough room now, when there is actually less information on my current hard drive (see my reply to SMH5206). When I plug it in, it says it is a 500.07 GB WD "My Passport"
I've even tried to have time machine only backup certain files, and not the whole thing. Still locking up.
I'm sure it's my error somewhere, - I just don't know how or where
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