Time Machine size configuration

How do I manage my time machine backup sizes?
I need to be able to limit/quota the time machine size. I can quota per user per system, but that would impact their home directories. I've tried to modify the sparsebundle size, but that just horks up TIme Machine.

Shame nobody cared to describe this working solution... I am running Mavericks and struggling to find this setup/config

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Time Machine not configured / won't open / but it runs?

I'd appreciate some assistance troubleshooting a Time Machine issue.
I recently purchased a 2TB Time Capsule and set it up on my home network. I have set Time Machine up using it to back up 2 out of 3 MacBook Pros with no issues.
On the third MacBook, the Time Machine setup appears to work just fine (I have selected the Time Capsule disk, it has done the first full backup and periodic incremental backups). However, I have the following problems:
I cannot open the Time Machine application. Clicking on the App causes absolutely nothing to happen. No error. No windows. Nothing.
The icon in the menu bar is greyed out and gives no indication of backups in progress (no spinning clock like the other macs). Clicking on it reveals the top, greyed out menu choice that says "Time Machine not configured". (I can open time machine preferences and observe status from within that window.)
I have searched this and other sites for solutions. I have done steps A4 and E4 from this site (repeatedly) with no success.

I'd appreciate some assistance troubleshooting a Time Machine issue.
I recently purchased a 2TB Time Capsule and set it up on my home network. I have set Time Machine up using it to back up 2 out of 3 MacBook Pros with no issues.
On the third MacBook, the Time Machine setup appears to work just fine (I have selected the Time Capsule disk, it has done the first full backup and periodic incremental backups). However, I have the following problems:
I cannot open the Time Machine application. Clicking on the App causes absolutely nothing to happen. No error. No windows. Nothing.
The icon in the menu bar is greyed out and gives no indication of backups in progress (no spinning clock like the other macs). Clicking on it reveals the top, greyed out menu choice that says "Time Machine not configured". (I can open time machine preferences and observe status from within that window.)
I have searched this and other sites for solutions. I have done steps A4 and E4 from this site (repeatedly) with no success.

"Time machine not configured" & Can't reset to factory setting.

Once I removed the Time capsule from my List to back up again. But after removing when i connect the time capsule, the amber light keep on flashing and i can't set up the Time capsule. Although i get it in the wifi network. ( I attached the Pic marked Majmadar's Wifi Network ). Now when i click on the icon of time capsule it shows " Time machine not configured ". Even when i open the time machine preferences i don't see My time Capsule in my list. Please help me to
solve my problem. Thanks in advance.

Start over and redo the setup from a manual factory reset.. do NOT use names like you have now.. this is problematic on Yosemite..
Also do a full reset on Time Machine.. See A4 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Factory reset universal
Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord or power off at the wall.. wait 10sec.. hold in the reset button.. be gentle.. power on again still holding in reset.. and keep holding it in for another 10sec. You may need some help as it is hard to both hold in reset and apply power. It will show success by rapidly blinking the front led. Release the reset.. and wait a couple of min for the TC to reset and come back with factory settings. If the front LED doesn’t blink rapidly you missed it and simply try again. The reset is fairly fragile in these.. press it so you feel it just click and no more.. I have seen people bend the lever or even break it. I use a toothpick as tool.
N.B. None of your files on the hard disk of the TC are deleted.. this simply clears out the router settings of the TC.
Setup the TC again.
ie Start from a factory reset. No files are lost on the hard disk doing this.
Then redo the setup from the computer with Yosemite.
1. Use very short names.. NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED names. No spaces and pure alphanumerics.
eg TCgen5 and TCwifi for basestation and wireless respectively.
Even better if the issue is more wireless use TC24ghz and TC5ghz with fixed channels as this also seems to help stop the nonsense. But this can be tried in the second round.
2. Use all passwords that also comply but can be a bit longer. ie 8-20 characters mixed case and numbers.. no non-alphanumerics.
3. Ensure the TC always takes the same IP address.. you will need to do this on the main router using dhcp reservation.. or a bit more complex setup using static IP in the TC. But this is important.. having IP drift all over the place when Yosemite cannot remember its own name for 5 min after a reboot makes for poor networking. If the TC is main router it will not be an issue.
4. Check your share name on the computer is not changing.. make sure it also complies with the above.. short no spaces and pure alphanumeric.. but this change will mess up your TM backup.. so be prepared to do a new full backup. Sorry.. keep this one for second round if you want to avoid a new backup.
5. Mount the TC disk in the computer manually.
In Finder, Go, Connect to server from the top menu,
Type in SMB://192.168.0.254 (or whatever the TC ip is which you have now made static. As a router by default it is 10.0.1.1 and I encourage people to stick with that unless you know what you are doing).
You can use name.. SMB://TCgen5.local where you replace TCgen5 with your TC name.. local is the default domain of the TC and doesn't change.
However names are not so easy as IP address.. nor as reliable. At least not in Yosemite they aren't. The domain can also be an issue if you are not plugged or wireless directly to the TC.
6. Make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only in the computer. For example wireless open the network preferences, wireless and advanced / TCP/IP.. and fix the IPv6. to link-local only.
There is a lot more jiggery pokery you can try but the above is a good start.. if you find it still unreliable.. don't be surprised.
You might need to do some more work on the laptop itself. eg Reset the PRAM.. has helped some people. Clean install of the OS is also helpful if you upgrade installed.
Tell us how you go.
Someone posted a solution.. See this thread.
Macbook can't find Time Capsule anymore
Start from the bottom and work up.. I have a list of good network practice changes but I have avoided Yosemites bug heaven.
This user has had success and a few others as well.
RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ
Here is where they discuss a true solution.. replace the rotten DNS app in Yosemite with the one from Mavericks.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-yo u-can-do-to-fix-it/

HT201250 "Time Machine Not Configured", but appears to be working?

The Time Machine menu in the toolbar says "Time Machine Not Configured", yet I have it fully configured in Prefs, it is "On", and when I browse the drive it appears to be doing backups. Anything I can do to fix the menu item?

Solved... Erased entire backup disk, reformatted and seems to be working again.

Restricting Time Machine size with LaCie NAS Share

I have a question regarding quotas for my LaCie 2big NAS. I am using Time Machine on my MAC OSX. I had no issues in the Time Machine setup and initial backup so far. I wanted to limit the amount of disk used by Time Machine. I created a separate Share for Backup on the NAS. However, I am not able to set a quota based on the Share. I can only set the quota based on the user. I tried to create a user named "backup" which had a quota but the Time Machine sparse bundle has my own username (i.e., "my_username") as the file owner (it seemed like I needed to have the backup and my_username for the NAS with permissions on the Backup share). Time Machine identifies the disk as "Backup - My_NAS_Name" with the 500 GB limit which I established. This seems like it is working but I am not sure about the best approach.
Why doesn't the 2big NAS support Share quotas? It seems to be supported on other LaCie products. Is this the best way to configure or use the NAS to restrict the TIme Machine available size?

Brian Smale wrote:
Thanks, Pondini, you make a good point about using a USB drive with my Airport Extreme. The snag is, the Airport Extreme is in the same room as my computer, so it doesn't get over the co-location/fire problem. I suppose I could plug the Airport Extreme into my ethernet in another room, but this might compromise its coverage.
To protect yourself against fire, flood, theft, and direct lightning strike on your power lines, you need secondary, off-site backups. Get a portable external drive (or a pair, to alternate). Periodically do separate backups to it, and take it to your safe deposit box, workplace, relative's house, etc. CarbonCopyCloner (which I use in addition to TM), SuperDuper!, or the like would be fine for this, although you could use TM by just doing a +Change Disk+ each time.
Frankly, looking back 20 pages through this thread, I am astonished by the number of problems that people seem to be having with Time Machine. It rather looks like a flakey piece of software that's best avoided.
Don't be misled by what you see here. TM works just fine for most people. They only post here when there's a question or problem. Many of the questions wouldn't be necessary if Apple's documentation was better, and most of the problems are either things people did without knowing they shouldn't, or hardware problems. You'll find similar threads on the CCC and SD forums, too.

How can Time Machine be configured to backup external drives?

I was running out of space on my Mac internal hard drive. I bought an external drive and moved all of the iTunes data to the external. It freed up 100 MB on my internal drive. However, Time Machine isn't backing up the data that I moved to the external drive.
I still want to back up that data. How do I configure Time Machine to backup both my internal Mac drive as well as the external drive, which is seperate from my backup drive?
Thanks.

External drives are automatically added to the list of items excluded from Time Machine backups. To remove the exclusion, open the Time Machine preference pane, click the lock icon to unlock it if necessary, and then click Options.

Time Machine size discrepancy / backup fail

Hi! For a few weeks now my Time Machine backups have ceased to work, with an error that they are too big for the drive. While I only have a 500GB drive, my total size of the backup has always been well within that (thanks to the exclusions I have set up, mostly for my video projects).
I've finally had a chance to look through my files and determine that the only truly gargantuan folder was indeed my Videos folder, but it is excluded.
Here's the nub of my problem / question:
My Time Machine panel under Options says the estimated size of the full backup is 274 GB. But backups fail with a message that the backup requires 849GB! That's way more than the 20% overhead I know TM requires in addition to the backup size.
This seems to be the key to why my backups are failing.
Can anyone suggest a course of action?
Thanks!
Adam

ARGH! Would you believe that - only days after I fixed it with the combo update - it happened again?
Well, it did. "The backup requires 847.90 GB but only 93.79 GB are available."
847 GB? The "Estimated size of full backup" in the exceptions window is 276.88 GB.
Just like before.
I did run a Repair Permissions after the combo update as suggested... just to rule that out...
Just in case it's at all helpful, I'm including the info from the Dashboard widget that reveals Time Machine log info - first for the last successful backup, then for the first one to fail.
Sigh...
Last successful backup:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Adam’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Starting pre-backup thinning: 789.60 GB requested (including padding), 83.52 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Adam’s iMac/2011-07-02-021404: 83.52 GB now available
Deleted 1 backups: oldest backup is now Jul 3, 2011
Stopping backup.
Backup canceled.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Compacting backup disk image to recover free space
Compl
(and yes, the incomplete last line is just as it appeared in the log.)
Failed backup:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Adam’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Starting pre-backup thinning: 789.67 GB requested (including padding), 87.35 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed.
Backup Failed: unable to free 789.67 GB needed space
Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.

TIme machine - size of HD doubled after restoring a backup

Hi there,
I think I have an issue with Time Machine. I had to restore my HD, and after the backup the size of the drive has suddenly doubled. I suspect TM created saved a copy of the backup on the HD, but I can't find, so I guess I might be an hidden file somewhere. Do you know if this is possible? If so, can I delete the backup file? I basically lost 100+ GB which I'd like to have back...
Thanks for you help!
Valerio

val75 wrote:
Hi there,
I think I have an issue with Time Machine. I had to restore my HD
That erases your internal HD, which gives it a new UUID, which means Time Machine treats it like a new drive, and backs-up everything on it: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338
That was supposed to be fixed in Snow Leopard, but obviously wasn't.

Time Machine Size Limit on OS X Mavericks

Before mavericks I was able to set a size limit to time machine back ups, but now on mavericks I cannot.
I used:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize (size in bytes,i.e. 512000 for 500gb)
In terminal.
But now in mavericks there is no longer a time machine plist, or at least I can't find it anymore.
Does anyone know how to set a limit using mavericks?

same problem here... Have you found any solution?

Time machine not configured in menu bar but when accessed all seems ok?

I have an apple time machine just purchased in nov 2011 i set it up for my macbook pro and all was fine, now the icon in the top menu shows that time machine is not configured and time machine button wont turn on in sys preferences but i can access time machine in airport utility and all seems fine, i don't get it nothing has been changed by me yet it says something has and i don't know what?????

Are you talking about Time Machine (Apple's backup software) or your Time Capsule?
The menubar icon is for Time Machine; Airport Utility is where you configure your Time Capsule and network.
If Time Machine is not configured, it's not making backups, but you can still use the Time Capsule, both to use your network and, if you want, to put files on it.
If you're not making backups, you really should. You don't have to use Time Machine, but you should be backing your Mac up with another backup app so when (not if) something awful happens to your Mac, you don't lose all your data.

"Time machine not configured" after yosemite clean install

I'm on a MBP early 2011, 16gb Ram, Seagate 500gb used to back up with Time Machine. I was doing manual backups once a month. Having wifi problems like everyone else and general slowdowns on the machine even before the regular install of Yosemite (on top of Mountain Lion, on top of Snow Leopard) I decided to do a clean install. Start fresh. Followed all the directions. But,little did I know that by changing my user name (not deliberately) on my brand new OS, I don't have access to TM. At least that's what I think is up with this "TM not configured"
How should I proceed?
Can I configure the drive now with my new username and still have access to my files? I wanted to bring over some of them, not all of them. If it's possible to do this, and I do, will I have all kinds of permissions or other problems? Will I lose my old backups if I configure it?
Or should I just start over with another kind of clean install? It's only been a couple of days.If I restored from the backup or whatever options there are, am I actually reinstalling the problems I was trying to eliminate? The upgrade to 16gb ram was part of my initial troubleshooting.
Other options?
Thanks!

My family upgraded to Yosemite on our 3 Macs four days ago: on an iMac, a MacBook Pro, and a MacBook Air, all three Macs from early 2014.
In Mavericks there was never any trouble with the Time Machine. But now on all three Macs, the TM doesn’t function properly.
1) on entering TM, the Restore and the two Arrow buttons for selecting the date are dimmed out 90% of the time; nothing can be done, for example, clicking on the Finder folders or files and so on is impossible.
2) sometimes, however, only the Restore button is dimmed out, or vice versa, only the two Arrow buttons.
3) on two occasions, no buttons were dimmed out, but on the very first click, all the buttons were again dimmed out
4) on the iMac and the Mac Book Pro, thank God, the backups still seem to be working; however, on the MacBook Air, a „preparing backup“ message just keeps on running and running.
The TM is a major feature of OS X that Apple pushes hard in its ads. Hopefully this means we’ll soon have an update. As a normal Mac user, I would find it difficult to apply any more exotic workaround solutions that some Mac experts might offer. My patience and ability to troubleshoot doesn’t go much beyond David Pogue’s latest OS X manual.
Anyway, a last more point: the previous TM was a thing of beauty, and I really enjoyed being sort of shot into space with the stars, like Dante on his way to the Empyrean; but now, on entering the TM in Yosemite, it looks like the Finder has fallen into an ugly pool of mud.
Thanks for any help or feedback you can offer.

Time Machine - initial configuration using PC formated external drive

I'm about to connect an external HD that I used on WinXP onto my imac and was wondering as it already had data on it will it be completely over-written/wiped? or will it leave my existing files alone? Does it matter how it is formatted also?
tks

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
See this user tip:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=965293&tstart=0
It will only be overwrited if you attempt to write something to disk. If you are attempting a data recovery from a PC to a Mac, I think it would be best if you simply got a data recovery program for a PC and ran it there, or ran it on Mac virtualization program.

Can no longer configure Time Machine

I upgraded to OS 10.5 from 10.3 a few weeks ago, Time Machine was working fine till today, when menu bar says Time Machine not configured, the Lacie disk I back up onto (which shows on desktop) now says Lacie and no longer shows the greenish TM logo (my HD on desktop still shows it okay) and when I turn TM on in prefs, it shows nothing to choose as my backup disk. I'm very confused...
Thanks in advance.
Michael, London

The preferences file may be corrupted.
Do a "full reset," per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If that doesn't help, your backups may be corrupted.
Repair them, per #A5 in Troubleshooting.

How do i set up/configure time machine and my first time capsule ?

I want to set up my time machine. When I click at the top of my toolbar it says time machine not configured.
When I turn time machine on through system preferences/time machine - it then prompts me to set up my first time capsule.
When I press 'select back up disk' it prompts me to a page where I cannot 'use disk' I can only click on cancel or 'other time capsule'.
When I click on 'other time capsule' I get taken to a screen with a globe on it and although it says 'internet connected' it also says 'no airport base stations have been found'.
How do I do up time machine/set up my first time capsule ?

See KB Articles;
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
http://support.apple.com/kb/VI29 (video)

Time machine is not configured in mavericks

I just bought a seagate backup plus EHD for mac, I plugged it in and nothing happend. I tried to look for it on time machine but my it cant locate it. And i noticed that my time machine isnt configured? is something wrong with my time machine or the EHD? Im not too tech savy so it might be something simple that I just dont know how to do.

If you have the disk plugged in it should slow up in disk utility, which it is not.
Try unpllugging all your peripherals, except the power cord, an then resetting SMC.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
Then plugin the disk and see if it shows up in Disk Utility.
If not, then try it in your other USB port.
If that fails then do you have another Mac/PC on which you can test the disk?

Time Machine size configuration

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