Time Machine Initial Setup

Hi, I have been searching post and havent found a clear cut answer. It is regarding the intial setup of Time Machine on an External Hardrive that I already have files on. Do I have to delete these files that I have on my external just to install Time Machine on it or can I keep the files there somehow?

What is the format of the external drive. When I started Time Machine on mine I got no warnings like that. It just started working. I have my Time Machine going to the same partition my Tiger System is in. Has not interfered with booting from Tiger. I have been very impressed with TM so far.

Similar Messages

Very slow Time Machine Initial Backup to Leopard Server on Xserve with RAID

I'm having trouble backing up my iMac to my Xserve running leopard with dual drobos as my time machine drives
So here is the setup:
Server: Xserve (dual quad 2.8 xeons) backing up to Drobo array with 4x1tb drives running (dual drobos on server) fully patched 10.5 server with 16gb/RAM (showing 8gb free)
Network: 1gbs via catalyst switches on essentially unloaded segment (a couple of folks reading emails)
Source Machine: iMac 24" 3.06 Core2Duo with 8gb RAM
Most important fact: nothing has changed on the server (other than usual updates)
Doing an initial backup of the iMac over the network, and getting peak of about 100Kb/sec, and much of the time it seems to have stalled. Given that the machine has like 230GB to backup, this is going to take a real long while. When I query activity monitor on both the client and Xserve, they are both virtually idle with all resources free (lots of free RAM/Disk/CPU). Neither machine is running any apps right now during the test (other than filesharing, but nobody is using as the office is empty today)
Now one thing to note is the staggering number of files (iPhoto library is ~120gb and holds over 500,000 files [faces?]) giving a total of 1.2M files.
As a point of testing, copied a 500mb quicktime movie to same partition, took <5 seconds.

Should I be concerned that the TimeMachineBuddy widget is producing tons of error messages in the system console (and doesn't seem to work)
8/4/09 3:34:01 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:01.438 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:01 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:01.439 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.359 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.360 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.620 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.621 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.885 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.885 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)

HD partitions, keychain, filevault, time machine - coordinated setup

Let me start by saying this question covers numerous individual components of OS X and how to set them up in a manner which makes sense. Thus I hope this is in the correct forum. This could be a very long question and perhaps beyond this forum. In this case, being directed to an additional online resource would also be helpful and appreciated.
I am new to Mac and as yet have not started using keychain or filevault, but want to in the near future. As such, I don't really know what questions I need to ask to get it all setup the best way. Since the iMac is the main family computer it has four user accounts set up on it, only one being an administrator. I want to ensure that TM, KC, and FV, plus the partitions and user accounts, plus the MBP, are set up in a coordinated way.
I will lay it all out:
I have an iMac and a MBP, plus a new external HD and I want to start using it as a backup. I want to use Time Machine for this. I will need to upgrade my iMac to Leopard from Tiger but I was planning on doing that anyway.
So once I have upgraded the OS, here are some of the questions which come to mind before I start:
1) How do I set up the external HD so each user can only access their backup files. Obviously this isn't a problem on the iMac's internal HD but how does this translate when you go external?
2) Does it need to be partitioned in order to do this? Are there any other advantages to partitioning it anyway, it is 1TB?
3) How does setting up secure individual user account access impact TM? Can I just set up TM within each account to do scheduled backups of each users data?
4) Does adding a second machine, the MBP, change any of the above? It already has Leopard on it but isn't used as the "main" machine. It too has different accounts etc. much like the iMac
Perhaps I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be but I just want to make sure I don't set something up at the begnning which forces me down a road I don't want to go down later on.
Hopefully this makes sense and thank you very much for any pointers.

you have some misunderstanding about TM. it only need to be set up once per computer and it will back up the whole computer including all users. unix permssions will prevent one user from accessing TM backups of another user and you don't have to do anything at all about that one.
If you want to use one TM drive with two computers you have two options.
1. you can constantly switch the drive between two computers as you can not connect an external to two computers at once. This is a major pain in my opinion.
2. you can get a Time Capsule and back up both computers wirelessly to that.
Lastly let me urge not to use filevault unless you absolutely must. filevault can cause all kinds of issues and doesn't play nicely with many things in aprticular Time machine. you can't back up a filevaulted account to TM while you are logged in and you can't use TM to retrieve individual files from a TM backup of a filevaulted account while you are logged in.

Time Machine initial backup fails OS 10.5 with no reason but 'bus error'

I ran into an error on the last system update and had to go back to Leopard 10.5 just to see my stuff. I managed to move my home directory into the newly installed system and all my files are intact. Now I'm trying to get a Time Machine backup before I proceed (my initial mistake was not keeping up with them in the first place).
I had some trouble early on and at one point decided to reformat the external drive (a Fantom Drives GreenDrive, usb, 500Gb). I formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as recommended, no partitions, and then tried my first initial Time Machine backup.
It predictably spent a long time 'preparing...' and I followed along in the system log. Eventually, the copying began but early on (within the first 45 min) the backup failed with almost no indications in the log as to why. I've pasted the system log below.
One thought I had was that it was weird that there was an automatic request for backup at 12:36:54. I also included the CrashReport, but I can't make any sense out of it.
any ideas?
System log:
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backup requested by user
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Starting standard backup
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backing up to: /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb
6/24/10 12:15:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] No pre-backup thinning needed: 173.94 GB requested (including padding), 453.71 GB available
6/24/10 12:15:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] MDBackupBegin() returned result (910) > 0, waiting
6/24/10 12:36:54 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backup requested by automatic scheduler
6/24/10 12:42:17 AM ReportCrash[1431] Formulating crash report for process backupd[1190]
6/24/10 12:42:18 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[1190]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
6/24/10 12:42:24 AM ReportCrash[1431] Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/backupd2010-06-24-004204dylan-boyds-macbook.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
CrashReport:
Process: backupd [1190]
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd
Identifier: backupd
4 backupd 0x00007525 0x1000 + 25893
5 backupd 0x00002332 0x1000 + 4914
8 backupd 0x00015028 0x1000 + 81960
9 backupd 0x0000ea64 0x1000 + 55908
10 backupd 0x00008bfe 0x1000 + 31742
11 backupd 0x00004c10 0x1000 + 15376
12 backupd 0x000057b8 0x1000 + 18360
0x1000 - 0x3dffb backupd ??? (???) <f50411bdb241b61699aa81b2f3dfb7d1> /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd

I should have added that I've been through about half a dozen sites (including sanctioned apple sites) and their recommendations for getting Time Machine to work properly. I did format the drive once (with extended journaled format and GUID partition scheme, but I didn't zero it out. I'm trying that now and I'll try TM again in about 4 hours.
This morning I tried turning Time Machine's automatic backups off (moved the slider to off in the preferences pane) and manually started a backup (right-clicking the TM icon in the dock and selecting "Backup Now"). It ran further along than before, but stopped again. This time, it gave an error, and I've pasted the log below. I looked but didn't find much helpful on "error 11."
system log:
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backup requested by user
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Starting standard backup
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|
Jun 24 09:47:13 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 175.31 GB requested (including padding), 453.11 GB available
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to (null)
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb/Dylan Boyd’s MacBook/2010-06-23-231048.inProgress/E3294B86-62B0-4ABF-9B2B-F5D46B82736D/Macin tosh HD/Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Stopping backup.
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb/Dylan Boyd’s MacBook/2010-06-23-231048.inProgress/E3294B86-62B0-4ABF-9B2B-F5D46B82736D/Macin tosh HD/Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources
Jun 24 10:13:57 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Copied 13360 files (1.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jun 24 10:13:57 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Jun 24 10:14:03 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backup failed with error: 11

Time Machine Initial Backup - Partial Only

I have a WD external drive that was erased by Time Machine. But the initial backup stops at about 1 gig of data (out of the 38 gig that is there). Then schedules another backup in an hour. Why doesn't

Hi!
Time Machine has worked for several months now but since yesterday i have the same issue. After reformatting the backup disk (file system was corrupt) time machine works but stops backing up after about 100MB.
Cheers
Silvan

Time Machine initial backup

I just used Time Machine for the first time. I expected it to backup about 35GB (and it estimated a full backup at 35.54GB) but it actually backed up 30.06GB. I looked at the Options screen and the only thing listed as "do not backup" is my backup drive which it lists as 2.52GB. Any thoughts on why the initial full backup does not seem to be the size expected?

The comment from Steve Holton i think has your answer on https://discussions.apple.com/message/7884490?messageID=7884490
In short there are some things skipped by Time Machine have a look at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist in the ExcludeByPath

Kernel panic during Time Machine initial backup

Hi all!
I've got the Airport Extreme 2009 and external WD My Passport 320GB attached to it via USB and shared to the LAN. While initial backup with Time Machine via WiFi my MacBook Pro gets kernel panic.
My Passport has been formatted as Extended Journaled Case-sensitive file system.
Did anybody stumble upon such problem?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You need to know that backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Kernel panics are usually caused by hardware problems, but can be software.
Disconnect all peripherals, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, run the Apple Hardware Test: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
And perhaps a heavy-duty memory test, such as the free Rember: http://www.kelleycomputing.com/
More kernel panic info:
Apple Support - About kernel panic messages
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ
The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics
Apple Developer - Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics
|
If you still want to back up via the Airport, the first backup will be much faster if you connect via Ethernet.

Time Machine initial space required

So in addition to my regular Carbon Copy Cloner backups, I wanted to add some Time Machine backups for an added layer of protection for my MacBook Pro. It has a 200 GB HDD partitioned into 170 GB for OS X and the rest for a WinXP Boot Camp partition. At present the Mac OS partition has ~145 GB in use. Until our XRAID gets upgraded to Leopard Server, I'm using a 160 GB firewire-attached external HDD as the Time Machine backup device. It is newly reformatted and reports 149 GB available. When I attempt to launch Time Machine for the initial backup, it fails reporting that 175+ GB are needed on the backup drive. The Mac OS drive is only 170 GB large if it were full.
Using the TM options, I tried to list the Boot Camp partition on the TM "excluded" list but I can't select that drive in the options window - it is grey'd out. TM options reports that I'm only attempting to back up ~142 GB (I excluded the Developer folder and a few other things) yet the backup always fails reporting that over 170 GB are needed on the TM disk. I'm at a loss on this one. Anyone have an idea why this is happening and, more importantly, what to exclude to get TM working with this drive?
Many thanks,
Cary T.
Vicksburg, MS

20% certainly seems to be the current consensus.
In addition, Time Machine by design is intended to hold a number of backups. Each additional one only has incremental data but the space fills up over time. When there is no longer enough room, Time Machine tries to delete enough space to create room. Anecdotally there have been indications that, if that process fails, ie there are not enough incremental backups to allow Time Machine to proceed, the whole Time Machine process can become flaky and unpredictable. Until we fully know the processes and limitations of Time Machine I would be very inclined to only use it in the sort of situation for which it is designed, namely that the partition/drive used by Time Machine is significantly larger than the size of the system being backed up.

Time Machine wireless setup failed, now stuck in an endless loop...

Oh dear!
I've had my TM up and running, backing up my main iMac and MBP without problems. I've had it configured to "join a wireless network".
This evening I decided to change this so that the TM would "create a wireless network", with the intention of retiring my existing modem/router.
Something went wrong somewhere along the way and I'm now faced with a Airport Utility message box reading "Airport Utility was unable to find any Apple wireless devices. Make sure ... then click rescan to try again".
I don't understand what this means. Which "wireless device" is being referred to here? The TM or the iMac itself? Having tried rescan a couple of times I thought I'd give up, close down the Airport Utility / Time Capsule setup dialog boxes and revert back to my original configuration.
However, this doesn't seem to be possible. When I reopen the TM part of system preferences and choose "Setup Time Capsule" it seems to jump straight to the "Airport Utility was unable to find any Apple wireless devices..." message. There are buttons for revert and update whilst the "discovering" swirlygig is playing, but these are greyed out. Likewise the manual setup button that appears thereafter. In fact, the only button that is clickable is Rescan, which takes me straight back to "Airport Utility was unable to find any Apple wireless devices...".
So I am stuck in an endless loop with no apparent way out.
Thoughts / ideas welcomed! Thanks in advance, Ian.

Could you be a bit more specific, and drop a few pronouns? What I'm understanding is this:
1. You have a Time Capsule
2. Time Machine was functioning perfectly
3. You wanted to create a wireless network (??? You lost me here. Shouldn't Time Capsule create a network already?)
4. You cannot set it up through System Preferences. (You're using so many terms that I can't tell what you're trying to say in the "However" paragraph.
Try using Airport Utility in the Utilities folder, found in the Applications folder.
\Applications\Utilities

Using Time Machine to setup new Mac

I have just bought a new Mac and need to take all the data for 3 users from the old one. The old Mac is backed up using Time Machine to an external 500Gb Firewire drive.
The problem is that I can't do all the data transfer in one go and due to space and time restrictions I will need to take a couple of sessions to complete all this. This is what I was thinking of doing ...
Backup old Mac using Time Machine
Create a Root account on new Mac
Log in as root and run Migration Assistant and restore user1 and user 2 and user3 from FW drive
Pack away new Mac and plug Time Machine drive back onto old Mac
Old Mac continues updating this Time Machine drive until a few days later ...
I can either just plug in the Time Machine drive to the new Mac and restore back to just after the point I was on the first installation or I could just repeat the whole thing again. There is over 300Gb of data to transfer which is why I would prefer to not have to run the whole restore again and just pick up the changes.
Thanks

Trying to mate a TM backup to a new computer is an exercise in futility, IMO. See http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1872713 for caveats upgrading a PPC (your G5) to an ICBM (Intel-chip-based Mac). SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner, Disk Utility, etc. can create a bootable backup/clone of your existing system to an external, bootable FireWire (recommended)/USB 2 external HD (usable with the new machine, but won't boot the old one, and is about 40% slower than FW). Once that's finished and tested to ensure it looks and acts as the original, just walk it over to the new machine, boot it up, and use the Migration Assistant to move your stuff, as described in the above link.
What I just did with a new 24"iMac and transfer stuff from a G4 (which was running Leopard) was to initially boot the machine, enter the same username/password combo, internet settings, and finish up. When the machine pops up the Desktop, Software Update will run an offer a host of updates. DON'T install them, but go to System Preferences, launch SU, and disable its auto-check and install option. That comes later. Then, I manually transferred my G4's user folder to the iMac's Desktop. Next, I started moving stuff from that folder into its appropriate places in the new user's folder. For instance, I replaced the current login.keychain with the former (thus bringing over all previously saved username/password combos), replaced the new Safari folder with the old (preserving all bookmarks, history, etc.), replaced the cookies.plist in Cookies, all preference files (except those in the ByHosts subfolder), merged everything in the other Library folders, mergee\d the Documents, Desktop, Music,Movies, and Pictures folders.
Launched System Preferences and opened each prefPane, checking and modifying as necessary. Note that one significant change is the mouse—the iMac ships with a Mighty Mouse, which has many new functions over the previous single-button mouse. Once that was finished, I restarted, repaired permissions, launched Safari to ensure it workedjust like the old versioni, checked e-mail (I use Eudora), and when I was satisfied everything was working as intended, I made another clone, so I could forego the previous if something went wrong. Note that many Dock icons will showup as plain files with a question mark (since you haven't installed the missing 3rd-party items—just ignore that—but they will identify what they should be pointing to.
After recloning, launched Software Update and let it install everything, except the Time Machine and Airport updates, since I don't use them, and repaired permissions. After ensuring that everything worked as expected, I updated the second clone, launched the Migration Assistant.app, only selected applications, and migrated them. Next, I replaced the ? Dock icons with their real aliases, launched each to ensrure they worked, restarted, and did one more permissions repair.
The only complication I ran across was that QuickTime lost its Pro registration information, so I had to putit back in. About the only thing that ran on my old machine under Tiger runs under Leopard, but I've been updating them for the past 20 months while beta-testing Leopard. AppleWorks 6.2.9, Quicken 2005-07, Eudoira 5.2.1, MS Office 2004, TurboTax 07, and just about everything except Unsanity's haxies (nonbetas) runs under Leopard.

Time machine initial backup is taking over 3 days

I have an external network drive which I am trying to back up my MacBook Pro OS X 10.6.8 to using Time Machine. Why after 2 days is the backup only 40% done? I know it can take time to set it up but... really?
I had to start over since it is a laptop computer and I do need to take it with me... but I really can't afford more than 24 hours of keeping it on the network.
What's the deal? Thanks!

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

FYI: No Sleep during Time Machine initial backup

Just an FYI - I noticed that during the first Time Machine full backup, the computer does not go to sleep.
I would also assume that if you computer is asleep, it will not wake for each hourly backup.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You need to know that backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Kernel panics are usually caused by hardware problems, but can be software.
Disconnect all peripherals, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, run the Apple Hardware Test: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
And perhaps a heavy-duty memory test, such as the free Rember: http://www.kelleycomputing.com/
More kernel panic info:
Apple Support - About kernel panic messages
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ
The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics
Apple Developer - Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics
|
If you still want to back up via the Airport, the first backup will be much faster if you connect via Ethernet.

Time machine initial backup duration

How long should it take for Time Machine to make it's first full back up of data? I'm 92GB into a save of 496GB, and it's predicting 11 more DAYS of copying before it's done. I did have to stop it once, but seems to have restarted. Is this typical, or should I have just reformatted and started over? Or is this the first sign of HD failure somewhere? My HDs is WD connected via USB2, I think.
Jack

How long should it take for Time Machine to make it's first full back up of data? I'm 92GB into a save of 496GB, and it's predicting 11 more DAYS of copying before it's done. I did have to stop it once, but seems to have restarted. Is this typical, or should I have just reformatted and started over? Or is this the first sign of HD failure somewhere? My HDs is WD connected via USB2, I think.
Jack

Time Machine - initial configuration using PC formated external drive

I'm about to connect an external HD that I used on WinXP onto my imac and was wondering as it already had data on it will it be completely over-written/wiped? or will it leave my existing files alone? Does it matter how it is formatted also?
tks

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
See this user tip:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=965293&tstart=0
It will only be overwrited if you attempt to write something to disk. If you are attempting a data recovery from a PC to a Mac, I think it would be best if you simply got a data recovery program for a PC and ran it there, or ran it on Mac virtualization program.

Initial Time Machine Backup

I have a MacBook Pro and a new 3T external harddrive. I am connecting my laptop to the harddrive using an 800 firewire. I am trying to create my first Time Machine initial back up and it is scheduled to take 1, 473 days for 267.82GB on OS 10.7.5. Every day the back up does not pick up each day on continuing its first build. Help.

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Time Machine Initial Setup

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for