Time Machine - I had to reformat its external disk - how do I start TM again?
MacBook Pro - 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
OS X 10.6.8
Time Machine backups to directly-connected external disk - La Cie 2 TB
I got Time Machine error messages saying it could not complete the backup. I followed advice at the Pondini TM website. I turned TM off. The problem was corruption on the external drive. Disk Utility could not fix it - invalid sibling link. I decided to abandon the existing backups and did disk erase, writing zeros to it. Took two attempts, the second attempt running for 15-odd hours. The disk has got one partition, GUID, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - this is stuff I don't really understand.
I can't see how to tell Time Machine to forget about the old backups and start up again from scratch on the newly reformatted disk. I can't find this task explicitly covered in the Pondini website.
When you erased the data that was reflected in System Preferences > Time Machine.
Glad your backup is working. You might want to consider adding a clone backup to your drive. Just like a seat belt and an air bag protect you in different ways when driving, you need both Time Machine and a clone for full protection.
Both of these applications can be used to create a clone.
SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/
CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html
Similar Messages
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Time Machine requires me to reformat my external hard disk
I have a Maxtor 1TB external hard disk that works fine with my Mac. It has been formatted to FAT32 format so I can use it on Mac and PC. When I tried to setup Time Machine to back up to this drive, I was told I needed to reformat my external hard disk as the format was not recognised. Do I have to get a separate external hard disk to use with Time Machine? Why the discrepancy in formats? If I get another external hard disk and reformat it according to the requirement by Time Machine, will that mean that I cannot use that hard disk with a PC? What is the required format recognised by Time Machine anyway.
Thanks for your answers.If I get another external hard disk and reformat it according to the requirement by Time Machine, will that mean that I cannot use that hard disk with a PC?
Yes, unless the PC has software such as MacDrive installed.
What is the required format recognised by Time Machine anyway.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Time Machine has usage requirements beyond Mac OS X's general ones.
(52969) -
Moving a Time Machine backup from a directly connected external disk to that disk on OSX Server
I have an iMac that has been using an external drive for Time Machine (TM) backups since 2013, so there is a lot of history in the backups. I now have a Mac Mini running OS X Server, and would like to transfer the drive to the Mac Mini, but continue to use the drive as the backup disk, that is, doing TM backups via the TM service on the server. However, if I simply stop TM on the iMac, disconnect the drive, connect it to the Mac Mini, tell OS X Server to use the drive as a backup disk, and tell TM on the iMac to use the Server TM service, it seems that a new backup file is started, rather than continuing to use the old one (symptom: when I enter TM on the iMac, I don't see any of the previous incremental backups).
Is there a way to persuade OSX server to continue to use the old backup file, rather than start anew, losing my history?
Both the Mac Mini and the iMac are running Mavericks and the Mac mini is running the latest version of OSX Server.
thanksWhat you are attempting is complex, and I am not certain whether it would be successful. I recommend you buy a new drive and start a new backup today, and set the old drive aside.
I have a somewhat different view of the benefits of what you are calling "History". I think that History just adds complexity to the Backup structure that makes it LESS likely you will be able to do a Restore. And Backups are only as good as their ability to do a proper Restore.
Copies of the currently-present files is all that Time Machine promises to keep -- older files that have been removed from the current source are not necessarily maintained on the Backup. In my opinion, a fresh, clean Backup from today is more likely to be able to Restore the things you need most -- without any error messages.
The most requested Restores are things Users broke or discarded today or yesterday, and those will be readily available tomorrow and going forward. In the event you need some really old copies of something, you can try to get them off the old Backup drive you set aside today. -
Time Machine encryption issue on IMAC w/ external disk
When I try to encrypt backup to my external My Passport disk I get this error message "There was an error preparing the Time Machine backup disk “Passport MAC”. A recovery system for the targeted disk is required." What do I need to do? Does this mean?
The Passport is connected via USB and time machine is activated meaning ON... and it does show up that it recognizes Passport as my time machine backup.. but why won't it let me Encrypt?
It shows the Passport at top as backup disk... and Encrypt is grayed out...
Below it shows the same disk available to select and when I select that encryption selection is NOT grayed out... so I decided I'd like to encrypt... chose the bottom choice and selected Encrypt... went thru entering good password 2X and hint... then got that error message.
So... since I was walked thru the initial setup today at the Apple store by their trainer... and Encryption was never mentioned nor selected but backup was started... does this mean that I can never choose to encrypt my backups to this Passport external drive? -
Time machine can't make backup on external disk
I'm using an external disk to make my backup with time machine. Therefore I formatted the disk for Mac OS Extended initially and the first backups went fine.
Now backup never finishes successful.
The external disk is connected via my airport extreme (wireless). I already did a disk repair but this didn't help either.
What is causing the problem and how can I fix it?eggann wrote:
I'm using an external disk to make my backup with time machine. Therefore I formatted the disk for Mac OS Extended initially and the first backups went fine.
Now backup never finishes successful.
The external disk is connected via my airport extreme (wireless). I already did a disk repair but this didn't help either.
Technically, that is not supported by Apple, although many folks (including me) are doing it anyway: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
What is causing the problem and how can I fix it?
Start with the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it.
If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, what you've done, and the results. -
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 -
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. -
Hi Everyone.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Right off the bat let me say I am using Mavericks 10.9.1 on a 2011 Macbook Pro and using all Lacie external hard drives.
I am trying to get Time Machine to alternate between two attached external hard drives, trying to be safe in case one of the backup drives itself fails.
I have both drives set in Time Machine.
From what I gather Time Machine should by default alternate between drives when backing up (I would assume it does one big initial backup on each then subsequent backups are just changes).
But this is not how it seems to be working and I cannot find a straight answer despite much Googling and Foruming
Unfortunately it seems to only be backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
There have been 4 backups since I set it up, all on "External Hard Drive 1", even though "External Hard Drive 2" is also attached and set in Time Machine.
I manually clicked "Back Up Now" and it started to work on "External Hard Drive 2" (like I want it to) for a minute but it appears to have stopped and gone back to backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
Am I missing something? Does Time Machine only move on to another disk when the first one runs out of space? Do I have to turn one off in order to force it to back up to the other drive (that would be less convenient of course)?
I am hoping that I am missing something and that it will just alternate between the two. Otherwise it is not the most comforting and thorough backup system as I had hoped when I purchased the additional external hard drive.
I have a 1TB drive and a 500gig partition on another drive, both dedicated to backups (my Macbook HD is 475gig). It will take awhile for each to fill up and who knows what could happen during that time. Having Time Machine alternate between hard drives would be a nice small bit of security if the worst happened.
I realize that there are tons of other options for backing up but I just want to use Time Machine if I can.
Again thank you for your help!You cannot use Time Machine in that way. I'm not sure where you heard that Time Machine alternates between drives automatically. What you can do is create a mirrored RAID array for the backup. This automatically duplicates whatever is on one drive onto the other drive.
Both drives must be the same size, and prefereably, exactly the same make and model. RAIDs can be configured using OS X's Disk Utility.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server:
Hardware and Service Comparison.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application? -
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 -
I am trying to do a full Time Machine Backup to a new external disk. The backup starts, and it says "Time remaining about 4 days." That seems like a very long time, but the real problem is that the computer "logs off" after a few hours, and the backup stops. The system preferences are set to "Never" for Computer sleep and Display sleep. The computer does not ordinarily log off automatically, but it has done this twice since I started the Time Machine backup.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting. -
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'm trying to set up time machine to back up on an external HD connected t my airport extreme, but the disk doesn't show as an option in the time machine selecting a disk, any suggestion anyone? My mac "sees" the airport extreme ??
The first important thing to consider here is that Apple does not support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port on the AirPort Extreme, so that may likely have something to do with your difficulties.
If you want to continue to try this, the drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and you almost always have to use a powered USB hub with a drive at the port of the Extreme...even if the hard drive has its own power supply....because the port on the Extreme is under powered.
Most users who try this unsupported method have corruption difficulties sooner or later, but we do hear from some users who seem to be able to make it work.
The bottom line is that there is no support from Apple on this if you have difficulties, so you may want to consider a secondary backup plan for your important data. -
Time Machine won't back up OWC external drive
Mac Mini running 10.8.5. Time Machine will not back up brand new OWC MiniStack external HD. I've trashed TM prefs, reformatted the TM drive, verified that there are no exclusions, but it won't back up the external HD which contains only data files -- no system, no applications. TM does back up the internal HD.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
Recap: Time Machine would not back up an external data drive despite being correctly formatted and settings correctly applied.
Problem was either: a) the Mac, b) the external data drive, c) the Time Machine drive, or d) the data.
I replaced both the external data drive (cloned) and the Time Machine drive, but Time Machine would back up that external drive either.
Finally, instead of CLONING (SuperDuper) the external data drive, I COPIED the data to a new HD -- root folder-by-folder. Now Time Machine again backs up my external hard drive.
SOLUTION: Problem was not hard drives or Mac, but within the data itself. Cloning the data simply passed on the problem to the new hard drive. For this problem, the solution was copying the data rather than cloning.
Thanks all. -
Time Machine won't backup up to external firewire drive
MacBook Pro - Time Machine won't backup to firewire external drive. Has worked well in past few weeks..........any ideas?
Launch the Console 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.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Select "system.log" from the file list. Enter "backupd" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. Post the messages from the last backup, beginning with "Starting standard backup."
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Do not post many repetitions of the same message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context. -
Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there.
Maybe you are looking for
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