Time Machine preference help

I've been wirewalking with an almost full 500gb drive for several months with zero backup plan. I finally picked up a 3TB drive and did my first time machine backup earlier this evening. Time Machine seems a little over zealous for my needs as it advertises hourly backups. I'd feel safe enough with just a once a week backup. I'm wondering if there's a way to set it up to do so and preferably at a time I know I'm asleep so I won't be on to disrupt it at all. As my mac's drive will constantly be about full I don't know if its best for my new external (its a WD MyBook) to be working at all hours.
It'd also be ideal if there's a way to set time machine where it will only keep my last and most current HD backup. I don't plan to ever need backups from 2-3 backups ago.

See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

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HT201514 cant open time machine preferences from help page

I just purchased a new I MAC and I am trying to connect my new mack with the time machine I bought with my old mac
I have been to help trying to gain access to the time machine preferences so I can make changes. But when I click on the
help high lighted Open time machine preferences. What am I missing here. the computer seems to have found the time machine
but I cant make the changes I want to , or chk to see about deleting backups.
thanks
navbob

See the green box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #19.

Can't open time machine preferences

I just did a clean install of Lion on my macbook pro. I used migration assistant to pull most things over, but not everything. I was going to go into Time Machine to pull out a few documents, when I encountered this error message. I clicked on Open Time Machine Preferences and got: An unexpected error occurred (error code -6584). Does anyone know what this means?

Snowmeister wrote:
"iMovie cannot be opened because of a problem. Check with the developer to make sure iMovie works with this version of Mac OSX. You may need to reinstall the application" - this doesn't make sense, as I have reinstalled OS X)?
Are you re-installing from the original grey DVDs that came with your Mac, or from a retail SL installer? The retail version doesn't include iLife.
The OE discs should have iLife on disc 2, so if that's what you're using you can re-install from there.
As to what CleanMyMac has done, I don't know. To alter the apparent processor signature seems very odd. Maybe some of the other guys around here can come up with a theory.
Cleaning caches is totally unnecessary unless there's a specific problem to address; caches are there to help speed up the Mac. If you clear them, you slow down the Mac until all the various applications and processes have rebuilt their respective caches.
Removing language files can be tricky too. Remove the wrong ones and the System will cease to boot.
Likewise for fonts.
Logs are mostly harmless to clear, but they are there for a purpose too; to help you find the source of problems. In any case, the daily maintenance task built in to the OS does all that's needed in that regard.
Could be that one of those logs may have been able to tell you what that junk did.
Applications > Utilities > Console
Loads of logs in there.

I am attempting to connect an external hard drive to my airport extreme and see this hard drive under time machine preferences. I used to able to do this under Leopard, but no longer under lion, even after downloading Airport utility 5.6.

Hi, I am attempting to see my extrenal hard drive, connected to my airport extreme base station, in time machine. I formatted the disk, backed up my mackbook pro to it via usb, and now want to be able to backup over wifi with my disk connected to my airport extreme base station. I spoke with Apple Care, and they told me Apple doens't support this. I used to be able to do this with my older MB pro and under older osx's. I do see the external hard drive connected under disks, just not in time machine preferences. Is there a workaround available that anyone is aware of?
Thank you so much,
Tabeer

Time machine restore help

I've recently been having issues with my early 2008 black Macbook. I ran the apple HW diagnostics and determined it is a bad hard drive. I went out and bought a new 500GB SATA HD, and attempted to restore my system using a Time Machine backup. I booted into the Leopard Disc that came with my computer, formatted the drive, and ran the Time machine restore. Everything appeared to go fine (took about 2 hours, no error messages). However, after the machine rebooted and attempted to boot into OSX an error similar to this popped up. http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7792/pict0017lo8.jpg
Any thoughts as to why this is happening? I don't really want to start over with a clean install, that's why I have Time Machine!
Other information:
My computer originally had Leopard, and was upgraded to Snow Leopard.
I have boot camp setup on my mac for Win 7. (I know this isn't backed up or restored as part of a time machine backup, which I'm O.K. with.)
Thanks in advance for all your help.

Any number of possibilities. First, did you prep the drive properly:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, 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.
Any brand new drive should be setup per the above because they usually are configured for use on PCs rather than Macs.
Second, depends on how you went about the process of restoring your system. Select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine." Look for an article specifically about performing a full system restore. Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
What you saw was a kernel panic screen. Panics at startup may be indicative of a hardware problem. You might give this a try:
How to run hardware diagnostics for an Intel Mac
Boot from your original OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears. Run the extended tests for a minimum of two or three hours. If any error messages appear note them down as you will need to report them to the service tech when you take the computer in for repair.
Some "common" error indicators:
SNS - sensor error
MEM - memory error
HDD - hard disk drive error
MOT - fan error
To assure the problem isn't with your backup you might consider installing OS X by itself. If all is OK, then you can complete the TM restore using Migration Assistant.

Clicking "encrypt backup disk" crashes Time Machine Preference Pane

Everytime click "encrypt backup disk" Time Machine Preference Pane crashes on MacOS Lion. I have a 2TB disk partioned into 2x1TB volumes, could this be the problem? Are there any other reaons that might cause the crash?

It sounds a bit like your backups may be corrupted, and TM is having a tough time figuring out what's on the drive.
Try doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your TM drive, per #A5 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Then do a "full reset" per #A4 there.

Time Machine Preference Safe?

Desktop iMac late 2013
Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB
OSX Mavericks versions 10.9.4 and 10.9.5
No lock symbol showing on Time Machine Preference.
Is that safe or is it defective?

Why wouldn't that be safe? But if you want to make it safer: open System Preferences -> Security&Privacy -> Advanced -> Select bottom option.

HT1338 lost word document. time machine no help. suggestions?

lost word document. time machine no help. suggestions?

Need more info. How do you think you lost a Word Document?
Try Easy Find, Search program, and search for *.doc*. That will turn up all Word Docs with both the .DOC and .DOCX extension on your complete hard drive.
If it is truly lost, Deleted, then you are basically SOL. Unless you do have a recent TM backup that has that file included.
As for recovering it from TM do a search for Pondini TM FAQs.

Time Machine Preference doc needed

I recently somehow deleted my time machine preference found in Drive/System/Library/PreferencePanes. Can someone email this document to me or where can I download it?

<font "size=+1">How to Use Pacifist to Replace Deleted OS X Applications
Download the shareware utility Pacifist from VersionTracker or MacUpdate. Use it to extract a fresh copy from the file archives on your OS X installation DVD. The file archives are in the /System/Installations/ folder.
Here are Four Basic ways to use Pacifist (courtesy of George Orville.)
A. Drag a .pkg icon onto the Pacifist window .....proceed to step 7.
B. Click on “Open Package ....” and navigate to package desired and click “Open” in the open/save window.....proceed to step 7.
C. Insert Mac OS X installer CD and when it mounts, navigate to .... Menu/Go/Go to Folder, and in the window, type....
/Volumes/disc name/System/Installation/Packages
where disc name is the name of the CD/DVD that you inserted.
• Click "Go".....
• Drag .pkg to Pacifist..... proceed to step 7.
D. Insert your Mac OS X install disk 1 .... and open Pacifist.
1. In Pacifist, select "Open Mac OS X Install Packages" ... dialog may appear asking for disk 2, then disk 3 and finally disk 1 again....{if DVD is not used)...If “Stop Loading” is selected...the procedure will stop!!!
2a. When loading is complete, a new window appears, click the triangle to display contents of each package...Select item and proceed to step 7.
2b. or click the “Find” icon in the Pacifist window and type the name of the software you need.
3. In the list that comes back, click the top most entry for the item that you want. ..... that is the one for the English language.
4. On the top of the Pacifist window, click “verify” .... you will probably be prompted for your password.
5. Enter checks for.... “verify permissions” and “verify file contents.” and click “verify” ....enter password when prompted.... you will get back output which may look like this:
20 files were scanned.
20 of 20 files were present on the hard disk.
0 of 20 files had file permissions that did not match those specified in the package.
0 of 20 files had checksums that did not match those specified in the package.
6. Click “close”. Go to step 7.
Extract or Install........
7. In the Toolbar (upper left), you now have the option to extract or install. Click a file in the lower list and those two icons will be enabled.
8. If “Extract to...” is selected.... navigate to the location where the file will be placed, select “choose”, select “extract” in new dialog that appears,authenicate , if prompted, click “OK”.
9. In the next dialog, click “Extract”.
10. If “Install” is selected... dialog will appear with the location/path of the installed software. Click “Install”
11. Type in your password, click “OK”
• Pacifist will begin to extract files.
12. In steps 8/10ß.... you also have the choice to “cancel”
Notes.....
• Pacifist may find that a file it is installing already exists on the hard disk. Pacifist will present you with an alert panel....
Stop
Leave original alone
Update ..... Default selection
Replace .... Replace option should only be used on full install packages

Time Machine Preferences breaks when I wake from sleep

I have recently started having a problem.
When I start my computer, everything is functioning fine. I am able launch System Preferences and open any preference pane and quit System Preferences and everything is fine.
When I put my computer to sleep and then wake it up, I have issues. If I open System Preferences, I can close it. If I click on Trackpad, I can close it. But if I click on Time Machine Preferences and try to quit System Preferences, it doesn't quit. If I try to Force Quit, I get the standard "this app isn't responding" error box.
I cannot quit System Preferences is any way. Force Quit does nothing and eventually the rest of my apps on my machine stop functioning. I have to hard reset my machine to get System Preferences back.
Anyone else seen this? I don't want to blame it on 10.5.6 but I think that this started happening after that.

So I have made a further discovery.
It is related to my non-Time Machine external hard drive. When it is connected I have the issue mentioned above, when it's not connected I have no problem. I re-formatted the drive and no longer have the issues with the System Preferences, but now, if I sleep, when I wake I can't shut down. It just hangs and I have to hard restart.
A couple of notes from the console log. When the "bad" drive is hooked up, I see the following message (multiple times when I wake up:
*kernel AppleYukon2: 00000000,00000000 sk98osx_dnet - recovering from missed interrupt*
Also, when I try to do the actual shutdown, I see this error:
*/usr/sbin/kdcmond[37] dnssd_clientstub read_all(3) failed 0/28 0*
So I feel like the issue is somehow connected to my eternal drive having a conflict with the wired network card. I am going to do some more tests.

Cannot open the Time Machine Preferences

I'm running into this new problem after upgrading a client MBP to 10.6.2.
I get an error message when trying to open the Time Machine Preferences:
The document "TimeMachine.prefPane" could not be opened. System Preferences cannot open files in the "Mac OS X Preference Pane" format.
Has anyone seen this?
I'm using Time Capsule for the backups. It is setup to extend a network with another Time Capsule.
Thanks

shellie619 wrote:
Time machine stopped working - my Mac is a problem in itself. I need to do a backup before I take my Mac to Apple to fix - so I try to go into Time Machine Preferences and I get the error message: You cannot open Time Machine preferences because it doesn't work on an Intel-based Mac. - ***???
Any suggestion please - I am down to the wire and need the backup today.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That's a new one. It sounds like something has been copied from a PPC Mac, or something's been corrupted so badly it looks like that's where it came from.
Can you do a +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in your Menubar?
If, as you say, TM "stopped working," you'd have to figure out why and fix it, anyway.
Can you make a partition on your TM disk that's at least 10% larger than the data on your internal HD? if so, your best bet might be to download CarbonCopyCloner. It will make a full bootable "clone" of your entire system on a separate partition. It's donationware, available at: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I can see my backups but there is no info in the Time Machine preferences

I recently upgraded to Lion and everything seemed OK with Time Machine but now when I click "Enter Time Machine" I can see the backups but when I open Time Machine Preferences I see "Oldest Backup: None" and "Latest Backup: None"
I have not made a new backup in fear of deleting my old backups!
I have also had some problems connecting to Time Machine — I have had to reboot Time Machine more than once and reboot my Mac Book Pro in order for the computer to see Time Machine.
All this only started after installing Lion!

I talked to AT&T and Apple. ATT says its the phone and Apple says its not the phone.

I try to backup my Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt with my Time Capsule but the Lacie is not active (grey) in the Time Machine preferences. Why ?

I try to backup my Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt with my Time Capsule but the Lacie is not active (grey) in the Time Machine preferences. Why ?

@LaPastenague
Morning / Afternoon.
We may have an unfair advantage in that the Internet gets here faster than it does "down there".

Time Machine preferences window appears as Finder view after restore

I wanted to upgrade to a larger disk drive, so I backed up using Time Machine to a USB drive, and then swapped out drives and did a restore. However, after the restore, now when I click on time machine preferences from the top bar, instead of the GUI appearing, a finder view appears with timemachine.prefPane in its heading. Any ideas what is going on? If I go through the System Preferences route, it works.

Not actually answered... Has been reposted...

Missing Time Machine Preference

I binned previous Time machine backups to start again with a clean drive.
Now I can't find Time Machine in the preference pane.
I can open the app, but have no way of controlling anything.
Any ideas would be greatly welcomed.
MR.

Just wanted to say thanks for the help.
I couldn't find the prefs, and it wouldn't open whatever I tried. In the end it was a simple fact of copying the pref file from another machine and dropping it into the relevant folder on my machine.
Works fine now.

Time Machine preference help

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