Time machine keeps OSX from updating to Mavericks - how do I fix?

Keep trying to update my old computer to Mavericks. It's currently at 10.6.8 and totally updated. Everytime I go to install Mavericks, when it gets to the window where you choose where to save it, I try to pick my Hard Drive but I get an error message that says I can't use hard drive because Time Machine is installed on that disc. I've gone in and deleted that program... I don't even use it. I don't know or care what time machine is... I just want to update my computer. But even after deletion, and a restart, I still get the same message.... HELP!

Hi PChick,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
Try these steps if you are not able to install Mavericks on your Mac hard drive due to a Time Machine backup.
Follow these steps so that you can install on the disk.
Important: You should have a current Time Machine backup on a different disk.
Note: If you do not need the backups that are located on your installation volume, you can simply erase the volume with Disk Utility instead of following these steps. Erasing the disk will result in all loss of all data on it, so be sure you have backup copies of any data before erasing.
Start up from the disk you want to install on.
Move the "Backups.backupdb" folder from the root level of your hard drive to the Trash. Enter your admin password if prompted.
Important: Do not empty the Trash unless you have a backup on a different disk and want to delete the Time Machine backups from this disk.
Move the "Backups.backupdb" folder from the Trash to the desktop.
Install.
These steps are found here:
OS X: Cannot install on a volume used by Time Machine for backups
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2986
All the best,
Jeremy

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Hello,
I use both SuperDuper and Time Machine to back up my MacBook Pro to an external drive. My computer's internal hard drive recently died, and my most recent backup was from SuperDuper, so after I replaced the internal drive, I restored my system using SuperDuper.
With the new internal drive, Time Machine still recognizes my previous backups and lets me access my old files -- but when I try to create a new backup, it wants to delete nearly one year and 100 GB of old backups from the external drive to make room for new ones. I'm not sure why it feels the need to do that; all the Created and Modified dates on my files appear to have been preserved, so only the usual incremental update should be needed, and I have over 50 GB of free space on my backup drive for it.
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kengagne wrote:
With the new internal drive, Time Machine still recognizes my previous backups and lets me access my old files -- but when I try to create a new backup, it wants to delete nearly one year and 100 GB of old backups from the external drive to make room for new ones. I'm not sure why it feels the need to do that; all the Created and Modified dates on my files appear to have been preserved
That's not what it uses to determine what needs to be backed-up (since they can be changed), but it doesn't apply to this case anyway.
Since you have a new drive, even if it has the same name as the old one, Time Machine knows it's a different drive and will back it up completely. You cannot prevent it.
This is actually for your protection; if you had a drive named "Music" and replaced it with a different drive, with different content but also named "Music," surely you'd want Time Machine to know it was different and back it up?
In fact, you can have two or more drives on the same Mac with the identical names; OSX (and Time Machine) know they're different, and can keep them separate without a problem.
If you really need backups kept that long, you need a bigger drive for Time Machine. Your best bet is to let it start fresh on the new one, and keep the old one "on the shelf" until you're sure you don't need it anymore. You can always view and restore from the old one, via the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Or, if you really want to, you can copy the backups from the existing drive to a larger one, then continue backing-up to them. See #18 in the FAQ.

After upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?

after upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?
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Ok. I got it to work, sort of....
As I mentioned before I tried the "disk password" and the "Time capsule Password" options to see if I can start the back up again or start a new backup. Neither worked. So I tried the firmware down grade, but like you said that did not work. I then decided to try the "Account password" option and I have never used this option before becasue it states that if there is data on the drive it would not be acessable after creating an account. Since I wiped out the disk that was nno problem. When I created the new account and choose the drive it asked for the user name and password. I entered the info for the new account I just created(FYI this has nothing to do with your login username and password), bingo! It worked!
Now I have two partitions on the TC disk. The old one and now the new account. I am guessing this is to be used if I have multiple computers, which I don't.
I any case, I am going to wipe out everything again and try again to do a backup the way I had it before.

I am trying to update my time machine backup on time capsule, but time machine keeps trying to create an entirely new backup (evidenced by the 200GB backup size). How can I get time machine to modify my old backup rather than create a new one?

I am trying to update my time machine backup on time capsule, but time machine keeps trying to create an entirely new backup (evidenced by the 200GB backup size). How can I get time machine to modify my old backup rather than create a new one?

It must have found the old backup corrupt.. so you will more than likely have little choice. You can archive off the old backup if it is still useful.
You can also verify it. See A5 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
He also has some info on this problem. eg C13.

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Time Machine Data Transfer - From FireWire Drive to Time Capsule - HELP!
I've been searching for weeks for a solution to my problem. Here's the story I've come across since I installed Leopard on Oct. 26, 2007.
I first installed Leopard on my Early 2006 MacBook and set up Time Machine with a 200GB external FireWire drive. Since then, things have been fine, until Time Machine started deleting the oldest backups. I'm a pack-rat and hated this feeling of losing data. So, I now have a few months worth of backups on my 200GB FireWire drive.
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* I drag and drop the 200GB drive into the the 'Restore' field
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* I get the warning message that I'll erase the drive - I proceed
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Error message pops up:
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I select the image in Disk Utility, then proceed with the following steps:
* Click on "Image" then down to "Scan Image for Restore"
* I enter my password
After hours of waiting, I get another error message:
"Unable to scan. (Broken pipe)."
I'm going to see, after transferring the DMG to the Time Capsule, if I can drag-and-drop the files from the Time Capsule drive onto the 200GB hard drive.
IF anyone has any more suggestions, please let me know!

32 updates on this Mac since December 2007 - Hardware, software, OS...
They keep coming at about 6 or 7 a month. Some of them I don't care about, but several are essential. 10.5.3 has been seeded to the testers a couple of times and will probably show up in the next few weeks. Jaguar wasn't worth a d*mn until 10.2.6, Panther about 10.3.4, Tiger about 10.4.4 - I'd say we are ahead or on schedule Too bad I can't get Apple to fix Spaces. I wish they'd focus on what I want but I guess some take more time than others.
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2008-01-29 21:33:23 -0800: Installed "Pages Update" (3.0.2)
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2008-03-18 10:03:57 -0700: Installed "Safari" (3.1)
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TS3423 Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not s

Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not start?

sonjadg,
you can purchase a replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for your MacBook Pro from either Apple or iFixit. If Startup Manager is only showing an OS X Installer volume, then it sounds like the Mavericks installer had a problem midway through its installation process. To fix this, you’re going to need to erase your internal disk and reïnstall your original version of OS X from the grey Mac OS X Install DVD, use Software Update to get it back to 10.6.8 (presuming that your MacBook Pro originally came with Snow Leopard), and then restore from Time Machine.

Time Machine keeps giving me an error message when I try to back up to my Lacie drive.

Time Machine keeps giving me an error message when I try to back up to my Lacie drive. It won't back up and I can't find where to fix it.

I was having the same problem with my LaCie hard drives, both of them had errors like that and wouldn't eject properly. They would be fine after turning off and then remounting and so on, but then it would start again after a while. So I looked on LaCie's web site for any software updates and I found a usb firmware update from last October and applied it to both drives and now they're perfect. Sorry, I can't find it on their web site right now, but you might want to remember this if it persists and apply the update if you haven't.

Using Time Machine on OSX 10.6.6

Hopefully someone can help here. Here's the situation: On December 31st, I ran a full system backup in Time Machine, I was having some serious disc issues and I had to send the computer to Apple to get it repaired. I wiped all of my personal data from the drive, emptied the trash and did a 7-pass 0 sector reformat on the drive (I'm a little paranoid about my personal data). I sent it to Apple and received it back from Fedex today.
I have attempted to simply restore my computer to how it was on December 31st before I began removing everything. However, Time Machine keeps telling me that I don't have permission to copy the files back to their original locations. And I don't know a **** thing about permissions in OSX.
Can someone please help me restore all of my files back to their original locations, and/or help me get past these "don't have permission" errors?

A full system restore is best; that restores everything from the backup selected, including OSX.
+Setup Assistant+ is second best. Erase the internal HD, reinstall OSX, then transfer everything but OSX when the Mac reboots. That will properly transfer all user accounts and data, and most apps, but some complex apps, especially those from Adobe, may have to be reinstalled; and some purchase keys/serial numbers may have to be re-entered.
Third best is +Migration Assistant.+ It's similar to +Setup Assistant,+ but you end up with an extra user account, which often confuses folks; or a duplicate that either can't be transferred or must be renamed; and the transferred accounts may not be recognized as the same ones as on other volumes, such as backups. Plus the apps problems.
Worst is trying to drag & drop, because the permissions usually won't allow it, plus the other permissions and apps problems.
See the link in my previous post about a full restore; see [Setting up a new Mac from an old one or its backups|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Setup.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Snow Leopard > Installation and Setup+ forum), for details on +Setup Assistant+ and +Migration Assistant.+

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch?

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch? I have a MacBook Air that was my wife's - now given to my daughter for school. My wife never used Time Machine to back up (she simply copied files to an external drive), so before clearing her files off the Mac HD, I tried using Time Machine for the first time with an external HD. However, the Time Machine back up repeatedly failed after about 2GB of 28GB of files. I manually copied my wife's 28GB of files to another external HD and deleted all the files off the Mac HD. I then reformatted the external Time Machine drive. But when I try to use Time Machine to back up the MacBook Air as it is now with my daughter's files on the Mac HD to the external TM drive, Time Machine acts as if the 28GB of my wife's deleted files are still on the Mac HD and fails back-up after counting to about 2GB, even though there aren't even 2GB of files on the Mac HD now and nothing on the external TM drive. I don't need to save any back-ups of how the MacBook used to be - I just need to start from scratch with how the computer is now. Can anyone please tell me how to get Time Machine to think the MacBook is a brand new computer and act as if it's a first time ever back up? I tried updating to Yosemite, and tried renaming the computer in System Preferences>Sharing, plus (as noted above) deleting all the old files off the Mac HD and reformatting the external Time Machine drive - none of that worked. All I can do at the moment is manually copy my daughter's files to an external HD - very frustrating.

Hmmm.. Office is not hard to restore.
You have something major wrong (Yosemite being the primary one).
Do a verify of the source drive.. to do that you will need to boot to the recovery.. and run the disk utility from there.. it sounds like your main disk is corrupted.
Once that is complete, delete the current setup of TM and try again.. use the widget to find out why it is failing..
See Troubleshooting.
A1, A4 and A5 for further info.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Good luck with it..
I would also download carbon copy cloner.. it is $40, but you can use it free for a time.. forget if a week or a month??.. to try out.. and make a proper backup before you start.. CCC is far more reliable than TM.. and in fact you might decide to simply forget about TM if it works and pays the $40.. because you can produce a bootable clone on the external drive which is a heck of a lot easier to use than TM.

Time machine restore data from an earlier OS

I have Macbook Air that is now configured with Mountain Lion. I am trying to restore data from a time machine backup taken from the same machine when it was running Snow Leopard, prior to a complete factory reinstall. I choose the files that I want to restore and then restore them. It looks like the files are restoring, but upon completion I cannot find the restored files. I have selected the "Replace" and "Keep Both" options. The kicker is that the SSD on the MBA is showing the available space decrimenting, as if the files are copying.
Can anyone offer any reasons for what I am seeing, or tell me how I can get at the restored files, which are taking up space on the drive but do not appear to be visible anywhere.
Thanks.

Yup: See #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Change which old backups Time Machine keeps

Any body know how to change what older backups Time Machine keeps? I know how to change how frequently Time Machine backs up (sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int XXXX),
but what I want is for it to not save so many recent backups and keep more of the old ones. Right now it saves hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily for the last month, and weekly for each month until you run out of space. I don't need all the daily stuff, and would really like to keep more of the monthly. The older the info, the harder it is to recover by other means. What I'd like to do is keep older backups and lose more of the intermediate ones.
Any ideas?

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.
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. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. 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 a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Time machine keeps OSX from updating to Mavericks - how do I fix?

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