Time Machine shows no drives to select for backup

I activated time machine when I installed Leopard on a new iMac 24". I then turned time machine off. Now if I try to turn it back on, I am asked to select a drive as a backup drive. The box is empty, there are no drives to select. Anyone know what I need to do?
Thanks,
Vinnie

Knitbuyer:
Welcome to the forum. You said that you have a 2GB USB Drive attached. I am assuming that is one of those Jump/Flash drives. If that is the case then they cannot be used as a backup device for TM. First, 2GB is too small to act as a back up for a HD that an average user has is over 50GB to back up. Second, try and connect an external HD USB/Firewire and it will show up in TM preferences.
Axel F.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Shows Duplicated Drives and May Not Backup

I have a Time Capsule with a Western Digital My Studio Drive attached by USB. Often it works well, but sometimes it appears to see a duplicated WD Drive with no backup on it, and fails.
The most obvious symptom is (and I wish I could attach a jpeg!) if you open the 'Select Disk' dialog, you see the following disks listed:
HA Time Machine WD Drive
home
net
HA Time Machine WD Drive
HA Time Capsule
HA Time Capsule
None
Where home and net are from, I have no idea. But you can see the duplication. And that can lead to error.
I have tried selecting 'none' and starting again, I still get this extended list. I have tried setting up the Time Capsule from scratch to no avail. Obviously I have rebooted!
Any answers?

Knitbuyer:
Welcome to the forum. You said that you have a 2GB USB Drive attached. I am assuming that is one of those Jump/Flash drives. If that is the case then they cannot be used as a backup device for TM. First, 2GB is too small to act as a back up for a HD that an average user has is over 50GB to back up. Second, try and connect an external HD USB/Firewire and it will show up in TM preferences.
Axel F.

Time Machine External Hard Drive (primary storage and backup)

Hi all, Recently purchased a 500G Mac Mini as a dedicated HTPC and have a question regarding Time Machine (I didn't see a dedicated forum page for TM). I have 2 1.5TB external hard drives (Free Agent for Mac). One houses all my iTunes and Movie files (connected to the Minin via FireWire 800), the other is for back-up of the first drive (connected to the Mini via USB). Can Time Machine be used for automatic back-ups from drive 1 to drive 2? Also, Time Machine also back up the Mini's 500G internal HD (assuming there is space/I don't max out the primary 1.5TB drive) as well as the primary external HD (in other words, back up from 2 sources)? Are there any special settings I need to apply for this set-up?

Hello! From my playings around with Time Machine I do not think you can program it to backup 1 external drive to another. Its main purpose is to backup your internal hard drive to an external source. Be careful however because it makes hourly, daily, weekly and i think monthly backups of different sizes, so after a while, if you take something off your computer and forget it, you could loose it. That said, you can drag and drop from one drive to another and still use time machine. For example 'backup' external drive 1 to drive 2, then use drive 2 as a time machine. You just wont have as much room, and time machine will not mess with whatever folders you drag and drop because its not apart of the time machine 'folder'. Hope this helps a bit.

Time Machine with 2T drive connected to Airport Extreme base via USB

I got this to work - Time machine recognizing the drive in its "choose backup disk" menu.
I used it to store Apple Lossless audio on a big iTunes library, as well as for my Time Machine backups.
Whole system ran fine for 4 months until last week: while I was using iTunes with that remote library, adding audio to it... "Airport has detected a disk error"... My 2TB of disk turned into a very expensive brick.
The disk had to be recovered with Disk Warrior, detecting "19,753 directory entries with incorrect text encoding value" as part of a nice one-page-long list of other errors.
SINCE THEN: no matter what I do, the disk does not show up in Time Machine, even though I can access it via the network exactly as before.
Any ideas are welcome!

Apple does not support Time Machine backups to an AirPort disk (a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS)). (ref: Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks) Although folks, like yourself, have gotten this to work initially, the long-term stability of the TM backups is highly suspect and why Apple doesn't support it. Sorry!

Time Machine: Repeated errors when backing up for the first time using a new external firewire drive

My Iomega 500GB firewire external drive failed on me last week and I have just replaced it with an identical model. I used to use the old drive with Time Machine on my MacBook Pro running 10.5.8 with no issues, until the drive had a hardware failure and stopped spinning up, hence the replacement.
Two days ago I tried using Time Machine for the first time with the replacement external drive. The backup failed and each subsequent backup attempt has failed since then with a different error each time. The drive cannot be ejected using Finder (Finder says disk is in use and cannot be ejected even when no processes are running except for Finder and Time Machine has been disabled), by dragging it to the dock (hangs computer which can only be fixed by a hard reboot), in Disk Utilities (drive cannot be unmounted) or in Terminal ("no such file or directory").
The first backup attempt failed after 3 hours of "preparing" with the message "The backup was not performed because an error occured while creating backup directory".
I tried repairing the disk in Disk Utilities and Disk Utilities said the drive was OK ("the volume Time Machine Backups appears to be OK"). I tried ejecting the drive (hard reboot of computer and disconnecting the drive), plugging it back in again and trying again.
This time it started backing up, then failed after a few minutes with the message "an error occured while copying files to the backup volume". I had a look at the troubleshooting suggested on http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C3.html and followed instructions. It failed again, so I did a full reset as per http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html.
It failed again, so I tried reparing the drive again in Disk Utilities and again it said it was OK. I tried using different cables and ports (Firewire 400 instead of Firewire 800), and backups still fail.
I have turned off anti-virus scanning (Sophos). I have tried excluding it from Spotlight but this causes an error message from Spotlight. I have tried trashing the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file and rebooting. I have tried selecting deselecting the drive as the back up in Time Machine preferences, selecting "None", then "Stop Backing Up" then quitting preferences, rebooting, disconnecting the drive, reconnecting the drive and selecting the drive again as the backup disk in Time Machine preferences. I have tried erasing the drive completely, rebooting, and trying to back up again.
None of these have worked. This is a brand new drive and I do not want to have to replace it again if I do not have to.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

Hello, some possible clues...
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-ba c kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076
Or a different/better solution in my experiences...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd.
Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set.
1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price.
I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there.
Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB?
Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopard
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009
where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.

HT201250 which external hard drive should I choose/use as I am setting up Time Machine on my MacBook Pro 15 for the very first time?

Which external hard drive should I use/choose as I am setting up Time Machine on my MacBook Pro 15 for the very first time?

Any of these SATA HDDs that are at least the same size as your internal HDD (preferably larger capacity). In addition you will need an enclosure, preferably one with a Firewire as well as a USB connection.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Ciao.

Has anyone successfully used a "WD My Book for Mac" via NAS (plugged into USB port on router) as a Time Machine back-up drive?

Has anyone successfully used a "WD My Book for Mac" via NAS (plugged into USB port on router) as a Time Machine back-up drive? Apple support tech tried to tell me it wasn't possible and that the only NAS Time Machine could back up to is the Time Capsule, but I'm not buying it. I know it's doable, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which External HDDs will work and which ones won't. If not My Book for Mac, is there an External HDD that will work? (Running OS X 10.9.1 - Mavericks, btw...)

Given the nature of backups, my recommendation has always been to use a strategy that is unequivocally supported by Apple. As you already determined Apple Support unequivocally informed you that your proposal will not work, unless your router is an Apple AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule.
The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected to your Mac
That is all.
Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless when they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

Time Machine shows a backup this morning at 11:58 but I didn't have the external hard drive plugged in. How is this possible?

Time Machine shows a backup this morning at 11:58 but I didn't have the external hard drive plugged in. How is this possible?

Because the drive was disconnected Time Machine made a local snapshot on your Mac.

My brand new back up drive is connected but now time machine has disappeared after working perfectly for a week. - no icon, not appearing as an option to save to - have rebooted everything a few times.

My brand new back up drive is connected but now time machine has disappeared after working perfectly for a week. - no icon, not appearing as an option to save to - have rebooted everything a few times.

It's not clear whether you were able to do any backups to this drive at all. If not, it's probably not formatted properly. See #5 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for instructions.
If you did get any successful backups, there may be a problem with the drive, or the backups may be corrupted. Try to repair the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine shows Backup Delayed

My time capsule / time machine have been working perfectly
Totally hands off, hourly backups etc etc
Now I have the problem that every backup is delayed as the backup disk is not available
Once I select the backup disk manually the hourly backups resume as normal
When I re-start the problem is back.
So unless I remember to manually select the time machine disk I get no backups
This was working perfectly, before I restored some files from the time machine
Help

When did you start seeing this issue? Have you downloaded Mac OS X v10.6.8 and Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update? If you plan to upgrade to OS X Lion, you will need Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update but I must be honest with you:
Early adopters to OS X Lion, like myself, have found issues like the one you're having with Time Machine on OS X Lion. Backups are showing as "!" in the menu bar and error messages "Backup Delayed: Time Machine could not find backup disk" and Time Machine isn't keeping records of past backups. When I noticed this once installing OS X Lion at first run of using the new OS, I had to reformat and erase my external 500GB G-Drive Mobile FireWire 800 drive and the issue still hasn't been fixed.
If deleting the corrupt preference doesn't work, try submitting feedback on Apple's Support page for Time Machine by visiting the link provided:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
The nice thing about the transition between OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Lion is the OS installs itself over Snow Leopard without you losing any of your files unless you find a way to do a "clean install".

Time Machine and partitioned drive

Hiya.
I have a macbook pro running snow. I use TM to an external hard drive.
When I first got the macbook I (foolishly) thought it would be a good idea to partition the internal hard drive. I've now realised my error and would like just one partition, however this does not seem to be possible without wiping the drive (or buying something like ipartition...)
Can I wipe the hard drive starting up from a version of osx on the hard drive, create one partition and then use TM to put back my osx setup to the new single partition? Or can it only put back the two partitions?
Thanks!

jonniecrossley wrote:
Hiya.
I have a macbook pro running snow. I use TM to an external hard drive.
When I first got the macbook I (foolishly) thought it would be a good idea to partition the internal hard drive. I've now realised my error and would like just one partition, however this does not seem to be possible without wiping the drive (or buying something like ipartition...)
Can I wipe the hard drive starting up from a version of osx on the hard drive, create one partition and then use TM to put back my osx setup to the new single partition? Or can it only put back the two partitions?
If OSX is the first partition (on top of the diagram that Disk Utility shows, when you select the top line of the drive and click the Partition tab), then you'll only have to delete the other partition. If it's second, this is going to be a bit more complicated: if so, post back and we'll tackle that.)
Then you can just drag the lower-right corner of the top partition down to fill the remaining space.
As Jolly Giant mentioned, I'd strongly recommend making a second backup of everything before you start this. You shouldn't need it, but remember: Murphy was an optimist!
Once that's done, you'll have to be careful of a few things. First, you'll need the procedure in #E3 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* to view the backups from the now-missing partition.
Second, you'll need to restore the top-level folders to an alternate location. Select them, click the "gear" icon in the TM Finder window's toolbar and select the +*Restore <item> to ...+* option, then specify the now-single partition on your internal HD.
Third, you may have to "redirect" some things from the deleted partition, if you had, say, your iPhoto library there. And you may have had some aliases directing things there.
Last, do all this with TM off. TM's first backup after this will be a big one; everything you moved from the deleted partition is new to the remaining partition and will be backed-up again. That will, of course, take a lot of space and considerable time. TM will, eventually, delete it's backups of the deleted partition, but if you're going to have a space problem on your TM drive, you might want to leave TM off for a while, be sure everything came over properly, then use TM to delete all backups of the deleted partition. Use the same procedure as above, but this time select the +*Delete all backups of <item>+* option.

Time Machine and Hard Drive Weirdness -- start again?

I bought a LaCie 500 Gig slick Porsche metallic drive to go with my slick metallic iMac last year. Set up Time Machine, was in awe, life was good. In recent weeks, I've noticed the drive running hot and a little louder than normal. Since it's not crucial for me to have TM always on, I just turn the drive off.
Recently, I noticed TM machine wouldn't mount. It was doing a lot of work, running real warm, but not mounting. In disc utility, the drive was blinking in and out of being accessible. Finally I was able to access it, and I verify/repaired it twice.
The next time it booted up, the drive icon wasn't in 'go' green but 'wait a bit' yellow. In preferences, I could see it preparing and preparing. It seemed like it would never end, and finally needing to go to sleep, I turned it off on yellow. This morning, it mounts GREEN and is working normal. Not hot, not noisy.
Here's the big question: now what I do?
You see, I've got some warranty left on this drive, and I can't figure out if it's about to break, or Time Machine is breaking the drive.
My gut tells me to trash my backups.backupdb file and start all over again. After all, I'm at a nice place where I don't need anything from a while ago. I figure if I try to do this and it outright fails to backup, this is an indication of a weary drive.
Also, if I were to backup all over again, it would be about 160 gigs of info. My backup drive currently has 130 available. There's maybe another 60 gigs or so of stuff on this drive tops, and so it seems Time Machine has nearly doubled in size of what it's backing up.
So, would y'all recommend purging the backup and starting again?
Sorry for longwindedness, but just trying to provide all info I can,
Me
Also, I see that I've got about 130 Gigs open on the 500 gig drive. I'm using half of my iMac's 300 gig drive, and so by my best guestimation I'd say Time Machine has already double

Jerome,
First, make sure Spotight is not set to Index the LaCie drive. That could have been the cause of the excessive use.
Next, if Time Machine hasn't been backing up for a while ("wouldn't mount"), then the next time it successfully mounts it will do a long "Preparing..." (I believe it's called a "Deep Traversal") session to compare what has changed since the last time it connected. This is normal and will show the drive as busy (Yellow light). Let it do its' thing in that case - perhaps leaving it on over night.
Your Drive is most likely fine.

Time Machine Back-Up Drive Question

Is it possible to use the Time Machine External Drive for storing information aside from back-up files, while using it for Time Machine at the same time? For example, I collect live shows of a certain band. Would it be possible to store the music files on the Time Machine Back-Up drive and still be able to use the drive for Time Machine? Thanks in advance.

Ben Goodkind wrote:
Is it possible to use the Time Machine External Drive for storing information aside from back-up files, while using it for Time Machine at the same time? For example, I collect live shows of a certain band. Would it be possible to store the music files on the Time Machine Back-Up drive and still be able to use the drive for Time Machine? Thanks in advance.
No problem but I suggest this:
Create a folder for you personal backups and put everything in them.
TM will create a unique folder for itself and it will be happy with that.
I have, on my G5, a TM drive that also has several old backup folders, (Not TM) which live perfectly with TM.
Just don't put anything into the TM folder.!

Time Machine & External Hard Drive on an Extended Network

My home network starts with an AirPort Extreme 802.11ac and the wireless network is extended (hard-wired via cat 5 cable) with an AirPort Extreme 802.11n (the second router is setup as a slave). Everything works great with the exception of Time Machine being able to locate the external hard drive I have connected via USB to the master AirPort Extreme 802.11ac.
Before I extended the network, I had only the AirPort Extreme 802.11n and the external hard drive was connected to it. Time Machine worked perfectly. However, since I have setup the new configuration, things are not working smoothly. Time Machine can see the external hard drive, however, when I select it and a backup starts running, Time Machine says it can't find the backup disk after a few minutes.
Must I be connected to the wireless signal of the master AirPort Extreme 802.11ac for Time Machine to work? Do I need to change a setting in one or both routers? Any suggestions? Thanks for the help.

The external drive is Mac formatted for Time Machine. Your gaming console and PC won't be able to read its format.
If you are determined to use it for both purposes, you can partition the drive in Disk Utility. Format the PC partition for MS-DOS or whatever is required for your gaming console. You may or may not have sufficient space for both partitions. If you do not you will have to erase your Time Machine backups.

Time Machine shows no drives to select for backup

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