Time machine greyed out in disk utility

I want to erase a time machine backup to use the HD on a different system, yet it's greyed out in disk utility.
The HD still works fine and I can restore files from it and time machine itself still works backing up to it.
I cannot however erase it using disk utility.
Here's a screenshot.
What am I doing wrong?

You've got other problems in addition to the Erase being grayed out.
The menu icons at the top are not right either. The Info, Burn and Eject menu items should be active also.
I'd suggest quitting Disk Utility, reboot your system and trying again.
Post back if that doesn't fix it.
regards

Similar Messages

Time Machine drive icon greyed out in Disk utility

Hi I'm using a 1TB WD Electronics external drive which is partitioned (265GIG used so far)
Macbook Pro btw
i use one half as a regular external drive and one half to take care of TM back ups
i recently plugged in the drive and the Time Machine back up has failed and there's no TM icon on the desktop and the TM partition is greyed out in Disk utility
i've turned TM off at the moment
any ideas to get TM running again?
thanks
Sam

Disconnect the drive and reconnect it. Any change? If not, test it with another Mac.

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/

Grey bar at startup - Mac HD is greyed out in Disk Utility - Can't be repaired? Need to salvage my data!

Mac Book Pro -
My MacBook Pro (2008 Model) has been unable to start up - upon the start up screen when the grey Apple logo appears, I get a loading bar below it.
After about 15-20 minutes when the bar is almost complete the machine shuts off. There seems to be no way around it.
So I booted up my laptop in recovery mode, and opened Disk Utility to check my if there was something wrong with my drives -
my Macintosh HD (under the TOSHIBA drive) is greyed out. When I hit verify/repair it returns error messages and it remains greyed out.
I tried multiple times and a few times it stopped being greyed out on the sidebar, but even then it wouldn't let me verify or repair.
Not backing up my data recently is my obvious fault here, but I just wanted to know if there is ANY way to salvage my data.
Things I've tried:
1) Recovery Mode
     -Veryify/Disk Repair doesn't work
     -Time Machine can't seem to access my HD either (greyed out)
2) TargetDisk mode
     -I connected my MacBook Pro via firewire to my Mac Pro in TargetDisk mode and no Hardrive shows up on my finder.
Any advice appreciated, going to try and take it to a tech shop on Monday.
Thank you!

I would take out the HDD and install it in an enclosure and then connect that to the Mac Pro and see if there is any success.
If not, then look for data recovery software on the Internet. Most will have a 'trial' version that will indicate if the software will be successful or not, so you do not have to commit funds without knowing if it will work or not.
The last option is a professional recovery service. There will be no guarantees of success and the costs will be very high.
Ciao.

Resize Time Machine sparsebundle size in Disk Utility

I have two MacBooks backing up to a 500GB Time Capsule. Each has a sparsebundle on the Time Capsule that seem to have maximum sizes of the entire disk.
Can I resize each sparsebundle in Disk Utility to something smaller, say 100GB, by simply dragging the partition size down?
If I create a third sparsebundle and mount it can I then use it to store miscellaneous files, basically acting as a NAS drive.
I have seen many topics that discuss ways to limit the size of a Time Machine archive, but I don't think that this one hasn't been presented.
Thanks.

You've got other problems in addition to the Erase being grayed out.
The menu icons at the top are not right either. The Info, Burn and Eject menu items should be active also.
I'd suggest quitting Disk Utility, reboot your system and trying again.
Post back if that doesn't fix it.
regards

Volumes Greyed out in disk utility

tried to do averify and repair disk when it finished the volumes/partitions are greyed out

Where are you running Disk Utility from - the boot
system, or an installation disk?
from the actual system yea, I understand about thenot being able to unmount a volume you are on but the disks that were doing it were not the system disk so I was able to do repair and verify disk to mount/unmount, they would go through fine but the volume would stay greyed out not the actual disk itself. One is a int HD the other was a ext FW 400 drive. I have haad a lot fo problems laltely so if you want to read all the thiings that have happened here they are. OH thanks so much for your help
OK before I forget the way all this happened I will write it all down so here it is.
I was trying to hook up a ethernet conn to a muse receptor (music gear)I realized after I wasnt successful setting it up that my main Macintosh HD was missing from the desktop , When I would do a search I would see it and could acess it but it was greyed out. I did repair perm it was ok. I tried moving it to the sidebar ,no luck. I then installed a OS x on an ext HD and repaired and verified the disc that way to unount and remount all was good. WEnt back to real Os ,still not there. Then SOmeone in an email said to run a apple script
"System Events"
set visible of (choose folder with invisibles) to false
end tell when I did I then realized that now my other HD is missing from my desktop and I also accidentally made it go poof from the side bar too. now if I go to finder and try to hit show HD nothing happened.
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!
More info if I do command shift G for , /Volumes/Macintosh HD/ it goes to a shortcut for it and if I do it for the Audi HD I get a short cut to it but this time it is a network shortcut icon
Also My iDisk which I never use is stuck on my desktop and cant get rid of it
I think what happened is maybe I got my user and my main hard drive volume switched up cause if I look into that Macintosh HD and go to users/myname/desktop it looks the same as my current desktop
OBviously these are all guesses
Update
Now when I hit the audio shortcut Icon it says it cant be found and to insert the disk or connect to the sever volume and wait for it to appear on the desktop
Matt

Permissions buttons greyed out in disk utility

In the disk utility, the "verify permissions" and "repair permissions" buttons are greyed out no matter which disk is selected in the left-hand pane. Does anyone know why this is so and/or what alternative ways there are of repairing permissions?
The problem persists whether I start the computer from the recovery system (command-r) or not.
Thanks.

Hi again and thanks for bearing with me!
I haven't done any cleanup, however there are only a couple of files in /Library/Receipts/, all very old, so I'm guessing the receipts are kept elsewhere after OS X 10.5, since the KB article you referred me to explicitly refers to pre- 10.5 systems.
The disk utility log in console and the info in the disk utility itself both give exactly the same info, which is basically what you’ve given:
          Owners Enabled :           Yes
          Can Turn Owners Off :           Yes
          Can Repair Permissions :           Yes
          Can Be Verified :           Yes
          Can Be Repaired :           Yes
          Can Be Formatted :           Yes
          Bootable :           Yes
          Supports Journaling :           Yes
          Journaled :           Yes
          Disk Number :           0
          Partition Number :           2
If I understand correctly, this would all mean that I should be able to click “verify permissions” in the disk utility, but for some mysterious reason I cannot.
However, in the KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452) I notice it says “While started from an installation disc in Mac OS X v10.5 and later, a user's home directory permissions can be reset using the "Reset Password" utility.” Does this mean that if I use the reset password utility I can reset permissions and therefore not need to use the repair permissions function of the disk utility? Or is this something completely unrelated to what I’m trying to do?
I really appreciate your help very much - the only reason I wanted to repair permissions was that it was one of the recommended solutions to a problem I’ve had with microsoft office, which thankfully has now been solved after reinstalling os x and office, but it still bugs me that the option to repair permissions seems unavailable!
Anyway, it's not the end of the world if it can't be solved, you've helped me learn a lot in the process!
George

When trying to format my internal hard drive, it's greyed out in Disk utility?

I'm trying ot format my computer and wipe everything off before giving it away, but Disk Utility has everything greyed out and won't let me choose my hard drive. I have the original CD and everything that came with the computer. How do I fix this fast?

Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it.
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

Verify option on Time Machine Greyed Out

If I hold the option key and click on the Time Machine icon on the top of screen I notice that the Verify option is greyed out. Any ideas?

I think that I just answered my own question. It appears that the Time Machine software only allows a verify option if your using a Time Capsule, not an externally attached USB drive. But you would think that the wizards that programmed the Time Machine would be able to determine that I am attempting an invalid choice and issue a message.
Just another example of the "not ready for prime time" status of the Time Machine product.

Mac HD greyed out in Disk Utility

Hey,
This all started after Mountain Lion, which slowed down my MacBook a lot. I tried to do a clean install and reformat my HD, and doing so it removed the partition already on it. When I went to restore the HD, every option is greyed out except for Verify and Repair Disk (which I have clicked on numerous times to no avail). I cannot even add a partition to the Hard Drive. This Hard Drive worked fine until I clicked erase (in which it gave me an error), and I just want to create another partition (which is also greyed out).
I don't care if everything gets erased, frankly I just want my Mac back to normal. I do have a Mountain Lion USB, but that does squat. Thank you Mountain Lion by the way for this long day in which my Mac still isn't fixed.
Any help is appreciated, I am new to Mac, just moved from PC which looks pretty good right about now.

While we all have MacBooks in this forum most of us don’t run Mountain Lion. There's a Mountain Lion Support Community where everybody has Mountain Lion. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer. https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mountain_lion

Mac HD option greyed out in Disk Utility

Hey,
This all started after Mountain Lion, which slowed down my MacBook a lot. I tried to do a clean install and reformat my HD, and doing so it removed the partition already on it. When I went to restore the HD, every option is greyed out except for Verify and Repair Disk (which I have clicked on numerous times to no avail). I cannot even add a partition to the Hard Drive. This Hard Drive worked fine until I clicked erase (in which it gave me an error), and I just want to create another partition (which is also greyed out).
I don't care if everything gets erased, frankly I just want my Mac back to normal. I do have a Mountain Lion USB, but that does squat. Thank you Mountain Lion by the way for this long day in which my Mac still isn't fixed.
Any help is appreciated, I am new to Mac, just moved from PC which looks pretty good right about now.

Old
look my 0 partition. It is the internal. The 2 is my drive.
Can't had a partition. the 0 guid options partition are all greyed out.
Notice that stars beside the 750?
Everything work great. I just can't add a partition.
Can't resize?
Am I booting from EFI?
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac OSX                 749.8 GB   disk0s2

Restore on new drive: Time Machine versus "Restore" via Disk Utility

I am about to install a new 240GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G (6Gb/s) SSD into the main drive bay of my MacBook Pro, moving the original Apple-installed 120GB 3G (3Gb/s) SSD into the optical bay using an OWC "Data Doubler."
I have my entire Mac OS X Yosemite install, all apps, and all data (that is, the entire contents of the original SSD) backed up to an external Time Machine backup drive.
I'll want to make the new SSD in the main bay my bootable drive, restoring my original SSD's system to the new SSD. The original SSD will then be erased.
Question is, what are the differences between these two restore strategies:
1. Restore from Time Machine to the new SSD
2. "Restore" via Disk Utility, using my original SSD (in the optical bay) as the "Source" and the new SSD (in the main bay) as the "Destination"
Are there any fundamental difference between these two approaches? Such as:
- Is one faster than the other?
- Does one involve more or less risk in some settings or such being "lost in translation" and needing to be reset?
- Would both methods of restore include a recovery partition on the new SSD?
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011, Macbook8,3) | 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 | Yosemite 10.10.2

Thanks Kappy - to clarify / confirm: are you saying that the "Restore from Time Machine" approach would *not* include the Recovery HD (and, possibly inferring, that under that approach, getting the Recovery HD would be possible but would require an additional step)?

I can't clone (Duplicate) my Time Machine backup properly via Disk Utility

I have an ext. HDD Time Machine backup sitting beside my 10.8 MBP.
I want to create an identical ext. HDD Time Machine backup, because it's safe to have 2 identical HDDs backing up my system.
But when I follow this apple guideline, a problem occurs:
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
URL: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5096
The problem is I get a strange path even if I drop "Backups.backupdb" of 3TB1 (The source HDD) onto the root level of 3TB2, the destination HDD (I mean there's nothing in there so I just drag & drop onto the HDD). And the result is my new ext. HDD eating up about 60GB more space.
I have attached pictures of the paths for both Source HDD and Destination HDD, please look.
Why does it alter my file hiearchy like this?
Please help some high-level Mac guy thanks!

Why not just use TM to back up to 2 external drives. TM will alternate between the two when it backs up.
Alternately, you could have a 2 back up strategy like others have using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are excellent 3rd party apps to clone your internal drive(s) and both have schedulers.

Time machine ran out of disk space

My WD passport has 2 partitions. I need to get rid of the partitions so I have enough room for backups. Can I wipe the whole disk clean and start fresh with just one partition. I'm not tech savvy so I need walking through the procedure if it can be done.
Thanks in advance.

Yep, but you may be able to change the partitioning without having to erase the drive. First, starting from scratch:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Second, changing on the fly may be possible but only if the TM partition is the first partition on the drive:
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.
2. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. Click in the area of the bottom partition. It will become enclosed in dark blue lines. Click on the [-] Delete button to remove the partition.
4. Now grab the sizing gadget of the remaining partition with your mouse and drag all the way to the bottom of the partition window. The sizing gadget is in the lower right corner of the partition rectangle.
5. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process is completed.
You should now have one volume on the drive.

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

Hi there,
I found that Time Machine in Mavericks will sort it all out for you. You shouldn't need to buy another backup drive, unless you have insufficient space left and can't afford to delete whats on there. It should just work fine.

Time machine greyed out in disk utility

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for