Time Machine just killed two external HD

Hi All,
Time Machine (TM) just killed two external hard disk drives. I am running 10.8.3 on a MPB 2.3 GHz I7 with 16GB SDRAM and I have had problems with TM not recognizing the external hard disks. I purchased a new 2TB firewire HD and started TM and about 2 hours into the backup TM error out with an error and the disk no longer is recognized and can't be initialized using the disk utility as it says there are zero bytes available.
I reconnected my MBP to the original MT HD and it proceeded to do the same thing and the HD is no longer recognized and can't be initialized...
Anyone else seen this or have a clue how to fix it?

Open Disk Utility and select the disk device (not the volume name). Then click the Partition tab that appears, and use the drop-down menu to create "1 Partition." Then click the Options button and ensure "GUID" is used, and then select the Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) format and apply the changes.
When finished, set up Time Machine again and see if the problem persists. If so, then the issue is likely with the drive.
If it does happen again, are you able to select the drive in Disk Utility and perform a verification on it? If so, then are you able to see any errors? Do this by selecting the drive itself, as well as any volumes on it.

Similar Messages

Time Machine backups to two external drives?

Hi,
I'm wondering if there is a way to use Time Machine to back up the same data to two or more external drives?
For that matter... I only have certain folders I need backed up. Can it be set up to do this?
I don't have it yet and couldn't find a definitive answer.
thanks,
Andrew

I'm wondering if there is a way to use Time Machine to back up the same data to two or more external drives?
You can use Time Machine to backup to multiple drives, but you'll have to manually switch target drives in Time Machine Options when you want backups to go to a different device.
For that matter... I only have certain folders I need backed up. Can it be set up to do this?
Not easily. Time Machine backs up everything unless you exclude each item that you +do not+ want to be backed up. SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner may do what you need to do a lot more easily.

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.

I am running my first backup on Time Machine using a Seagate external hard drive with a thunderbolt adapter and cable. I have a MacBook Pro 2011. It is backing up 11GB, and is telling me it will take approx two days. Is this normal?

I am running my first backup on Time Machine using a Seagate external hard drive with a thunderbolt adapter and cable. I have a MacBook Pro 2011. It is backing up 11GB, and is telling me it will take approx two days. Is this normal?

Download the supplemental fix to 10.7.5
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599

Is it possible to boot or Time Machine restore from an external Thunderbolt disk drive?

(There are several questions - search for "?".)
I purchased a Seagate Backup Plus for Mac Desktop Drive 3 TByte with default USB 3.0 interface, and also acquired the Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter for Backup Plus Desktop Drives and Thunderbolt cable.
I do a redundant backup to the Seagate Drive using both Carbon Copy Cloner (nightly) and Time Machine (hourly) using its Thunderbolt adapter. BTW: One never knows when Time Machine will choke - see discussion titled, "UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion", which I had; Rest In Peace Pondini (James Lewis Pond).
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from System Preferences -> Startup Disk:
I select the Time Machine OS X, 10.8.5 Startup Disk (Thunderbolt attached drive), click Restart, confirm my choice, the computer reboots, however, it reboots from the internal Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5, NOT the selected external Thunderbolt drive. The SSD drive was used as the Startup Drive, not the selected external Time Machine volume as indicated by the display free disk space command (df(1)) and seeing that the Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5 volume is mounted as root. That is very deceptive in that both the internal and external drives will appear in the same manner from a GUI point of view! OS X doesn't even inform me that it did not boot off the selected volume. This is the first half of the problem, that is, Is it possible to boot from an external Thunderbolt disk drive? In my case, the answer is deceptively No. Can anybody else boot off a Thuderbolt attached disk drive? Note that if I remove the Thunderbolt adapter, and attach the drive via its USB 3.0 cable, the MBP boots off the external Seagate Backup Plus just fine, as is expected.
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from boot-time "Option - Select startup disk" method:
When I restart the MBP using the startup Option key to select the startup volume, the externally connected Seagate drive ONLY SHOWS UP if it is attached with the USB 3.0 cable, not when it is attached with via the Thunderbolt interface. Can anyone else boot off a Thunderbolt drive with the startup Option key sequence? At least the MBP doesn't deceive me in this case - I know right away that the external Thunderbolt drive is not an option when connected as such.
Time Machine restore from the external Seagate Backup plus via Thunderbolt interface from the "command-R - Recovery Parition" method:
After booting from the recovery partition, I attempt to perform a Time Machine restore from the Thunderbolt connected Seagate Backup drive. When Time Machine attempts to present me with a viable backup Time Machine volume, the external Thunderbolt drive is never offered as an option. So I switch the Time Machine volume to use its USB 3.0 interface, and then Time Machine displays that drive as an option, and the MBP proceeds with the restoration as expected. The interesting thing to note is that while booted in the recovery partition via the Thuderbolt cable, the MBP Disk Utility may be selected, and the Thunderbolt attached drive may be operated on just fine. Can anybody else restore their MBP using Time Machine and the Recovery Partition via the Thunderbolt interface?
This is also a big problem for me in that I am forced to restore my MBP via Carbon Copy Cloner using the USB 3.0 interface, because I cannot even boot off that volume's Thunderbolt interface. Of course, the option may be that I could use yet another eternal USB 3.0 drive, boot from it, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to restore the Macintosh HD via the aforementioned drive connected by a Thunderbolt cable, but that is less than ideal and not elegant, so I'm not going there.
Another side issue is that the commercially available program, TechTool Pro 7's eDrive, which I installed on the Time Machine volume, will not boot off that eDrive as advertised, but I won't got through those steps here, because that would be beyond the scope of this issue, however, I must say, It does not work either when the Time Machine volume is connected via the Thunderbolt interface, but works just fine when connected via the USB 3.0 interface.

If this helps anybody else make a decision about whether to consider Apple because of Apple's superior customer service:
Apple sells this entire line of drives right in their store, from 1TB to 4TB. I spent 1 and 1/2 hours, yesterday, confirming that the 3TB model IS NOT 100% Thunderbolt compliant. A MBP cannot boot, nor can it Time Machine restore from this drive, though EVERYTHING about the drive is normal.
Apple's South Coast Plaza store management had at least two responses to me personally about how to proceed:
1. Buy a different drive from another drive manufacturer, and to attempt to return the drive to COSTCO. A lead genius suggested going with GTech drives, for instance.
2. Wait for Seagate to fix their problem.
I told Apple management in the store that the drive is advertised as Mac Compatible (see picture) and that it is advertised as being a Thunderbolt drive (see picture). I pressed management that my purchasing decsion to get the best possible MBP Retina was based on the availablity of Inexpensive Devises (raID), and that not having this complete compatibility is a show-stopper for my needs, and that I wanted a refund. Their response? They needed to talk with "Merchendising" to see if they are on or off the hook for these kind of 3rd party assertions, and would get back to me.
I am not holding my breath.
Note: I do not hold this against the Geniuses that helped me, nor against the management I've dealt with, nor the upper level engineers that I've corresponded with through Apple Care - their problem solving skills were helpful - although I could have arrived at similar conclusions given enough $$$. (For instance, try a Lacie TB drive and see if that works - we did, and it did not work. Or, we have a different TB cable and a different TB adapter, let's try those - we did, and it did not work.) I blame myself for not doing enough homework before going with Apple's solutions.

Does Time Machine only work with external HDD's and Networks?

I have a Mac Mini that I just replaced the optical drive with a hard drive. This second HDD is formated into two partitions, with one of them being for my Time Machine backups, the other a media scratch drive.
When I try to choose this volume in setting up Time Machine, I get an error message that says, +"Are you sure you want to back up to the same disk your original data is on?"+ The message goes on to explain that +"the volume you have chosen for storing backups is on the same disk as the volume containing your data... you should back up to a volume on a different disk."+
The volume that I have selected IS on a different disk than my start-up system drive and the data to be backed up IS NOT on the same disk as the disk storing the backups. System Profiler defines my startup HDD as "BSD Name: disk0" and my second HDD as "disk1," with the two partitions "disk1s2" and "disk1s3." Mount Point for the start-up HDD is "/" and the two partitions on the second HDD are "/Volumes/Scratch Disk" and /Volumes/Time Machine." These two volumes show up as options when I "Choose Backup Disk" in Time Machine, but not the Mini's startup HDD.
Does Time Machine allow the use of second internal HDD? I have an external HDD, but it has a clone of my start-up drive on it. Thanks for any help.

Chris, excluding the other volume could certainly be the issue since the two options that I'm given for a backup volume are both on the same hard disk. The start-up system HDD is not listed. Maybe the message is referring to this, rather than to the start-up disk.
Not until after I selected "use this volume anyway," did I get to the "Option" screen to exclude items from the backup. When I selected "+" I was surprised to find the other volume, Scratch Disk, listed along with the start-up HDD as being included in the backup routine. So I selected Scratch Disk as one of the items to exclude.
As V.K. mentions, the cautionary message is rather vague as to what exactly it is referring to. Thanks.

Can Time Machine Backup to Two Different Drives?

I have many Apple Computers, and I was wondering if it were possible to have time machine backup to two different drives.
I want it to back up My documents, Mail, and other files/folders that I access often to a partition of my internal drive every minute.
And
I want it to back up Everything on my Mac to my external each night upon connecting it to my mac.
I take my MacBook everywhere with me and I need to make sure that the files I work on the most stay Perfectly Accessible no matter what, and I don't want to sacrifice too much space for that procedure. I would rather just be able to do constant backups of my most used files and folders, and then do a system backup each night to make sure I always have what is needed.

Let me add some more observations. I use two disks, one at home (its a mounted volume on another Mac at home) and the other is a portable disk that I attach to my MBP at work. This works fine.
About your details - TM backs up every hour. If you look around you'll find some posts that give instructions on changing the frequency (I haven't paid attention to these, so I can't help you). However, backing up to another partition on the same drive is not what I'd recommend. If the drive dies, you may lose both partitions.
As for doing constant backups of the most used files and at night doing a system backup - it seems to me you aren't "getting" TM. This sounds like the type of backup strategy one uses with "regular" backup software. I don't think I'd recommend backups every minute, but for short intervals, why not just do a default backup of everything. It doesn't really back up everything, just things that have changed. The only time it does a complete backup is the first time you use it with a specific drive. After that it no longer does complete backups, unless you reformat the drive and start from scratch.

How can I remove all Time Machine data from an external HD, while retaining the other folders/files on the disk?

I recently replaced my old Macbook Pro with a new Macbook Pro Retina.
The original MBP had Time Machine set up on an external HD, and I also had some manually saved/backed up files (stuff that didn't need incremental backups; very old stuff) on the disk as well, in folders. This worked fine and well for the life of the original MBP.
When I set up the MBPr, I did not elect to transfer everything over from a Time Machine disk, as I wanted a Fresh Install; I chose to just re-download/install the apps I needed from the App Store. Much cleaner, more stable. I updated to Yosemite immediately so, it gave me more of a clean install.
The problem is, Time Machine now won't read any Time Machine backups from that disk. Migration assistant can pull data from it, but it's a bit wonky. It was easier to just manually copy over what I needed.
Now, I just want to "reset", and completely remove the old Time Machine data from the external hard drive, since it is completely useless to me now (I can't access it on this computer, and it's taking up space). I want to remove the Time Machine data, as if it were never there, but keep my other folders/files that are on the disk (so, a format is not feasible).
I will then set the disk up as a new, fresh Time Machine disk for the new MBPr.
What is the proper method for removing Time Machine data from an external disk (which doesn't seem to be associated with this machine anyway)? I know a simple rm -rf will cause problems.
Thanks for any help provided.

See the yellow box in #12 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

HT201250 How can I migrate a Time Machine backup from an external hard drive to a new TimeCapsuls?

I just got a 2TB Time Capsule. I want to migrate my time machine backups on an external hard drive to the new Time Capsule. I have about 430Gb of files to back up; I don't want to wait 7-8 days for the backup, unless I have to. I am using OS 10.7.5 (forget which cat that is). I have mounted the TC drive as 10.0.1.1; I tried to drag and drop from old to "data" on TC, but I get the error "The volume is the wrong format for a backup." Any ideas how I can move my old files to the new, and bypass creating a brand new backup file?
Thanks.

Rather than do that, which means starting over from scratch, losing all your edits, organisation and so on, why not simply use iPhoto Library Manager to revert the Library to the older version? Easier, less destructive.
The instructions on that are here
If you really want to start over: you can access the Originals folder simply by going to your Pictures Folder and finding the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

Re Time Machine I have an external hard drive with files I backed up manually over the past 2 years 1TB of memory. I am finally taking the leap to use Time machine to back everything. will I have to reformat that drive, thus wiping my previous bac

Re Time Machine
I have an external hard drive with files I backed up manually over the past 2 years 1TB of memory.
I am finally taking the leap to use Time machine to back everything.
will I have to reformat that drive, thus wiping my previous back ups?
can I split it the drive in two partitions?
Also
as I have two separate Macbook Pro's- one older than the other.
OSX 10.68
the other is
OSX 10.75
can I back them up separately?
or even synch and merge files and folders etc? between the two?

You CAN use a drive with files already on it to store Time Machine backups. But long term, that is not recommended. You do not need to reformat or re-partition the drive to do this. Once Time Machine Backups are established, you could remove the old files.
But do not delete Time Machines files with the Finder -- that can cause it to lose its place and lose everything.
With the cost of backup drives under US$100, it might be a better idea in the long run to get another drive. Best results from Time Machine is a drive about 3 times larger than the drive(s) you are backing up.

Cannot transfer Time Machine backups from one external drive to another

Since I bought my 13 inch MacBook Pro in September 2014 I've been keeping Time Machine backups on an external 1TB Lacie Rugged. This is partitioned into three and one of the partitions contains my iPhoto library.
Last weekend I left my MBP disconnected from the power source but with the external hard drive still plugged in. Long story short - the battery level fell below the minimum needed to operate so it turned itself off and 'disconnected' the external hard drive. This resulted in a corrupted iPhoto library which is no longer accessible.
In order to restore my iPhoto Library from another backup I needed to buy a second external hard drive. Yesterday I bought a 2TB Lacie Rugged which I've now partitioned into 5.
I want to move my Time Machine backups from the 1TB Lacie Rugged to a partition on the 2TB Lacie Rugged (to take advantage of the new Lacie's Thunderbolt connection).
I read the Apple article -
HT202380: Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
and followed the instructions precisely. About 2 hours into the transfer I came back to my MacBook Pro and saw a message saying that it was not possible to complete the transfer because I did not have the correct permissions. The only option was to click the OK button which stopped the transfer.
Can anyone advise what I should do next?
Cheers
Tricia

Hi Eric,
Thank you for your response. I came across another thread yesterday which suggested the Restore via Disk Utility method. It worked for me, too. This was after I had tried following the method suggested in the Apple article above three times but each time the message was the same ....
The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items.
I dare say that Apple would like to have us believe that it's a simple matter of 'drag and drop' but it certainly wasn't for me. From what I've read the permission problem crops up fairly frequently. Before the second and third attempts I had already amended Permissions on the Time Machine backups so that everyone could read and write, so that mustn't have been the problem. I'm the only person who uses my computer so that's not a problem.
The next problem I have is that I decided I would use the Restore route to transfer my SuperDuper clone rather than start from scratch. Unfortunately, the partition size on my original backup disk where SuperDuper clone is is 350GB and the size of the SuperDuper clone partition on my new backup is 300GB.
Of course, Apple says you can resize partitions using Disk Utility. What they don't say is you can downsize partitions but (in my experience and that of many other frustrated users on various forums) you CANNOT upsize using Disk Utility. I have 100GB spare on my external hard drive (from downsizing two partitions by 50GB each) BUT there is no way Disk Utility will let me increase the size of SuperDuper partition to 350GB :-(((
Cheers
Tricia

Time Machine issues since adding external drive

System spec:
2012 Mac Mini, quad core 2.3ghz i7, 16gb RAM, OS X Yosemite 10.10.2
Problem:
Today I added an external USB 3.0 1TB hard drive to my Mac Mini - a self powered Seagate one. I want Time Machine (running on another external drive - a mains powered 2TB USB 2.0 Western Digital drive) to back this drive up - so I went into the Time Machine preferences pane and removed the drive from the exclusions list to which it had automatically been added (since TM doesn't usually back up external drives)
I moved some data to the drive and Time Machine began to back this up as expected on it's next run. I went to check the TM drive in Finder to make sure it was backing up correctly when I noticed that the folder for this latest backup wasn't appearing - and that the Latest link went to the backup BEFORE the drive was installed. Both Finder and the Time Machine pref pane correctly showed the TM drive space dropping though - and if I went to Terminal and listed the contents of the Time Machine drive, the folder for the current backup appeared and Latest pointed to it as expected.
I let this backup and a second backup finish - so at this point I have two backups that have run since adding the external drive. The backups appear in the navigator on the right hand side - but they are greyed out compared to the others. If you try to click on one of these greyed out backups, TM scrolls back to an empty Finder window titled "Waiting: ...." and the time the backup ran.
I tried rebooting to fix this - when I checked again after rebooting, Time Machine showed the two backups and both were accessible and navigable within the TM restore interface. This was four hours ago. Three more backups have run since my reboot and they are exhibiting the same symptoms as the ones prior - not showing in Finder, not linked from Latest, and greyed out in the TM restore interface.
While I'm fairly confident the data IS being backed up, this is still going to be a problem if I need to restore. Has anyone seen this before and how did you fix it if so?

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 and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take the action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Is there any way to create a time machine backup to an external hard drive with content already on it? I have a hard drive that i have used for pictures but when i try to run a backup it says i need to start from a blank drive. Can i get around it?

Is there any way to create a time machine backup to an external hard drive with content already on it? I have a hard drive that i have used for pictures but when i try to run a backup it says i need to start from a blank drive. Can i get around it?

It would be much better if you had separate drives for the pictures and Time Machine backups.....but, if you want to use the same drive for both purposes, temporarily move the folder with the pictures to another location for safe storage.
Run the Time Machine backup on the hard drive and verify that everything is working correctly. Time Machine will format the disk for you in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as part of the backup process.
Then move the folder with the pictures back to the hard drive with the Time Machine backups.
When you have tested to make sure that everything is working again, then and only then should you delete the folder with pictures from the temporary storage area.
Again....it would be much better to keep Time Machine backups on a drive just for that purpose, and other data on another drive for that purpose. This is clearly one of those times when the fact that you can do something does not mean to imply that you should do it.

Will Time Machine Back up an External Hard Drive Attached to my Mac Pro?

Apple TV is GREAT, but it quickly filled up my hard drive. My thought is to take my folder that contains all of my personal files and put it on an 1TB external hard drive. I'd then "point" iTunes to where this new folder is. First, is that the right approach? Will that mess anything else up? Second, can I have Time Machine then back this external hard drive up? So, I'd like to have Time Machine back up my Mac HD and the external HD. If Time Machine won't do this, is there a good back up program for Macs that is very turnkey?
Thanks in advance!!!

GregT wrote:
Apple TV is GREAT, but it quickly filled up my hard drive. My thought is to take my folder that contains all of my personal files and put it on an 1TB external hard drive. I'd then "point" iTunes to where this new folder is. First, is that the right approach? Will that mess anything else up? Second, can I have Time Machine then back this external hard drive up?
If the drive is formatted +Mac OS Extended,+ yes. While it's connected, go to TM Preferences > Options. If it's listed in the exclusion box, just select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.
If it's listed in gray, however, it's either formatted wrong or corrupted, and you can't remove the exclusion.

Time Machine doesn't do External HD to External HD Live parallel backups...

I didn't know where else to post this...
I have 12GB of external storage devices attached to my MacBook Pro 17. They are a variety of sizes, and I'm trying to figure out how to use some for storage, and the rest for backing up those storage drives. I don't think Time Machine supports this...
so, I'm looking for a Time Machine styler backup software recommendation that also allows you to have live parallel backups from one external drive to another. I've checked out all the obvious things - SuperDuper, Data Backup, Backup, and others. They only support backups of the INTERNAL hard drive.
If that doesn't work, I'll have to resort to scheduled incremental back ups, but again, I can't find software that will do external to external backups.
Does anyone know of a Backup utility like Time Machine but for EXTERNAL Drives.

SFjoe1966 wrote:
I didn't know where else to post this...
I have 12GB of external storage devices attached to my MacBook Pro 17. They are a variety of sizes, and I'm trying to figure out how to use some for storage, and the rest for backing up those storage drives. I don't think Time Machine supports this...
Time Machine can back up external drives, if they're formatted HFS+, along with your internal, but only to a single volume. So unless you have one of those big enclosures that you can configure as a monster hardware +Concatenated RAID set,+ Time Machine may not be your whole solution.
so, I'm looking for a Time Machine styler backup software recommendation that also allows you to have live parallel backups from one external drive to another. I've checked out all the obvious things - SuperDuper, Data Backup, Backup, and others. They only support backups of the INTERNAL hard drive.
I don't use SuperDuper, but I'd be very surprised if it can't back up external HDs. The similar CarbonCopyCloner, which I do use in addition to Time Machine, can. But it only backs-up one volume at a time, so you'd need one "task" for each. Depending on the sizes, it could back up, say, two 500 GB disks to a single 1 TB drive (I don't know offhand if it would have to be partitioned, but that would probably be wise).
With that much data, your best bet may be a combination: Time Machine for your OSX volume and one or more externals (probably the ones with the most changes), and CCC, SD, or others for the other volumes.
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial and perhaps browse Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Also see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.

Time Machine just killed two external HD

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