Time Machine makes the Host Computer unusable

I have been running Time Machine for some time now. Long enough that it started notifying me that it was deleting older backups. Shortly thereafter my computer (24" IMac) started to run very slow. So slow that it would take several seconds to type a 4 letter word and the mouse movement delay was several seconds. I went to the control panel and turned Time Machine off. That did not help. So I next disconnected the firewire disk that is hosting the Time Machine backup and my computer returned to normal.
So what do I do now? For obvious reasons I am reluctant to reconnect the Time Machine disk. Any suggestions on what might have happened and/or how I can safely reinstate Time Machine?

Obviously you are running out of space on the backup drive causing TM delays as it combs through data to determine what can be deleted to make up the space. That would suggest you need a new, larger hard drive for TM backups - might consider doubling the size at the least.
To continue with the new drive you want to clone your old backup to the new drive so you will need enclosures for both drives.
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the new backup drive.
Source means the old backup drive.
Be sure to prep the new drive as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Be sure you only use Disk Utility or SuperDuper! to clone the TM backup correctly.

Similar Messages

Two Time Machines from the same computer on one external drive?

Hello all. I tried searching for a similar situation but didn't see one.
I have a MBP running Leopard 10.5.8. Its Time Machine is located on an external mirrored raid LaCie drive.
I have installed Snow Leopard on a separate external LaCie d2 drive on its own partition. On a second partition of that drive is a clone of the MBP HD (with Leopard 10.5.8).
Can the external mirrored raid LaCie drive I use for Time Machine contain both of the Time Machine backups that are created by the same MBP - one when Leopoard is running, and another when Snow Leopard is running?
Thanks. I hope I've posed the question clearly enough to trigger thoughts. It's a brain twister for me ...

Can the external mirrored raid LaCie drive I use for Time Machine contain both of the Time Machine backups that are created by the same MBP - one when Leopoard is running, and another when Snow Leopard is running?
Yes, but it's not the best solution. A better solution is a separate drive or a separate volume on the same drive in order to keep the backups separate. In this way if anything happens to the Leopard backup volume it won't affect the SL backup volume.
If you do as you propose each system's backup will be separate but stored in the same Backups.backupd folder as long as you use a different Computer Name in each system. Your backup drive will need to be large enough to maintain full backups of each.

Access Time Machine backup through different computer

Hi, I have a 1TB Time capsule and I have my Macbook pro and my mother's macbook pro backing up to it. If one of our computers were to crash, could we go about getting a file from time machine through the other computer? I tried the right-clicking on time machine and selecting 'browse other time machine disk', but that only shows the backup for the computer im using, not anybody elses. any help?

Try mounting the "sparsebundle" file for the other computer before you invoke the "browse other ..." option. If that works, please let me know.

How can I make Time Machine use the ethernet cable to Time Capsule instead of the wireless connection? Wireless is too slow; has been taking 40 hours to create an initial 142 GB backup.

How can I make Time Machine use the ethernet cable to Time Capsule instead of the wireless connection? Wireless is too slow; has been taking 40 hours to create an initial 142 GB backup.

Plug in ethernet .. in the computer.. turn off wireless.

I have an older macbook pro and the hard drive is starting to go (making loud noises). i tried to back up to an external hard drive (my passport essential se) using time machine and the computer keeps shutting down. suggestions to complete backup please?

I have an older macbook pro and the hard drive is starting to go (making loud noises). i tried to back up to an external hard drive (my passport essential se) using time machine and the computer keeps shutting down. the same thing happens when just trying to save my pictures from iphoto to a flash drive. suggestions to complete backup please?

Sounds like you'll need to access that drive while it is not booted. You need to replace it anyway, so do that, then one way or another (ext enclusure, et), access it and copy files.
If you keep trying to boot it, you might kill it for good and not get your files, so just swap it out first.

Can I use the harddisk that I used for Time Machine on my previous computer on my new computer without deleting the old back-ups?

Can I use the harddisk that I used for Time Machine on my previous computer on my new computer without deleting the old back-ups?

Yes. See:
http://pondini.org/TM/4.html
My only concern is that you may not have enough free space on the drive.

How do you get time machine to reset your computer to the specific date you would like?

How do you get time machine to reset your computer to the specific date you would like?

Hey carlleeh,
Thanks for the question. The following resource may guide you through that process:
OS X Mountain Lion: Recover your entire system
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11192
Thanks,
Matt M.

Running Time Machine for the first time, how that I make sure that some information I have in the external drive does not get erase in the prosess

Running Time Machine for the first time, how that I make sure that some information I have in the external drive does not get erase in the prosess

1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Note: This is now your Library. It's not a Back Up, and you need another disk for backing up.
Regards
TD

Time machine makes 30 backups for the last two days, no backups for any earlier times: is there a way to control it?

I've been running Time Machine in the background for as long as I've owned my current Mac--- a few months. It is a completely generic set-up: it's a desktop (rarely shut off or asleep) connected to an external hard drive that is much larger (1 TB) than my internal hard drive (0.5 TB), and Time Machine is configured to save backups of my whole internal drive to the external drive. The external is half-full, and the internal is a little more than half-full. I often hear my external crunching away, working on something.
I recently needed to access an old file, so I went into Time Machine mode on the folder where it had been deleted a few weeks ago. While I'm not upset that it isn't available (it's my own fault for deleting it), I didn't expect the Time Machine to have such a bad distribution of saved backups. There are 30 backup snapshots of the past two days, and nothing earlier. I was expecting something more like a few from today, a few from this week, a few from this month, and a few going all the way back in time--- a broader distribution.
I don't see any way to control this in the Time Machine Preferences (in fact, very little control at all). Is there a secret way to control it, or some tip to ensure a more useful distribution of saved snapshots?
Thanks,
-- Jim

Thanks, but it doesn't exactly address my question. TimeMachineEditor allows me to set the intervals or times when backups occur, but it doesn't control the algorithm that decides which snapshots should be deleted. My problem was that Time Machine chose to delete all of the old snapshots and keep only the most recent ones: I'd like it to keep more of the recent ones than the old ones, but still keep some old ones.
In fact, the (unmodifyable) text on the Time Machine control panel says that it keeps:
hourly backups for the past 24 hours
daily backups for the past month
weekly backups for all previous months
That would be perfect if it were true.
Perhaps the algorithm did the wrong thing because the size of my internal hard drive varied quite a lot a few days ago: a process got out of control and used up all of my internal disk space. I killed the process and deleted its output (several times), so my internal disk eventually went back down to normal. Perhaps in the intervening hours, Time Machine made a backup, once an hour, and used up all of the external drive space. When it had to choose between keeping "weekly backups of previous months" and "hourly backups of the past 24 hours", it chose to keep hourly backups of the past 24 hours. This was the wrong choice in my case (it was the unwanted output) and is probably the wrong choice in most cases.
Is there a way to control the algorithm that decides which backups to keep and which to delete? I would have it delete the hourly, daily, and weekly backups in a way that preserves their relative distribution.
By the way, while I have made it sound like my problem was a runaway log file (something that would be easy to put in an excluded directory with Time Machine's "Options" button), it was a VirtualBox snapshot merge. The data in question are precious, but were unnecessarily copied many times while VirtualBox failed to merge them properly. I can't simply exclude a directory: I'm talking about a more general problem.
Thanks!
-- Jim

Time Machine over the Network: Terribly Slow

Hello,
I've been using Time Machine for over 3 years now with no issues over the network; the destination being a 2TB external Seagate connected to another iMac connected through gigabit ethernet. Everything has been working flawlessly: Every hour Time Machine would MOUNT the sparseimage it created on the disk, BACKUP the data and UNMOUNT the disk image when finished.
Until I upgraded to Lion. The above process is still working per se, however it is PAINFULLY slow! A 50MB backup can take up to AN HOUR! Searching around on the net, advised that there could be an issue with Spotlight as well, however this is not the case for me, since Spotlight finished a new index in under 30 mins. Followed every tutorial I could find on the issue, to no avail..
I then upgraded to Mountain Lion with the hope that the issue will clear itself. Cleared my old backups, resetted Time Machine by erasing its .plist file, restarted my iMac just to make sure and connected Time Machine to the network share anew, creating a "sharing only" account on the host iMac, i.e. the one that has the external HD connected through USB. Still no luck.
I painfully realize that I still have the same issue. While backing up, network traffic is under 100KB, and activity monitor does not show any backupd or mds or any similar processes taking anything over 3% of CPU time.
What could be wrong?

Hello again,
Tries on the other iMac (also running 10.8.2) and things are exactly the same: Image creation takes almost half an hour, and copying crawls at under 1MB/min. While time machine image is mounted and Time Machine is "backing up", accessing ANY disk on the host Mac is VERY slow. Seems like something hogs up appleshare when Time Machine is in use. Mind you, there is insignificant network traffic as seen by Activity Monitor, as well as insignificant CPU usage while backing up.
Stopping backup and using tmutil to set the Time Machine destination to the mounted image as mounted by Finder, solves the issue again, revving up Time Machine throughput to over 20MB/sec! There is also no issues acessing the other Mac as well, under this scenario.
Up to this point, the only way I have managed to use Time Machine over a networked external HD is through the NAS server. Both configurations where I am using a Mac running 10.8.2 as a server of the external disk have failed with very low throughput while backing up. Something must be wrong in 10.8.2's afp when Time Machine is mounting the image by itself.
I may need to remind you that I have been successfully backing up to the external HD for 4 years now; something broke a few months after the client iMac was upgraded to Lion and at the time when the host iMac was upgraded to Mountain Lion. Will try to locate a Mac running some later OS X version to do some more testing.
Also reminding that I have used two distinctive iMacs and two external HD drives for my tests so far. The client iMac has remained the same, however 10.8.2 has been reinstalled on it a couple of times. Have also used an afp-enabled NAS server which worked fine with Time Machine.

Can I use time machine to back up computer hard drive AND contents of an external HD (contains only photos) onto another external hard drive (standalone HD for backups only)? PLEASE HELP!!

I keep my photo files on a separate external hard drive, separate from my laptop hard drive. And I want to be able to use time machine as the back-up system to back up BOTH the computer's hard drive AND the external hard drive.... and i want all of the "back-up" information contained on a separate standalone external HD. So in the end, I have a 250GB computer hardrive, a 1TB external hardrive, and I want to have a 2nd external hard drive that will be the location to store the "back-ups" (using time machine) which will be either a 2TB or 3TB harddrive.
I am in dire need of help....

Yes, just make sure that they are not excluded in Time Machine.

Does Time Machine make bootable backups?

I used a beautiful backup program called Backup Simplicity in Tiger that made a bootable Exact duplicate of my HD into my external drive. That's really I want to do.
This morning I tried Time Machine for the first time. It only put a backup folder on my external drive. That's not what I want to do.
So here's my question, if I totally erase my external drive will Time Machine make a bootable duplicate of my HD on my external drive also?
Also, is there a way to schedule Time Machine for backups manually?

No, TimeMachine doesn't create a bootable backup, nor can it be controlled manually. The purpose of TimeMachine is to work behind the scenes backing up changed files. Later, when you realize something is amiss, you can 'go back in time' and fix the problem. Admittedly, I'm a little shaky on the details of just how flexible the retrieval system is since I've not yet played with that feature yet. But as I understand it, if you installed a new program and your computer suddenly started going nuts, you'll be able to use TimeMachine to restore your computer to the point before you installed that program. Or, if you realize you improperly edited a file, you'll be able to retrieve the file prior to that editing session.
Apple's team realized three things: 1) most of us don't take the time to perform backups even though we know we should be doing it. 2) most of us don't really understand how to develop a good backup strategy. 3) computers today are so powerful that most of the time the CPU isn't working hard at all and those extra cycles might as well be put to use doing something useful. Hence, TimeMachine's design.
As you noticed, TimeMachine makes a folder and does its incremental backups inside. Since I have an external drive that is much larger than my boot/data drive, I'll continue to clone my boot drive to this external once a week, just as I've been doing. If disaster strikes and I need to use the computer right now, I can do so and at worst my data will be one week out of date. (I should then be able to use TimeMachine to retrieve the missing data but the important thing is that I'm up and running again as soon as I've rebooted.) Later (or if I have the time right away) I'll use TimeMachine to restore/replace my boot drive.

"Time machine error, The disk image cannot be mounted" What can I do??

I ran the time machine. Then, "preparing backup" showed up for a long time. After that, a window pop out: "Time machine error, The disk image cannot be mounted" What is disk image? What can I do (I can't back up anything)
P.S. I use time capsule for backup. there were no problem on connection

I'm having the same issue. I do not have TC as my base station. It says right in the book that if you choose, you do not have to have it run as your router, just as a part of your existing wireless network. All software is up to date and I have already shortened the name of both my TC and TC disc to 6 characters and no spaces! I've already spoken with someone today about this. He really didn't know. Have tried backing up both wirelessly and directly connecting with an Ethernet cord. I had to finally call because when I attempted to register the product to get online support, apple.com didn't recognize the serial number!!! The gentleman on the phone got it registered for me. I bought the TC from an official apple store and for whatever reason when he put in the serial number his computer said that this TC was so "old" I guess that there was technically "no support." That basically means that even though my parents just purchased this for me a week before Christmas, that it was made a year ago and the warranty is not good?? I need to do more research on that. Right now I am very unhappy about this. I am a firm apple user and have been for years, but this is frustrating.
I had read somewhere else (not sure I've been searching apple for what seems like forever now) to make sure that the TC was showing up in "devices" of the Finder. Mine doesn't show up there, but rather in the "Network" window. Is this an issue? If it is, can anyone tell me how to fix that. I have Time Machine backing up to my TC, so I do not see why it would be.
UPDATE: I just opened up my TC on the "Shared" section of the Finder window and deleted the old "sparsebundle" (I had no clue that anything had backed up way back at 3:30pm on Dec 29) and now I get a slightly new message: Time Machine Error: The backup disc image could not be created." So now the word "mounted" is replaced with "created." This error showed up a lot sooner than the original one. Ok, no clue. I am going to try to Change the Disc again, and try again. I will post another update.
Message was edited by: kryzma

Time Machine makes my new external HD not readable on my PC?

ok, so today i just bought a new Western Digital external HD, and i 1st plugged it in on my PC, and it works fine as any other brand new HD, and i was just making sure the HD works before i plugged it on my MBP, so later i used it on my MBP and as i plugged it in, Time Machine asked me if i want to make the new HD as a back up drive for Time Machine but need to erase anything on the HD
and since it's new and none was on the HD, i click yes and erase, and it's done, my HD was named Time Machine bla2, ok so i have some installer that i need to be transferred from my PC to my MBP, so later i removed the HD again and tried to plug it on my PC again, but boom,, not readable ( 1st my pc detected a new hardware, but that's it, the HD icon wont show up on "my computer" )
and i did various things, like roll back the driver and stuffs, and even trying to reformat the HD back, but it's no use, my PC wont detect any presence of the HD
so my question is
does making a HD back up for Time Machine means the Time Machine reformats the HD into something that WIndows cant read?
i gotta go and buy another one again =(

If you just need to transfer installers or other files occasionally, then a USB flash drive works great and you just leave it formatted in FAT32 which will work on both Mac and PC. 4GB flash drives have gotten VERY cheap lately, so you can transfer quite a lot with one of these. Of course, you can also burn CDs and DVDs (if you have a burner on your PC) which are even cheaper than using a flash drive, but a little less convenient.
(Time Machine doesn't work with the FAT32 PC format, so a Time Machine drive can't be used to transfer files from a PC).

Can time machine make an external HD bootable?

Hi,
I'm not really familiar with Time Machine, and I really want to make a copy of my HD onto an external HD, so I can boot off of it in the case that my computer goes haywire. Can Time Machine make my external HD bootable? Or, would one of those other programs (CCC or SuperDuper) be better suited for the task?
Thanks!
-Dan

use Superduper or CCCloner for that. Time Machine backups are not bootable. You can create a bootable drive from a TM backup but it's a lengthy process. You need to boot from the install DVD and use the system restore utility from the utilities menu. plus you'd need an extra external drive.

Time Machine makes the Host Computer unusable

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