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.

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HT1178 i can't connect the time capsule with my mac using the aiport utility. i want to use the time capsule to make backup for my mac book pro. the time capsule is giving a flashed amber light. please advice me

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To do the setup, plug it in via ethernet.. do not try to setup over wireless.. Once it is setup you can plug the TC into the network and use wireless.
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Time Machine questions: Handling backups for multiple Macs to one FW drive

I am reviewing the Time Machine thread and seeing a lot of helpful information, but I would like to ask something I haven't quite found yet.
We have 2 Leopard Macs, a MacBook Pro and an intel iMac... with plans to upgrade another MBP from Tiger to Leopard at some point.
In planning for Time Machine, we set up a 1 TB drive, attached it via FW 800 to the iMac, partitioned it GUID for Intel, and made 3 partitions, one for each planned Mac we want to back up to it.
I started Time Machine on the iMac first and the first backup of about 100 gb took maybe 4 hours.
Then we tried to start the Time Machine backup for the MBP over the network (wireless). It was understandably much slower and quit with some error last evening, so I took advantage of the pause to move the notebook to a wired ethernet connection. It got even slower so this morning I directly connected it FW 800, erased what had been backed up, and started over. So far, so good. 6GB out of 100 in 10 minutes or so. The idea being, if we can get the first backup completed faster over wired connection, maybe doing the incrementals over wireless network will be okay. Sounds like some folks are doing that successfully. I am hoping that works out.
Questions: Was it necessary to partition my 1TB drive into a partition for each Mac's Time Machine backup? I did make each partition bigger than the hard drive it is designated for.
To get the MBP to mount the external FW drive on its desktop, I had to disconnect the drive from the iMac. Is there any way I can connect the FW drive to both the MBP and the iMac (the drive has two FW 800 out connections, so it is physically possible)? I'm thinking (from reading posts of others with notebooks) that one strategy is to connect your notebook to your Time Machine drive at night and let it back up, but it'd be great if I could leave the iMac connected while doing so. Is there a way the volumes on the drive can mount on both desktops?
When I try wireless again, I'm seeing mixed posts regarding whether the MBP will need a password to log in to the remote volume each time, or only the first time when the Time Machine backup is established... if I could get clarification on that, it would be helpful.
Thanks!
thanks

What do you see on your notebook when you click on your TimeMachine icon in the Dock?
My notebook is mounting the backup drive on an hourly basis, running a backup, and looking like it is doing something... but when I then look at TimeMachine, I can't see the backups. (On my iMac with the drive directly attached, I see a progression of windows showing all the hourly backups the last 24 hours, etc.) I just called Apple to ask why this is so, and they told me they couldn't help me because wireless Time Machine backups aren't supported.
I know backups to a hard drive attached to an Airport Express Base Station are not supported. But when they say "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. +Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices+"... well, how can you DO that?

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

Cannot browse Time Machine backup from different machine

I've recently got a new macbook, and am transferring stuff selectively from my old machine rather than doing it holus bolus.
As per http://pondini.org/TM/17.html (that site's a great resource!) I can direct Time Machine to the previous machine's backup set (done locally on a USB-connected external HD) by alt-clicking on the Time Machine menu bar icon and choosing 'browse other backup disks'.
The problem from there is that the root of the Time Machine/'Finder' interface's hierarchy is my current machine's name. There's no way of browsing 'above' that to the name of my previous machine, from where I might browse the previously backed-up files. Time Machine can apparently open the alternative backup set, but has no way of showing me what's in there. What it shows me is my current machine's files, with no earlier versions available (because I haven't done any time machine backups of the new machine yet).
(I can of course just browse manually to the most recent backup of the old machine in [time machine drive]/Backups.backupdb/[old machine name], but that doesn't provide an easy means of browsing earlier versions of files.)

Thanks again Joe.
One last question. Once I've transferred my files from the Power Mac's Time Machine disk could I select that disk in MacBook Pro's Preferences as it's Time Machine backup disk?
(Effectively stop using it as the Power Mac's backup disk & continue using it as the MacBook Pro's backup disk).
Backing up new files on the MacBook Pro to the disk, but still be able to 'go back in time' & restore files from the Time Machine disk (backup up over time on the Power Mac).

How do I copy a TM backup to an external HDD with an existing TM backup (for another machine)?

Hi,
My question relates to the use of Time Machine for two different Macs ... I have two Macs: a MacBook Pro (ML) and an iMac (SL). I use Time Machine for both.
Unfortunately, the external HDD (A) drive I use for the backup of my MacBook Pro is on the way out. I am now in a situation where I need to copy this Time Machine backup to another external HDD (B) which I use for the backup of my iMac.
I have decided that I would like to use external HDD B for all future backups of both machines from now on. It is a 2Tb LaCie drive with one partition. Therefore, I would like to copy the Time Machine backup data from external HDD A to external HDD B. Since both TM files/directories have identical names, I am looking for some advice of how to do this without 'deactivating' any of the backups or corrupting them, or screwing with permissions.
In case this is known to be problemmatic, would it be 'better practice' to partition the external 2Tb HDD drive into two partitions, then just use one partition for each backup? Is there an advantage/disadvantage to partitioning the drive? Will this approach make it 'less confusing for Time Machine' and reduce potential problems?
Any advice would be great!
Thanks,
Mark.

Don't bother trying to copy a TM backup file. Just connect the other good drive to your MBP and create a new full TM backup on that drive. I do suggest you create a separate partition on that good drive for each Mac you will be backing up to it.

RDCMan different behavior for different machines

I'm using Remote Desktop Connection Manager, which has been very useful since I have to remote into so many different machines.
I am curious though and this is more of a question than a problem, but I notice different behavior remoting into different systems.
On some servers, I get this popup when I connect:
On other servers, I get brought to this screen to enter my password:
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RDP Session Setting:
Console Session Settings:
Hi,
As per my research, that is the default behavior and it correlates for 2 different scenario “Console and RDP”. When you are performing “Console” of server then it will provide you the direct screen of server to login. But when you want to take RDP
then it will ask you as “Windows Security” login prompt.
Please check my words on your screenshots
Hope it helps!
Thanks.
Dharmesh Solanki
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

Time Capsule error - no backup for two weeks

I, too, have received the ridiculous non-descriptive error message. When I called Apple, they just told me to reset the Time Capsule. I thought everything was working fine, then when I actually used Time Machine to find a file that I had deleted, I noticed that there have been no backups for a week! And what's more frustrating is that that **** icon keeps spinning and saying that it's either preparing to backup, backing up, or finishing a backup. I thought that something was actually happening because the rest of my system/internet connection is so slow. This Time Capsule promised to be something great and I called all around trying to get one when it was first announced, and I have had nothing but problems with it since I got it.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
What happens when you try to do a +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in your menubar, or by right-clicking the TM icon in your dock?
If you get an error message, see #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
And please click +My Settings+ at the right of this page, and specify what model of MacBook you have, what version of OSX you're on, and any other pertinent information, so it will show up on each of your posts. Sometimes that's important info for us to figure out what's going on, and to provide the best advice.

Firefox is rendering a page in quirks mode on one machine, but not on a different machine.

I have two machines that are going to the same website. One machine renders the page correctly, the other enters quirks mode and nothing appears on the screen.
The machine that is not working is running OS X 10.6.4. The one that is working is running 10.4.11.
I tried deleting the preferences, and reinstalling Firefox.
This is a brand new install of the OS and was the first time we tried access this website.

The problem is due to a call to getVolumeInformation. It works on my desktop but not on a different machine which has different drives and partitions etc. I'm returning the file system type of the fixed drives, however on certain fixed drives it fails. At first I thought it was failing on logical drives but that does not seem to be the case.This is nonsense in terms of your original post.
Perhaps you meant to say that some of your native methods work and others dont? And the one and only way that they don't work is because you get the link error? If yes then I already told you what the reason is.
Conversely there is some other failure, which has nothing to do with a link error. And thus it is pointless to continue to discuss this unless you actually explain what is happening.

Time machine creating new backup for external hd every time it is connected.

Hi.
I have recently gotten a Time Capsule to back up my files.
I want to back up my internal harddrive as well as an external harddrive with master images from aperture.
Theoretically time machine should skip trying to back up the external drive when it is not connected, and make a backup when it is. (I only connect the disk when working with the images)
However, the problem is that every time I connect the external hd to back it up, time machine seems to create a total new backup of the whole drive and not just the changes. It seems to not recognise that it has already backed up the disk before. Does anyone know how to fix this?
I know it is possible, since I have used this system before, but can't quite figure out how to solve the problem.
Thanks!

However, the problem is that every time I connect the external hd to back it up, time machine seems to create a total new backup of the whole drive and not just the changes. It seems to not recognise that it has already backed up the disk before. Does anyone know how to fix this?
If the drive is not recognised.. you should see multiple external drives in the backup.. is that in fact what is happening.
What makes you think it is doing a whole new backup??
One factor you may not have considered is that Time Machine does need to do a deep scan of the disk when it has missed more than a few days. A deep scan can take ages over wireless as it will have to actually compare the backup with the files on the disk. Determine what has changed, make up a list of files that need backup and then start and actually do the backup.. this might even take longer than a straight clean backup.
Have you checked the TM log for what it is really doing?? Pondini widget will give you that info. See A1 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
I have a simple solution.. that will cost you around $40.. use Carbon Copy Cloner.. not Time Machine. It simply handles this kind of thing better.
There are a number of other solutions that you can buy.. 3rd party backup software.. you can even do it manually via rsync.. however.. a tool like CCC which is based on rsync is a heck of lot easier than writing your own backup scripts.

Problems with Time Machine backup for two machines to one external drive

I have a brand new WD 500GB USB My Book external drive plugged into my Intel Mac Mini running 10.5.1 to use as a TM backup drive (TM reformatted it to HFS+ journaled). The Mini's connected by ethernet to the Airport Extreme. It works great. I setup my wife's MacBook Pro 17" Dual Core 2 w. 10.5.1 for TM using the Mac Mini's TM backup drive and it works fine (a little slower at 811.n wi-fi speeds, but OK). I have the Mac Mini setup in Energy Saver to shut down at night and restart in the morning. The morning after I setup my wife's MacBook Pro for TM I found a big black & white message (in half a dozen languages) on the Mac Mini saying start up failed and I need to reboot using the power button. I did and everything was cool. Now comes the problem, it's done it three days in a row so it looks like there is a problem with the TM setup. It didn't do this before I setup my wife's computer for TM.
Any thoughts on what is causing this? We've had minimal problems with Leopard setup (short of a brief hunt for an Airport Extreme Drive and a couple of network printers during initial setup).

1 mistake @ a time wrote:
I works fine over a network if the TM drive is attached to another Mac running Leopard. It won't work with an Airport drive (Apple deep sixed that feature in the final release).
We have an Airport Extreme base station, and we plan to add an Airport Express to boost the power to reach the second floor. We are ordering 4 iMacs, 20", plus I have the Macbook 13" that I have had for a few months.
We thought we could connect one large external drive via firewire cable to one of the iMacs and use it to back up all five computers via Time Machine.
Is that possible, or does everybody need their own external drive?
Thanks!
susan

Can Time Machine perform encrypted backups for more than one computer to the same external drive?

I have two MBPs. The older MBP, with 1TB of storage, now contains two other MBP clones, for a total of 3 user machines on 1 MBP). I'd like to back up both my newest MBP, and the older MBP with the 2 clones, to my new 5TB drive (via wi-fi). I want to encrypt these backups, but am unclear whether it is possible. Does TM first encrypt the drive itself, or is each back up separately encrypted? I understand that if I wanted to encrypt an existing Time Matters backup on a drive, the prior data would be erased and reformatted, but here I am working with a new backup drive, on which one encrypted backup has been performed.
I just don't want to overwrite this existing backup (which was for my newest MBP).
Thanks for whatever help anyone can provide.

You should have prepared the drive better..
The drive should have been partitioned. It is possible to load the backups.. but you can get into trouble.
See http://pondini.org/TM/4.html
Since partitioning at this point would destroy the existing backup.. the best way is to setup a disk image for each of the other Macbook backups and then mount the disk image and use that for the TM backup..
Encrypting the drive or the backup.. that is something I avoid.. backups to me are useless if I forget or lose the key.. apple have warned lose the key.. the backup is useless..
But check pondini FAQ .. you might be able to encrypt a drive image.. or the backup.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
See Q25 and 31.

Does Time Machine make complete backups of Virtual Machines?

I am new to the forums, so forgive me if this has been asked before.
I have a MacBook Pro and have VMWare Fusion 3 installed.
I have Windows 7 and XP installed as virtual machines, and use an external hard drive to back up into using Time Machine. I have been given conflicting information regarding the backups being created by Time Machine.
I have been told that I should use a Windows backup program such as Acronis to back up the Windows installations separately from the Mac backups on the separate hard drive.
Someone else has told me that if I use Time Machine, then the Windows installations will be backed up automatically, as the Windows installations are effectively folders and files within the Mac software.
Just to confuse things, I have read somewhere that Time Machine cannot back up Boot partitions of Windows installations, but I can't remember where I read this.
I don't want to lose my Windows installations through not understanding the backup capabilities of Time Machine, so I am hoping that someone here can advise me as to what the best course of action would be please.
Can I trust Time Machine to back everything up and to be able to restore my whole machine, including Windows installations, from a Time Machine backup, or do I need to back up the Windows virtual machines separately by using Acronis.
Thanks
Kevin

1. TM will not backup a Boot Camp Windows volume.
2. TM will backup a VM disc image every time it changes unless you have excluded it via TM's Exclude list.
3. If the VMs change often then TM will backup each change thus consuming large amounts of space on the backup drive which is not recommended. Thus, it's best to backup VMs separately from within Windows using a Windows backup utility.
4. TM will not backup individual files and folders of a VM disc image. It will only backup the entire disc image.

Need to collect the Windows logon and logoff events across the Domain in a DC eviornment, for different machines and user accounts.

Hello All,
I am trying to build a Tool to collect the info about all the user's who login and logoff on daily basis in a domain network. I am using a windows 2008 server as a DC and have xp, win 7, win 8 , win 12 server as clients in the network.
There are few questions in my mind which I am not able to answer.
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output in the eventvwr.
2> Do I have to use Audit policies to monitor all the user's log off and log on activities?
3> Is there a way to collect these information from any place on the AD server other than the Eventvwr?
Please help me in finding the solutions to these query's of mine.
Thanks.

1. Open the Group Policy Management console on any domain controller in the target domain: navigate to Start → Administrative Tools → Group Policy Management.
2. In the left pane, navigate to Forest: <domain_name>→ Domains → <domain_name>→ Domain Controllers. Right-click the effective domain controllers policy (by default, it is the Default Domain Controllers Policy), and select Edit from the pop-up
menu. </domain_name></domain_name>
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<domain_name><domain_name>4. Set the Audit account management and the Audit directory service access policy to "Success". Set the Audit logon events policy to "Success" and "Failure". </domain_name></domain_name>
5. Navigate to Start → Run and type '"cmd". Input the gpupdate /force command and press Enter. The group policy will be updated.
Number of events could be excessive so you need to adjust size of Security log ( 1gb for example )
Usage of EventCombMT Tool (part of
MS ALtools )
 This tool gathers specific events from several different servers to one central location.
 Run the EventCombMT.exe > Right Click on Select to search field > Choose Get DCs in Domain > Mark your Domain Controllers for search
 Click the Searches menu > replace Event ID field values with
4624 LOGON / 4634 LOGOFF
 Click Search and wait for the process to complete the operation.
 After the search is done the output directory contains the log files for the domain controllers where events with the specified Event ID’s were found.
Alternatively you can try Netwrix Auditor for Active Directory solution with 20 days of free trial to generate such reports.
--- Jeff (Netwrix)

Time capule preparing to backup for over 24 hours

My time capsule has not backed up since the last successful backup at 1:25 est, Wednesday. When I open the time machine preferences, it says that its preparing to backup (which it has been doing for over 24 hours). Any ideas please?

Hi there!
I had some problems with the instalation of the Time Capsule (TC).
Not it's with the green light and it's working fine (I think). I'm not totally sure because the backup process took more than one day! And when I open the Time Machine I only have the present time (Today) available... I can't navigate trough the time.
Maybe it's normal taking that time to backup.
About not backing up since your last time, in the 'Open Time Machine Preferences' you can set the TC to backup periodically.
Espero que tenha ajudado...
Hope that I helped something... I'm having also some problems to understand TC still!
Pedro Lopes

Time Machine- manually removing backups for different machine

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