Time Machine on an External Hard Drive - used with another computer or mac?

I'm planning on selling my computer but want everything that is on my Mac saved so when I can afford to buy a new computer I will have all of my files, music, pictures, etc. I hooked up Time Machine to an external hard drive last night. So everything should be saved to the external hard drive now right?...will I be able to open any of those files on another computer using my external hard drive that has my backup on it? For example, if I have my resume as one of the files can I plug in my hard drive that has my Time Machine back up on it to open edit and resave the file? Or am I better of manually saving the files to the external hard drive without using Time Machine?
Please help...I need to sell my computer but don't want to lose any of my stuff on it...
Thanks!

Time machine works great for the file you accidentally delete or modify even if you need to go back months and months. There are better solutions when you really just need to clone your existing system like CCC or Superduper. A clone is more flexible when it comes to getting your stuff. The only downside is you will lose the multiple copies time machine keeps. The upside is you know exactly what's on it and you can boot from it if needed. The file structure is definately more stable on a clone.
A time machine is OK for what you're doing. I just think a clone is better. The choice is yours.

Similar Messages

HT201250 i am using for first time the time machine and an external hard drive because I want to erase my macbook and start from zero files. do i keep my files in the portable hard disk when I connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will era

i am using for first time the time machine and an external hard drive because I want to erase my macbook and start from zero files. Am i keeping my files in the portable hard disk when I will connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will erase all?
I would like to know if after I erase all my data, empy hard drive inside the macbook, the time machine will erase all my files that I have saved in my "WD "My passport" external hard drive

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Time Machine has to erase the external disk in order to make backups. Before setting Time Machine up, copy the files of your external disk to the hard disk of the Mac in order not to lose them, and then, set up Time Machine. The first backup will start automatically.
If you want more information about Time Machine, read the Pondini's site > http://pondini.org

How do I use my Time Machine as an external hard drive to just dump files no longer needed on my computer?

How Do I use my time machine as an external hard drive?

Time Machine is software that allows a Mac to backup to a Time Capsule or other hard drive, so I think you are asking about the Time Capsule here, correct?
http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/
How do you plan to connect the Time Capsule to your network, or is it already connected and configured?
When you have it configured on the network, you can use the Finder to copy/paste or drag/drop files from your Mac to the Time Capsule disk.

HT1553 DO I HAVE TO HAVE THE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION DISCS IF MY HARD DRIVE IS REPLACED BUT I MADE A BACK UP WITH TIME MACHINE TO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ?

I have an imac from late 2009 and received an email saying the seagate hard drive may fail and apple is going to replace it free of charge. I will back up using time machine to an external hard drive but do I absolutely have to have the original installation CD's or is there a way around this to restore the computer once they replace the hard drive??

Yes, you can partition your 2TB drive that way. In fact, I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions: one for a SuperDuper! clone of my Snow Leopard partition, one to clone my Lion partition, and one larger partition for Time Machine (which only backs up the Lion partition).
I would expect the authorized reseller to have a complete set of OS X disks.

HT3275 Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough

Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups. I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer. How can I erase old backups and complete this one?

Walter Goodman wrote:
Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't clear it up, how much data is on your Mac? If TM is only trying to back-up 34 GB, it should be able to delete old backups to do that (assuming you're running Lion).
It sounds like your backups may be corrupted. Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer.
If that's all you did, no.
How can I erase old backups and complete this one?
Just erase the drive per #1 or #2 of Using Disk Utility.

How do I move data on time machine from one external hard drive to another

How do I move data on time machine from one external hard drive to another?

Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

Time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line

can anyone help
time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line
before 2013
information say in 2009 is not accessable to view this
i must select external drive from finder
the time machine icon not recognising

thanks for reply
when i open time machine the time line on right side of page
has date ranging from 2014 back to 2010 but only highlight date from 2014 back to 2013
anything before 2013 is greyed out and cannot not be selected
when i touch the pages they only rush towards me a limited amount then stops
also why it shows date as 2014 is strange

Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

Yes, but you might want to note that the port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0, and that it runs at about half the speed of the USB 2.0 port on a computer, so things are going to be quite SLOW as far as backups are concerned, or anything else for that matter.

Using Time Machine to restore external hard drive data

I have been using a Mac Mini running 10.6.8 for years as a media server. I have always been very careful to maintain backups of everything, and the inevitable did happen - the hard drive containing all my media did fail.
To clarify my set up, my Mac Mini internal hard drive is insufficient to store all my media, so I have been using an external 2TB drive to store it. I then set up Time Machine to back up both the Mac Mini and the 2TB external drive to a second 3TB external drive. Now that the 2TB drive with my media has failed, I seem to be having problems restoring all the media from 3TB drive. This is because the Time Capsule interface is designed to display finder windows at various points in time so you can go back to when your missing files existed and restore them. The problem is that I need the entire contents of the dead 2TB drive restored to a new drive, but I can't open a Time Capsule window that shows the contents of the old drive. I have tried opening /Volumes in a finder window, then invoking Time Machine, but my dead hard drive does not show up in the list of volumes. When I open the 3TB drive in a Finder window I can clearly see that it has backups of the 2TB drive, but they are spread out among 83 different snapshots of various dates.
How can I use Time Machine to easily restore the entire contents of the dead 2TB external drive to a new external drive?

This web site might answer all of your Time machine questions:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Ciao.

HT201250 Using Time Machine as an external hard drive

I backed up my iMac with an external hard drive using Time Machine; can I delete all the data from my iMac now? My real goal is to use the 1TB external hard drive I just got to store all my music, photos, and other files on. I want to clear all the space off of my iMac, and may by a new Macbook. I want to be able to access all the files from my original computer on either, while cleaning out the iMac. Was it pointless for me to use Time Machine? Thanks so much for the feedback!

You cannot use the files in the Time Machine backup and while it is possible to partition or otherwise use free space on the Time Machine drive as external storage Apple does not recommmend it. Your best solutions are either replace the existing hard drive in your MacBook Pro with a larger capacity drive or add a bus powered external HD. A 1TB USB 2 or 3 drive runs just a bit over $100 and the internal drive about $20 less. In either case remember the Time Machine drive should have two to three times the space of the drive(s) it is backing up.

Time Machine Backup of external hard drive connected to IMAC

I have an external hard drive connected to my IMAC. I also have a 2TB Time Capsule connected to my network. I store all of my video (both events and projects from imovie) to the external hard drive to save space on the IMAC. Does the Time Capsule backup this external hard drive? When I open Time Machine I don't see where the external hard drive is backed up? The drive is formatted MAC OS extended (journaled).

nujac,
Time Machine backs up all locally attached drives unless you specifically exclude them in System Prefenences > Time Machine > Options.. icon.
You should be able to see this in Finder, enter TM and highlight the external drive. Click back to a prior date. Sometimes it takes a little while to fully populate the display since it's reading across the network, give it a few minutes.
Regards,
Captfred

If i back up my mac using Time Machine and an external hard-drive, can that same hard-drive be used on another computer and on a PC?

Hi!
I hav just got a macbook pro and am used to using a HP pc and am a newbie! I have backed up my macbook with my elements external hardrive and was wondering if i can transfer the music i have purchased and is now on my external hard-drive back onto my other laptop purely because i use both laptops for different things and want to use my music on both. how do i do this? and do i need a particular software to do so?
Any tips would be greatly appreciated
thanks
alex xxx

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can do it, but it's not recommended to use a Time Machine volume to store other files. In this case, you can create a second volume on the external drive, so you will be able to use it to store data and transfer it to other PCs.
As you are going to use the external drive with other PCs, you can make the volume and format it in "MS-DOS (FAT)" with Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Finally, you will be able to copy files to the external drive.
If you copy files to a Time Machine disk, you may damage the Time Machine file structure, so you shouldn't do it. It may not happen, but it's better not to try that. Also, you won't be able to read the Time Machine drive in a PC

Use time machine to backup external hard drive (not main one)

Hi all,
I've searched for information on this and getting nowhere. Not sure if it's possible, but I have two USB hard drives now as I've run out of space on my laptop. So therefore I really use one of the hard drives for my main storage and drag files across to the other one to back that up.
It would be easier if I could just use time machine to back up the one external hard drive to the other. I don't want to just replicate what's on my laptop hard drive.
Does anyone know if this is possible? Would appreciate any help.
Cheers
Paul

Thanks for your reply V.K. much appreciated.
I have gone into the options and I can see my external drives there, but for some reason I can't remove them from the exclusion list. I can add and remove the Laptop HD from this list, but for some reason the "-" button becomes disabled whenever I select the external Hard Drives.
Is there a reason for this? I've been using both drives for a while, so they are both Mac formatted.
Thanks again.

Backing up iPhoto pics without using Time Machine or an external hard drive

I cannot figure out how to back up my photos on my one year old MBP. I haven't gotten around to buying an external hard drive (so many choices and there seems to be problems with every one I look at - advice?), but at this time the only important data on my MBP are my photos (approx 9 GB). I've searched the various forums, looked in The Missing Manual (Mac OS X Leopard), and read the help sections on the computer but cannot seem to find step-by-step directions for backing up to a flash drive or a few DVDs. Thanks for your help.

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. Unless you have an external storage source you can't backup your photos.
You could burn the image file to a DVD disc by selecting about 4GB of files in iPhoto and exporting the photos to a folder on the Desktop and burning that folder to a DVD with the Finder.
Or select about 4GB worth of files in iPhoto and use the Share->Burn menu option. That will give you a DVD disc with a mini iPhoto library on it that contains those 4GB of original files, their modified versions and all metadata associated with them.
Click to view full size
When you want to copy any of the file on the disc back into iPhoto mount the disk in your optical drive and it will show in iPhoto where you can select what you want and drag to the Library icon to copy them back into the library.
CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO
I'm sure you have other documents on your MBP that you need to backup. An external FW hard drive for use as a Time Machine backup drive is essential if you value your photos and other data on the hard drive. Consider for a moment what you would have to do to get back where you are right now if you lost the entire internal HD.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier versions) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. There are versions that are compatible with iPhoto 5, 6, 7 and 8 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. Just put the application in the Dock and click on it whenever you want to backup the dB file. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
NOTE: The new rebuild option in iPhoto 09 (v. 8.0.2), Rebuild the iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup" makes this tip obsolete.

HT5097 I recently upgraded my macbook to Mountain lion. Before doing so I used time machine and an external hard drive to back up my entire laptop. When we upgraded my computer came back like new. All pics, music, videos documents etc gone. How do I ge

I recently upgraded my macbook to mountain lion. Before doing so I used time machine to back up my entire laptop with an external hard drive.
When I got my computer back it was clean....all pics, music, documents, bookmarks etc. are gone. How do I get these files off the external hard drive and back onto my laptop with the new upgrade?

I recently upgraded my macbook to mountain lion. Before doing so I used time machine to back up my entire laptop with an external hard drive.
When I got my computer back it was clean....all pics, music, documents, bookmarks etc. are gone. How do I get these files off the external hard drive and back onto my laptop with the new upgrade?

Time Machine on an External Hard Drive - used with another computer or mac?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for