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?

Similar Messages

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

the time capsule is giving flashed amber light and i cant connect it to my mac book pro. i want to use it with the time machine to make backup for my mac. please advice me.

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.
Most likely you will use the TC in bridge to an existing modem router.. but we cannot help as you have no details of the network setup.
I do recommend in the setup of the TC you use SMB type names.. that means, short, no spaces pure alphanumeric.. as later Mac OS do have issues with long names, spaces and that apple shocker, the apostrophe.

Can I set up multiple usb hard drives- one for time machine and a second for media? Can one also print wirelessly with an old HP C6280 printer?

Can I set up multiple usb hard drives- one for time machine and a second for media?
Can one also print wirelessly with an old HP C6280 printer?

Can I set up multiple usb hard drives- one for time machine and a second for media?
Yes.
Can one also print wirelessly with an old HP C6280 printer?
Possibly by using an Airport Express, but depends on what type of port connection the printer requires.

Time machine won't backup on second mac because it says sparsebundle is already in use?

time machine won't backup on second mac because it says sparsebundle is already in use. What is the fix?

Make sure that the first Mac is not backing up at the time....then....
Pull the power cord from the back of the Time Capsule
Count to ten
Plug the power cord back into the back of the Time Capsule
Try a backup again from the second Mac in a few minutes
Post on your results

Time machine osx server backup to multiple drives?

Hello,
I've just discovered Time Machine for Mac OSx Server. It can act as a centralizad point for the backups of all the computers in the network, how cool!
I know that Time Machine "client" can back a system up to multiple drives. My question is, can I do something similar with Time Machine "server" so I can have more than one storage product onto which I can back up all the systems? That would be very interestin if I want to implement a off-site backup from all my systems.
I would love to hear your inputs.Thanks in advance,
Regards,

I don't know. If the TM preference pane is scriptable then you could do it with an AppleScript. Unfortunately, TM is not designed to also schedule different backup times. For example, assume you could automate drive switching, you still need to tell TM to backup to one drive at some time then backup to another drive at a different time.
I suppose the latter could be done via a cron job as long as you did not use TM preferences to turn TM on in which case it will backup each hour automatically.
It seems to me you'd be better off using a different backup utility that would allow you to schedule such backups. For example:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Not all of the above will backup over a network, but most can backup to any mounted device including a network drive except SuperDuper!.
In an enterprise setting your best choice of the above is Retrospect. There are a few other enterprise level backup utilities (costly) that you can track down at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. BRU is an example.
Oh, and if you know how to use the command line you can use the Unix tools, ditto and rsync.
Message was edited by: Kappy

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 questions... how to use with an external drive etc.

Hi,
I am about to start using Time Machine. I have a few questions:
1. Can Time machine be used to restore data and applications / application settings?
2. I have a CalDigit VR eSATA drive which is 1TB RAID 1 which I was going to use as the Time Machine target drive.
Does Time machine store all of its data files in one main folder with many sub folders?
If my TM backup data takes up 600GB on the drive can I safely store other data on the 400GB or is it best to partition the drive HFS+ Journaled 600/400 and leave TM to its own dedicated partition?
3. Does TM keep adding data until it runs out of disk space and only then delete older BUs?
4. Is TM a good backup software for total recovery or is something like SuperDuper better? I would almost never use TM to recover a file that was deleted... but I am looking for a way to protect against data lost in the case of HD failure.

If you haven't found this yet, take a look here: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
That should give you a rough idea of the "look and feel."
1. Can Time machine be used to restore data and applications / application settings?
Yes, unless you tell it not to, it saves everything (except some system caches, temp files, etc.). If your HD fails, you can recover your entire system to a new/repaired HD via your Leopard install disc (it has the restore utility) and your TM backups. OS, apps (Apple and 3rd-party), preferences, settings, data, the whole system.
Does Time machine store all of its data files in one main folder with many sub folders?
As you may be able to see in the video, the small Finder window is very much like the main one; you can see your data in the same way. TM presents a "picture" that appears to be a full, separate backup of the way your Mac looked at any time. Of course, that's an illusion. It only actually copies files/folders that have been added or changed since the last backup.
You can't tell which items are "real" and which are the "multi-links" representing a file that didn't change on that particular backup.
For more info on the internals: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
3. Does TM keep adding data until it runs out of disk space and only then delete older BUs?
Sort of. After an initial Full backup, it does incrementals (hourly, if you let it). Then it converts the first of the day to a daily backup, which it keeps for a month, and deletes the other hourlies after they're 24 hours old.
After a month, it converts one per week into a weekly backup and deletes the dailies.
It keeps the weeklies until it runs out of room, then begins deleting the oldest. But because of the "multi-links," it doesn't delete it's copy of anything that's still on your internal HD. So it manages it's space and deletions automatically and intelligently.
4. Is TM a good backup software for total recovery or is something like SuperDuper better?
They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Many of us use a clone plus TM. The clone advantage is, of course, being bootable. TM isn't. TM's advantages are the very fast incremental backups (it doesn't have to examine every file and folder to see what's changed): the ability to restore old items; and the ability to restore your entire system to a previous state, even if that's a prior version of Leopard!

Time Machine for backups for multiple Macs, disk space?

Hey there,
i have an Time Machine drive with backups of my old MacBook and a brand new MacBook Pro. Now i wanted to connect my new MacBook Pro with my Time Machine harddrive.
The Problem is this: First there were not enough disk space available on the harddrive, so i could not create a new backup of my MacBook Pro. Then i excluded some big folders and i could create my backup. My old Macbook is currently (and the next few month) not physically available at my place, so i could not delete old backups manually with this. But i want to keep this backups.
Now my question: In the future, will Time Machine delete my old MacBook backups or will it fail and my harddisk is full after 2 backups of the MacBook Pro?
Best regards and thanks
Johannes

Alright,
i have a few years of backups in this TM. I thought TM will delete old backups if the harddisk runs out of space, or am i wrong? The question is, if TM will delete old backups of other Macs synced with this TM.
Best regards
Johannes

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.

External USB drive as backup for multiple Mac-minis

I have a network with two Mac-minis on it. On one Mac-mini (#1) I have an external drive (250GB) hooked up to the USB port and use it as a backup drive using the Time Machine function. However, when I try to setup the other Mac-mini (#2) to use this drive for backup, Time Machine does not allow me to have the external drive on Mac-mini (#1) as a choice for backup. I do have the drive shared and can see the drive from the other mac-mini (#2).
Any suggestions?

First, you really should partition the drive, so TM on each Mac has it's own, exclusive space. See #4 and 6 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Note that each partition will be shown separately, so make sure the one you want to use with Mini #2 is setup for Sharing. Then on Mac #2, connect to Mac #1 and to the specific partition using Finder.
Go to Time Machine Preferences and select the external drive as the TM drive.
Add that external drive in System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items (drag the connected drive from the desktop to the Login Items list.
I don't know if it's the same with sharing, but if there's still a problem, it may be connected to one or more of the names of things in the network. Try the solution in #C9 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

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 - Need central reporting for several macs.

several mac's on a network all backing up to a network Hard drive, now I need centralized reporting to make everyone happy.

Install OS X Server and activate the Time Machine service.

Time Machine: Can I backup to more than 1 external hard drive?

would anyone know about this: i have a TM at home in boston which i use when i am there; however, now i am in taiwan where i will have a second TM to use here: apart from naming the two TMs differently on the laptop (macbookpro, tiger), is there anything i should look out for? with many thanks, steven totosy

Other users have successfully backed up their Mac to more than one Time Machine drive. As you stated, name them differently. You also need to switch TM drives, but that's only once after you've arrived at your new location. Note that after extended absences, TM may not want to continue with a backup and force you to create a new backup. I don't recall how much time has passed, but someone has stated 10 days, but I cannot confirm that.

Time Machine wont mount backup, wants to create new one.

I'm running OSX Lion 10.7 on an iMac 27 with an intel i5 2.7 GHz processor.
I received a notification that Time Machine wasn't backing up.
Somehow the external backup drive became disassociated with TM. So I re-selected it and TM began preparing for a backup. A few moments late a warning popped up stating there was not enough space on the disk to complete the backup.
I entered Time Machine to free up space however, TM had created a new backup file and now it won't mount the original one. I've tried deleting the new backup file, hoping TM would mount the original, but it just keeps creating new ones.
I noticed the new backup file name was different to the original. After looking in to it further, it appears as if this was due to some changes I'd made in my file sharing settings, a couple weeks back, while trying to download some photos from am Android phone. I changed the name back, however, TM still want's to create a new file and still won't mount the original.
The last time it successfully backed up was Oct 30th and the good news is, I can manually open the original backup file in Finder, and see all the old files.
I've read through a number of trouble shooting sites and I've already checked for and installed all updates with no luck.
I really could use some help with this. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

No, I don't think playing around with the sparsebundle is very good idea ever.
If you are now down to that level. Move the old sparsebundle off the TC. Either delete the whole thing and start over.. or save it beforehand.
It is possible to archive off the old sparsebundle, although it is pointless if it is corrupted.
You can copy it to a USB drive on the computer.
See Q18 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
That will take a long long time so be warned.. and do it with ethernet.. otherwise it will take forever.
You can also do the archive directly to USB disk plugged into the TC. You need a hard disk at least as large as the data.
And you will need to use v5.6 airport utility because Apple deleted it in the new version.
If you run Mountain Lion (Lion is easy) you can download it and install by a trick.
That will then give you access to archive and you can use that to save the present hard disk info.. then erase it and start over.
How to load 5.6 into ML.
1. Download 5.6 for Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Click to open the dmg but do not attempt to install the pkg.. it won't work anyway.
2. Download and install unpkg.
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
Run unpkg on the desktop.. it is very simple.. drag the AirPortUtility56.pkg file over to unpkg.. and it will create a new directory of the same name on the desktop.. drill down.. applications utilities .. there lo and behold is Airport utility 5.6 .. drag it to your main utilities directory or just run it from current location.
You cannot uninstall 6.1 (now 6.2 if you updated) so don't try.. and you cannot or should not run them both at the same time.. so just ignore the toyland version.. the plastic hammer.. and start using 5.6.. a real tool.
For screen shots see this post.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4668746?tstart=0

TS1550 Time Machine fails to backup after I've repartitioned the external drive

Just got this new iMac running OS X version 10.8.4 and can't get Time Machine to complete the back up... It is extremely slow... makes me think of the Windows environment I'm trying to escape from... and then after several hours (only achieving about 200MB back up) I get a message that the back up failed.
I've repartitioned the 1T HP drive several times to the Mac OS as advised by the Apple on-line advisory, and have run rhe Disk utility repair function... but still can't get it to work.
? suggestions

Hi, I never use TM, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imagine something not being covered there.

Time Machine questions: Handling backups for multiple Macs to one FW drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for