TIme Machine manual????

Can anyone tell me where I can find a PDF of an instruction manual for Time Machine?
Thank you,
monet0528

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
There isn't, unfortunately, a Time Machine Manual published by Apple. There are some 3rd-party books about Leopard, that include TM. Check Amazon or the like.
In addition to the FAQ Tip that Thomas provided a link to, you might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
If you have trouble setting-up or using Time Machine, try the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it.

Similar Messages

Time Machine- manually removing backups for different machine

Hey all-
I'm running into a problem where Time Machine is suddenly not able to back up my laptop anymore, due to the TM disk being out of space. As part of trying to figure out what was going on, I went to manually browse the TM disk, and noticed that there are backups of an old machine that I no longer have chewing up a lot of space on the TM disk. Is there a way for me to remove those old backups of a no-longer-existing machine from the laptop that I now have?
      Thanks!
             -c

lackhead wrote:
when I go into Time Machine, and double click on the "Time Machine Backups" icon under "Devices" in the left-hand navigation panel, all I see are the backups for the machine I'm coming in from. However, if I go to Finder, command-K and browse to my data store, I see sparsebundle files for my both my laptop *and* the now-gone-to-the-graveyard machine.
Ah, your backups are on a network?   In that case, it's easy:
If they're on a USB drive, connect it directly to your Mac and delete the sparse bundle for the old Mac via the Finder (that is ok to do).
If they're on a Time Capsule, see #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.
In either case, if it takes an extraordinarly long time, see the blue box at the bottom of that article.
If I could do a screen/window capture in Time Machine,
For some odd reason, Shift+Cmd+4 doesn't work there, but Shift+Cmd+3 does.

Time Machine manual backup which option should be chosen?

When you click on time machine and it scrolls to a window there are options for backup. These are all my files. air, drop desktop (which is usually highlighted) Is desk top the one we should use for pictures, iTunes, documents or should it be all my files? If I leave backup plugged in does this automatically keep everything updated? I also run Fusion 5 with Win 7, is this backed up? Thank you

Thank you. I had read the article previously but the discussion with Mende 1 helped me to make more sense of the article. I had a wrong premise and once I was able to clear up my misconception I was able to move forward. Figured out how to erase old time machine backups and start anew. I wanted to start over because I really did not know how it worked and secondly because of an unrelated issue the local Apple store had to reinstall operating system. I was able to restore files from time machine (command R) menu. I thank all who replied for their assistance!

Time Machine backup missing bits of iPhoto library

I just noticed that the size of my iPhoto '09 library as seen in the Latest directory on the backup drive is a little smaller than the current size of my iPhoto library. The backup is up to date. I made sure by running Time Machine manually.
After some exploring I found whole directories within the iPhoto package structure that are just missing on the backup drive. For example, iPhoto Library / Modified / 2009 / Sep 26, 2009 is missing. I can't understand why. TM has run plenty of times since those photos were imported into iPhoto. I found other directories missing, too.
What's up with this? At this point I no longer trust Time Machine. If it's not backing up these directories what else is it not backing up?

Move/backup/move back/backup did not fix the problem. TM still didn't backup the missing directories.
I was finally able to convince TM to do the right thing by following the procedure described here:
http://www.nzmac.com/quick-tips/time-machine/how-do-i-reset-time-machine.html
This isn't a solution because I still don't know what caused TM to think that it backed up something that it didn't back up. But the article was suggested by a friend of mine in IT who also owns a few Macs. After following the procedure and running TM again I can see all of the previously missing files backed up on the ext drive. I also used BackupLoupe (http://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/) to browse the files that were actually copied by the last backup. I see that TM copied the directories that I knew were missing and two other directories that I did not know were missing.
At this point I think my TM backup is complete. But now I'm on the lookout for a better backup solution. Until I find it I'll need to periodically compare backup sizes to make sure that TM keeps doing its job.

Time machine open preferences takes long time

I use Time Machine manually to backup my digital audio workstation. I select Open Time Machine Preferences from the Menu Bar, then Back Up Now so I can watch the progress. Most of the time, the first step above is instantaneous, but every once in a while, it takes over a minute for the preference window to appear. What is going on, and how can I fix this?

I use Time Machine manually to backup my digital audio workstation. I select Open Time Machine Preferences from the Menu Bar, then Back Up Now so I can watch the progress. Most of the time, the first step above is instantaneous, but every once in a while, it takes over a minute for the preference window to appear. What is going on, and how can I fix this?

Any way to automate multiple Time Machine profiles?

I have 9 drives. 5 drives for data (1,2, 3, 4 & 5) and 4 drives to back them up (1/2B, 3B, 4B & 5B) using Time Machine. I have a lot of photos and video, drive 1 is a SSD boot, drive 2 is a SSD for work, the rest are hard disk drives.
I reset Time Machine manually for each profile every so often like so:
Profile Task
1 Backup Drives 1 and 2 to Drive 1/2B
2 Backup Drive 3 to Drive 3B
3 Backup Drive 4 to Drive 4B
4 Backup Drive 5 to Drive 5B
I wish I could set it up so time machine knows the profiles and does the backup tasks one after another in a continuous loop. That would be great!
If there is no practical way for me to do- then this post is my wish list for next operating system!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Short of something like an Applescript or Automator that would swap various versions of the preferences file (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist), which would be a serious problem if done while a backup was in process, no.
A better solution might be to use Time Machine for your boot volume, and perhaps another (1 and 2 in your example, apparently).
Then use another app, such as CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or the like, for the other backups. CCC is donationware; SD has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling. Either is easily found via Google.
And/or, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.
Feel free to post the suggestion here, though: http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html

Restore one hard disk from Time Machine backup

Is it possible to restore only one disk from Time machine backup? I have a SSD with OSX 10.8.5 on it while user folders are on a separate 4TB hard drive. I also have a Time Machine volume for backups. Yesterday the user drive failed beyond repair, but fortunatly I do have a recent backup. When I tried to resotre following insructions provided in the Time Machine manual, it does not give me an option to resore a specific disk from the backup, and tries to resotre only the System disk backup, in this case the SSD. Is there a way to restore a disk on which no system is installed?

Time Machine - Troubleshooting E3. I can't see backups for a disk/partition that's no longer connected

Why does time machine back up when no new files have been added?

I run time machine manually and even after having just back up, it says it is backing up 50mb of something. Nothing has been added or taken away. It just keeps adding and using up disk space.

System files are constantly changing, TM backs the whole machine up not just the files you are working on,
And 55mb is small change

Time Machine restore password problem

I had my HDD replaced by Apple. Was running latest Lion OS version before the fault, and had fully backed up with Time Machine. Booting up the iMac with the restored Lion was going well. Had selected restore from time machine. Then i was asked for my password. I know 100% that the password i entered (several times) is correct. There isn't any possibility at all that it is wrong but my iMac will not proceed further saying the password is wrong.
As I can't get past this stage I cannot access anything including the operating system - I can't get to the desktop even without any data. So I cannot get to any Lion recovery partition either. Have tried Lion interent recovery but that simply hasn't worked. Apparently I didn't purchase Lion through my Apple ID - utter rubbish. I've tried every Apple ID that I have used and no records of Lion purchase in any of them - how the **** did I download it and use it for ages then?!!
I bought the iMac originally with Snow Leopard so have that install disk but it seems I can't go back to that.
Going back to the apple store is a real pain the proverbial.
I am happy to wipe the HDD completely and start over, with Snow Leopard then pay (again) for Lion and then copy across the data I need from Time Machine manually and/or thru migration assistant. So here's the main question: How should I do that - wipe the HDD when I have no access to the desktop? I guess I'm going to have to boot up using Cmd C or similar and then type in some code. I have no experience/knowledge of that code so any help will need to be idiot proof please!.

As I had a brand new HDD installed by the Apple store this was the sequence of events (slightly different from the original post due some new info):
1     The external HDD which was the original Time Machine back up was plugged into the firewire port.
2     Booted up (as normal) for the very first time to be met with a fresh installation process just the same as when you buy an entirely new iMac - setting up language etc.
3     During that set up sequence I was asked if I wanted to restore from Time Machine, I selected that option.
4     About 3 hours later, c450GB of data is seemingly successfully loaded from the Time Machine external HDD to the internal, new HDD
5     The only option I now have available on screen is to log in using the same password as had on my original set up (before the internal HDD replacement). The forgot password hint is available, and clearly indicates that I should be able to enter my password to move, but no matter how many times I input the correct password (and, just in case, all other possible password options each with all conceivable varieties of CAPS on and off etc.). Nothing is accepted. No option to go backwards (eg uninstall the restore or anything else), and no ability to get to the desktop.
6     Several expletives later....I decide the only option is cmd+R reboot, internet recovery....and this is the udpate from the original post....
7     I'm in the UK and I try doing internet Lion recovery at about 11pm UK time. Indications are this will take 4+ hours. The trick is, I have now discovered, instead, if based in the UK at least, is to try this at 6am (when most people in the US will be asleep) and it takes about 10 minutes!
8     That brings up a chance to recover the "OS X". Great I think, just enter my Apple ID....error: "This Apple ID did not buy Mountain Lion"...cannot proceed. Mountain Lion? Where was the Lion only option? Doesn't exist seemingly. (Q: has Lion internet recovery been withdrawn? If not how on earth does one get to it?) BTW, I cannot see any partition on the internal HDD with the Lion recovery.
9     However, with the failed internet recovery (inviting me to install Mountain Lion, if only I'd actuall bought that before, but no option to select Lion or buy Mountain Lion there an then!), what I do get is a menu option to "Choose Startup Disk". "Choose the the system disk you want to use to start up your computer". One icon is there...my internal HDD...BUT I see that says "Mac HD OS X 10.6.8" - what? That's Snow Leopard, not Lion. I bought my iMac (from new) with Snow Leopard then upgrade to Lion when that came out. On the original set up (step 2 above) there's nothing to indicate what OS is running. I just assumed that as I had Lion the Apple store would have reinstalled Lion when the swapped by HDD. Likely then this is not the case. V annoying Apple Store (Brent Cross, London!). Idiots.
I guess there's a possibility that my Time Machine restore won't work because it is a Lion based backup.
Not had time to do this next step yet but likely to be my only option before admitting defeat and driving to the store again...internet recovery, get to disk utility from there, wipe the internal HDD and load Snow Leopard from the installation CD I still have (phew). BTW have tried to cmd+C and boot from the Snow Leopard CD. No joy..just ejects. Doesn't want to know!
If you've got this far..thanks for your patience. Thanks even more if you've got any ideas.

Pointing Time Machine to another Cloned Drive...

I recently cloned my HD onto a SSD. The SSD is now my start up disk. Can I continue using time machine that was originally connected to the HD and have it start backing up from where it left off using the SSD? How if possible?

I basically cloned the HD onto the SSD. Installed the SSD internally next to the HD. I will use the HD to store data in the future that I don't need on the SSD. Initially, there was nothing wrong with the HD. I just wanted more speed which was easily obtained by going to the SSD.
But when I went to start time machine manually, I started thinking that it was still recognizing the HD instead of the SSD. I looked around on options and knew I couldn't connect the time machine to the SSD even though it was a clone. So I'm thinking I have no choice but to start a new time machine. But hopefully I've overlooked an option. The user account is still the same name.
When I go to time machine, on the right side of the screen, as I mouse over, there are valid times that I ran time machine. But when I click on a date, it does not load that info into the finder. So I definitely know I am mixing apple to oranges.
I'm just hoping I can reconnect the time drive to the SSD and continue on where it was with the HD. I think I'm wishing too much out of it. Rarely do I use it to recover an old file. I do know that I can manually, using the finder, locate files on the time machine. So maybe I should put that one aside and just start a new one for the SSD.
Let me know if I'm not thinking correctly.
Thanks...

Old FileVault crashed my MacBook Pro, had to delete, reinstall and Time Machine restore failed. Trying to manually rebuild. No iPhoto pics, no iTunes music and NO DOCUMENTS found! Any thoughts?

Here's the ordeal. I'm running a 2007 MacBook Pro 17 inch with Lion OS. When I converted to Lion, I didn't have enough room on my harddrive to convert to the new FileVault, so I remained on the old system. Less than a week ago I reboot my computer because iPhoto seems to be stuck on "cataloging" my photos, though after days of letting it run, it doesn't do anything. After the reboot, my computer appears as if it had been reset to factory settings with all my programs gone, etc. I'm like, hey, I've got Time Machine, I'll restore it. After the restore is run, when I go to login, I get the dreadful error message, "You are unable to log into the FileVault user "John" at this time. Logging into the account failed because an error occurred". I searched the internet via my iPhone for suggestions and followed everyone of them, all the way down to erasing my harddrive and reinstalling Lion. So I get back into my computer and think I'm golden. I go to restore my computer via Time Machine and wham....I'm right back to that error message. I think, ok, I'll do it again. This time it messes us even more, giving me two login screens, one for the new Lion like before I restored the computer and then a second, as if it were restored, but unable to login. On top of that, I couldn't get back to the Command-R page! I thought I was really screwed! Well, I finally figured a way back, or maybe it was just that it finally decided to cooperate, I don't know, but I erased my harddrive again, and reinstalled again and thought, well, I'll rebuild manually by selecting what I want to restore from the Time Machine drive. I was able to get all my applications back and running, but to my dismay, I seemingly have lost all my iTunes music (except that which Apple has graciously setup to redownload now "thank you!) plus all my iPhoto's and even worse, all my DOCUMENTS!!!! Here I thought Time Machine from backing all this stuff up, but with over a years worth of back-ups I cannot locate any photos, music, or my documents on my drive to extract! Needless to say, I will never be using Time Machine again to back up my computer, I'll find another program or at least do it all manually. But my question is: am I looking in the wrong places for this files? Are they hidden under some unknowning folder that doesn't list it as music, photos or files? I can manage with the music, I can live with the photos because my wife has many of them on her computer and I have many uploaded to Facebook, but my files! My documents, thousands of them, many with information I won't be able to compile again, seemingly gone unless someone out there has any ideas?!!!
I even had iPhoto search the drive for photos and after hours of the barber shop pole spinning I cancelled the command for I figured it wasn't going to find anything.
If anyone has any suggestions, or if Apple, you are reading this and can provide some direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Also - my battery has been telling me "service battery" for a LONG time and then it switched to "replace soon" som time ago. Can't really see what this has to do with anything but whatever.
That could conceivably explain all the problems you're describing. Replacing a Mac's battery should not be postponed since a failed battery will cause other problems to occur. It is also possible that its hard disk has failed, which means the information on it may soon become unrecoverable.
... my latest TM back up was from April 2014, can I just run this when I have rescued everthing and then it might not be as slow?
If that Time Machine backup remains intact, it may be the only viable means of recovering that Mac's information. I suggest you do not attempt to restore its contents to your ailing Mac.
Given that you are having trouble creating a newer Time Machine backup you should stop using that Mac immediately and have it serviced as soon as you are able. Do not take it to anyone other than Apple or a service facility authorized by Apple, for the very reasons you explained. If there are no Apple Stores in your vicinity search for an Authorized Apple Service Provider using the Contact Us link below. Use one of the options that appear under Contact Apple Support. The language on that page will be different for your location.

I have chosen to fil migrate from old ibook to new MacBook Pro using Time Machine after establishing admin account. I now have two admin. accounts and wish to delete the later one and transfer files manually. I am worried I will loose both accounts. ??

I have chosen to fil migrate from old ibook to new MacBook Pro using Time Machine after establishing admin account. I now have two admin. accounts and wish to delete the later one and transfer files manually. I am worried I will loose both accounts. ??

Use the Office for Mac and ignore using Parallels for that. If you have PC only apps you have to run that are MS Windows only then consider Parallels. Just transfer your main PC, using Migration Assistant. If you don't know how then simply read over Pondini's article called Lion or Mountain Lion Setup Assistant tips and look for the section on migrating from a PC. Millions have done what you are about to, it's far from leading edge these days, if you go to an Apple Store to purchase they will offer this as a service, something you might be interested in.

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.

Using a single external drive for both Time Machine AND for manual backups?

I'm new to Leopard and haven't launched Time Machine yet. I would like to use a single (500 GB) external hard drive to use with Time Machine, plus I would like to use whatever portion of this external drive Time Machine isn't using to keep some other files upon it as well--things that I can drag-and-drop manually and then trash from my computer's HD (avi files, etc., so that they don't take up space on the computer). Is there anything special I need to do with the external hard drive before I let Time Machine have its way with it, so that I can also do drag-and-drop manual file backups with it?

I’m not terribly knowledgeable, but I’ll tell you what seems to be working for me.
I also have a 500GB external drive which I had planned to use for TM for my MBP. I partitioned it (using Disk Utility) into two partitions. One I created nearly the same size as my MBP drive, the other I used for TM.
I used the smaller partition for a backup using SuperDuper prior to upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. Once I tested that I was able to boot from it and that all my programs seemed to work, I upgraded to Leopard and told it to use the other partition for TM.
It then created a TM icon for the other partition and, to the machine, it looks like a separate drive. I’ve seen no performance hit at all.
Just one man’s experience, though I haven’t yet tried to retrieve anything.
Good luck.

I'd like to do a fresh install on a macbook air running 10.9.4 and manually restore programs and files from time machine. How would I go about doing this?

In the past I've always just run a full backup from time machine, but my computer is just getting way too full and its performance is a little sluggish.   If there's any way to to just reinstall all the programs without user files, and then manually restore user files on an as needed basis, that would be ideal.
Also, should I just reinstall mavericks using the command + R function?
Any help would be appreciated.   Thanks.

Install or Reinstall Mavericks or Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
OS X Mavericks- Erase and reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Erase and reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Erase and reinstall Mac OS X
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.

TIme Machine manual????

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