Time machine sync with freeagent ext drive

I have a seagate freeagent 500gb ext hard drive which i use to sync with time machine. So far as i can tell it is syncing perfectly however when i first set it up I gave the drive the name "seagate 500GB drive". I've got the drive showing as an icon on my desk top but the name seems to have corrupted to a nonsensical name made up of letters and numbers. Still doing an hourly back up just fine and this is not a major issue although i would like to know if i can rename the drive as it was.
Also my iMac only gets used for a few hours in the evenings and at weekends and i usually put it into sleep mode when i leave the room.
Will this affect my back-ups? What if the iMac goes into sleep mode during a back up?
Should i set my iMac to "wake up" eg at 6am and immediately do a back up or should i just do a quick back up before i log out at night?
[i'm not "techie" and not really sure how all of this works just happy if it does without necessarily knowing why!!]

squashcoach wrote:
i would like to know if i can rename the drive as it was.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Yes, you can rename the drive without Time Machine missing a beat. Right-click it in a Finder sidebar and you'll get the option to rename it.
Also my iMac only gets used for a few hours in the evenings and at weekends and i usually put it into sleep mode when i leave the room.
Will this affect my back-ups?
No.
What if the iMac goes into sleep mode during a back up?
It shouldn't, but if it does, it will recover after it wakes up.
Should i set my iMac to "wake up" eg at 6am and immediately do a back up or should i just do a quick back up before i log out at night?
Either will work, but neither is terribly necessary. If you've made a lot of changes just before logging-off, running a backup isn't a bad idea. When your Mac wakes from sleep, it will do a backup immediately (unless one was done within the previous hour).
[i'm not "techie" and not really sure how all of this works just happy if it does without necessarily knowing why!!]
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial
and perhaps browse Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Similar Messages

HT5096 cannot move time machine backup from one ext drive to another. pls help!thanks!

my time machine file is about 390GB and it is on a 1TB external harddrive. I have been trying to move the backup to a new 2TB external harddrive. it stopped copying any more files after transferring 466MB. I repeated the same procedure several times,but with same result. any advice? thanks!

Apple support article:
Time Machine – Transfer Backup to a New Drive
Another good source of information:
Time Machine Troubleshooting

Time Machine errors with external hard drive

This is my first post,
I've had my MBP for a little over 8 months and came up with an error when i went to go use bootcamp, saying that it could not partition my windows partition cause there is not enough space ( I have like at least 40+ gigs left after i partition it) and it tells me to backup and re-install. So what I wanted to do is do a time machine restore.
I take my 750GB Western Digital External Drive via Firewire and plug it in, time machine recognizes it and wants to format it as "Mac OS X Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled). So I do that and it all goes well.
After that's all done is basically when all my problems come. My external likes to lock up now and doesn't want to transfer all my files. I will load up the time machine restore and it sometimes will recognize my external and sometimes wont show up. My external will occasionally lock up during the time machine restore process. And all the time when it does actually complete and I restart the computer, it will have most of my things but all my pictures and stuff are missing off it and i go to look in my external and its still all in there but I'm left wondering why it didn't work.
As another resort i did a fresh re-install of mac os x and tried the migration assistant. It went going to restore it but then comes up with an error saying that it cant transfer the data and tells me to plug in my external when i have it already plugged in.
Since that didn't work I did another re-install of mac and decided to just start fresh, I still had all my music and other things that I had on my back up and tried putting them on my mac's hard drive and towards the middle and stuff it will come up with an error saying that it could not transfer files anymore and what not.
So I'm left scratching my head in wonder, because my external will show up on my desktop and I'm able to search files through there ok.
Could the possible problem be is that time machine partitioned it as journaled and case-sensative while my mac is partitioned as just journaled? Would that cause a conflict of having it locking up and giving me errors?
This is really the first time I've ever really been able to seriously play around with a mac and am totally lost and don't know what I can be doing wrong.
The external I have I just got last year not too long ago and it was working great before this.
I've been trying for the past 3 days straight trying to figure out this problem and have had no luck.
Please any help would really be appreciated greatly.
Thanks in advance!!!

Ok I tried what you said and I failed every time.
But here is an interesting thing that I just figured out. What I tried was making a folder on the desktop and I went into the time machine backup that I had I went and manually copied the applications, library, system, users, and developer folder thinking that it may work. Well it did for me with all the folders but not the Library folder. I think that it may be the culprit behind it cause it may be corrupt and thats why my stuff will keep locking up.
I will start copying all the other folders and they work just fine but then i would start to copy the Library folder and it would come up saying preparing to copy to "so and so" folder. well a bit into that it will stop and my external will spin down and stop working, all the other things being copied will stop in their tracks. But when I cancel it and wait a few for it to finally cancel, all my other folders will continue to copy to my desktop to the specified folder. I tried copying the Library folder over and over but same thing happened. It locked my system and my external up.
I thought all along that I had a bad external drive when i knew it worked well when I first got it.
So could that be a possibility that there's something in that folder that would completely halt everything when I'm copying? Because I've really never done a fresh reinstall of mac os x when I bought the machine. This backup is the factory install.
I'm just sitting here right now making sure that these other folders that are copying get done so I know that I can single out the Library folder. And so far so good with all the copying via firewire.

Time Machine backup with firewire external drive

I am having issues with a brand new firewire external drive and I am not sure if it is a drive issue, a configuration issue or what.
I have a 6tb Firewire hooked up to my machine. This is the drive which is being used as the destination for Time Machine. I have had this drive for awhile and seem to be having no problem with it and have not had an issue with Time Machine previously. I have a new added a second firewire drive (2tb) in daisy chain to the first (the 6tb). Whenever this drive is included in my TM backup profile, TM fails. Whenever I remove it, TM seems to work. I am wondering if the issue is the sequence of the drives (the TM drive perhaps needing to be the last in the chain), an issue with TM or perhaps an indication of a hardware problem with the new drive itself. Anyone got a clue?
Thanks.

Okay,apparantly no one else seems to be having this issue. That being the case then, how do I find a log file to get an error code so I can try to determine *why* Time Machine is failing?

Help with Restoring from Time Machine Backup with new Hard Drive

Hello. Recently, my hard drive died in my 24" Early 2008 Aluminum iMac. Luckily, I had a time machine backup, and I took it upon myself to replace the 320 GB Hard Drive with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda disk. The hardware replacement (although difficult) went fine. Now, I'm having a bit of trouble restoring the new drive from my time machine backup. The new disk shows up in Disk Utility with the correct capacity. I formatted the new drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using my installation disk. My only problem is that the drive isn't showing up when I am choosing which drive I want to restore my time machine backup onto. I can pick out the backup I want perfectly fine, but I can't find the new drive. Any help?

UPDATE: I restarted it (Classic IT Crowd "Have you tried turning it off and on" moment) and the drive shows up on screen. Right now, I'm waiting for it to "Calculate disk size needed for restore" and I'll keep you posted.
UPDATE 2: Currently restoring. Let's see if it's successful.
Message was edited by: funman895

Lion breaks Time Machine backups with Western Digital Drives.

How can I find out what's being done about this from an Apple and a Western Digital angle? WD has nothing on their site. Apparently there is an 'AFP' protocol change. Help, I have upgraded all machines to Lion and now no upgrades are possible.

Time Machine was never supported on 3rd party remote drives other than Apple's own Time Capsule and MacOS X Server. Event the Airport Express with an external drive didn't support Time Machine. If any 3rd party products want to support Time Machine, it is their responsibility to stay up to date. Lion has been available to developers for months.
If you want to hack up your Lion to use the older protocol that Apple now feels is insecure - here you go.

Time machine backup with 2 external drives?

i got myself an external hard drive to use with my MBP. I do a lot of filmwork in imovie for my artwork, and have found my internal hard drive filling up fast.
So i bought a second hard drive yesterday. I'm hoping to backup my files on the external drives so i can erase the files on my MBP and keep it fairly free to record more film.
Is there a way to simultaneously backup to both external drives? or to move files from one external drive to another quickly? I am a complete newbie to macs (and technology for that matter) so simple words work best smile
thanks!

dman8950 wrote:
Hello
Does anyone know if it's possible to use two separate external drives in Time Machine to backup different parts of my mbp hard drive? That is, I want to use ex.drive1 to back up work files at work and ex.drive2 to back up personal files at home. In time machine options, I can set the folders for exclusion, but currently have to set those each time I back up at home/work.
There's no easy way to do that with Time Machine. As you see, it only has one set of exclusions and one destination drive at a time.
In theory, and if you're careful, you might be able to manipulate the preference file where all that's stored. Set TM up for home, say, then copy or rename that version. Then set it up for work and do the same.
The file is at the top level of your drive, not in your home folder:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
You could probably write an Automator workflow or AppleScript to simplify swapping the files.
Otherwise, two alternatives:
Back up everything in both places.
Use Time Machine at home, and a different app, such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, at work, or vice-versa.

Time Machine Backups with Multiple Target Drives

I am looking at setting up a Time Machine backup solution, for a client, and I was wondering if it was possible to rotate 2 USB drives, and use 1 each week for backups with little or no user intervention.
Even Week = (Drive 1) --> Xserve
Odd Week = (Drive 2) --> Xserve
and cycle this by simply unplugging and plugging as needed.
I am currently without the hardware to test, which is why I post this here, rather than simply experiment.
My current question essentially comes down to, does Time Machine choose target drives based on the S/N of the drive, or simply whatever you have labeled it?

busterv: I used to do this myself for those exact reasons, fire, water damage what ever. I can say that it works well other than having to reset system preferences when you change the drive and the fact that you are exposed for a week or so until you swap the drive.
I say used to because now I use a drive from a company called ioSafe. http://www.iosafe.com. It's fire proof, water proof and even crush poof, now I don't even have to worry about it. I don't work for ioSafe BTW.

Time Machine Backup Partition on Ext drive unmounts. Other partition doesnt

I have a 500 GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW/USB drive that has two 250 GB partitions. I use one for storage and one for Time Machine backups and have been using it this way for a long time. The backup partition never unmounts unless I drag it to the trash. The backup partition constantly unmounts after a while.
I have run Disk Utility and DiskWarrior on the disk and partition many times. They show no problems. I have reset PRAM.
If the backup partition is mounted when I put the computer to sleep, it is still mounted when it wakes up.
Nothing will keep the partition mounted indefinitely, while the other partition on the disk is always mounted. Any suggestions?

deerhound2 wrote:
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Error: Flushing index to disk returned the error: 0
TM was having a problem writing to the backup disk, so the backup failed and ejected the disk.
Start by repairing it, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

HT201250 Can time machine work with an external drive in the network

I am trying to use an external drive connected to my router(Airport Extreme) via USB as my backup drive or TimeMachine. Is it possible or I have to connect it directly to my computer? Thanks for any help.

Connect it directly.

HT201250 How do you let time machine know that a restored drive does not need a brand new backup set and just append to the old one?

I had an external drive failure and had to buy a brand new drive. I was able to restore my info onto a new drive, about 1.5 TB of data. When I go to launch time machine now with the new drive connected and my backup connected, it treats the new drive as if it had different data and wants to create a whole new backup set when it should just append. How do I get around this?
I could just reformat the backup drive and start fresh again but would rather not do that if I can avoid it, just in case there were errors in copying etc.

Hi
I should have been more clear, sorry. I work from a laptop. I have 2 external drives - one for my projects which failed but has since been replaced and restored from a backup. My 2nd external drive is the time machine backup drive.
When my project drive crashed, I bought a brand new drive and restored it using my time machine backup drive.
Now the data exists on 2 drives - the time machine backup drive, and the new drive. When I connect the backup drive now, it thinks my new drive has new data, probably since it is a new device/drive, and wants to do a brand new backup, when in fact the data already exists on that very drive. It shouldn't have to back up all 1.5 TB when nothing has changed!
Unless there is a way to tell time machine to simply append to the old backup, I think it will try and do a new backup (1.5 TB). I'm thinking maybe I should just initialize my time machine backup drive now and start over so it is only one backup set of 1.5 TB instead of (2) sets of 1.5 TB!

Backing up with time machine to a shared hard drive on a network

HI,
Here's my situation: I have a 2011 Macbook Pro, 2009 iMac, and the last generation Macbook that they made. All 3 computers have Lion. I have a WD 4tb ext hard drive that I had been using to backup my MBP and everything worked fine. So, I decided i wanted to backup my iMac and Macbook to that same hd, which is obviously plugged into my MBP. It worked fine, both computers were able to backup simultaniously and all was great.
However, since I take my MBP with me places, the other computers wont backup when it isn't there (obviously). So, I decided to plug the ext hard drive into the iMac and use that as the central computer for the others to backup to (which makes way more sense). So, I formatted the drive (I didn't have any real need for any of the backups, and I wanted to start fresh), plugged it into the iMac, and set it up to be shared. I can backup to it from the iMac no problem, but I can't do it from either the MBP or the MB. I can access the hard drive on the laptops (mount it, copy and read files from it, ect), but when i go to set a backup disk in time machiine, it just isn't one of the drives to choose from. In the old configuration, the networked drive appeared as a possible drive to backup to in time machine preferences with out any problem, so I'm not sure what's wrong!
Any help would be GREAT!

That's what it should be. Take a look at Pondini's Time Machine FAQ #22: http://Pondini.org/TM/22.html
Also, make sure you are sharing via AFP and not SMB.

Time Machine colliding with MobileMe sync after 10.5.6 update?

Hi, all. I am having fairly regular time machine errors, such as the following:
Mar 2 17:35:19 ENTOURAGE /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4831]: Error: (-43) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/jkinner/Library/Preferences/sync.plist to /Volumes/Backup of ENTOURAGE/Backups.backupdb/ENTOURAGE/2009-02-26-165316.inProgress/BE549816-EABC -4157-9FFE-2579D2A66254/Entourage/Users/jkinner/Library/Preferences
Mar 2 17:35:19 ENTOURAGE /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4831]: Copied 52238 files (92.2 MB) from volume Entourage.
Mar 2 17:35:19 ENTOURAGE /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4831]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Mar 2 17:35:27 ENTOURAGE /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4831]: Backup failed with error: 11
Every failure is because of sync.plist, which makes me suspect that the "near-instant" updates from MobileMe sync are causing my backups to fail. Anyone else getting this? FYI, my Time Machine volume is a USB drive mounted on an AirPort, and it's been working great before the update.

Sheepless wrote:
Mar 2 17:35:19 ENTOURAGE /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4831]: Error: (-43) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/jkinner/Library/Preferences/sync.plist
This looks like a corrupted preferences file.
For now, don't touch it. Instead, exclude it from TM and run another backup (there might be another problem).
To exclude it, go to TM's Preferences and click Options.
In the next panel, click the plus sign at the bottom.
In the sidebar of the next panel, select your home folder, then navigate to the file listed.
Select it, click Exclude, then Done.
Then do a +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in your Menubar.
If TM runs ok, then you need to figure out what's wrong with that file, or just delete it and re-enter your sync preferences.

Backup with Time Machine on 2 different Hard Drive

Hello,
I'd like to know if I can backup *all my data on 2 different external hard drives*. The aim is to a double backup in case of big issue.
I'd like to process on this way:
- only one of my backup HD at home and the other is at the office
- when I plug one of the backup HD, its data is updated according to the previous backup with this HD (not with the other one)
- if I backup my MBPro just before leaving the office (on the office's HD) and I backup my MBPro just after arriving at home (on the home's HD), my 2 HD should have the state and exactly the same backuped data.
Is it possible ? Otherwise, is there another way to proceed ?
Thanks for all,
Malphas

malphas,
*Using Time Machine with Multiple Destination Hard Disks*
Yes, this is possible, as long as you understand how it works. First, Time Machine is only designed to work automatically with one backup disk. If you are going to employ multiple Time Machine disk with a single Mac, then you are going to have to manually select the new drive each time it is attached using the Time Machine Preferences “Change Disk…” button.
Secondly, Time Machine *+does not+* ordinarily perform file-by-file comparisons to determine what has changed and thus determine what needs to be backed up. Rather, Time Machine relies on FSEvents notifications. This is a log that the system uses to keep track of changes to directories. Rather than scan tens of thousands of files for changes each time, Time Machine simply looks at this log and narrows its’ scan to only the directories that have experienced changes since the last backup.
Every event that FSEvents records has its’ own ID which includes a time stamp. At the end of every backup, Time Machine stores the last event ID that it processes. When the next backup is initiated, Time Machine looks at this stored ID and determines that it only needs to backup events that have occurred after the time stamp on this last event ID.
Naturally, for hourly backups, Time Machine does not have to go back very far to find the last known event ID. However, if a Time Machine disk is only being attach for backups every few days, a week, or more, and Time Machine has to go back too far to find the last event ID, then it will give up and simply go into “deep traversal” and do the file-by-file scan on its’ own. There are simply too many events logged by the system for Time Machine to bother looking for the last known event ID. Consequently, expect lengthy “Preparing Backup…” sessions anytime you attach a backup disk infrequently.
Nevertheless, using Time Machine with multiple destination disk will work. If the two drives are routinely backed up then they will always remain in relative sync.
Finally, remember to reselect your normal Time Machine disk in the Preferences when the backup to the secondary disk is complete.
Hope this helped clarifies things a bit for you.
Cheers!

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

Time machine sync with freeagent ext drive

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