Time Machine to backup a bootable external HD

Running 10.6.8 on a 27" 2009 iMac with a bootable external HD also running 10.6.8.
For the internal HD (1TB, 680GB used), I use TM to backup to external HD (1TB). No problem.
For the bootable external HD (called "CupCake," 500GB, 200GB used), it tells me that the external HD that I'm trying to backup to (called "CC TM," 500GB, empty), is too small for the 800GB data. I assume that 680 + 200 = 800GB, TM is trying backup the internal HD and CupCake. I want to backup CupCake alone to CC TM.
How do I get TM to backup only the external HD?
Thank you, JS

I would suggest CarbonCopyClone ($40 download) to backup an external drive. It allows you to select the source and destination drives, and makes bootable clones which I would suggest doing for your intern drive. A bootable clone is a good "usable backup" when your internal drive fails (it will eventually fail).
SuperDuper also clones, but does not save the RecoveryPartition like CCC does (at least so is reported).

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Can I use Time Machine to backup ONLY an external drive?

I am having problems with the internal HD on my iMac and Disk Utility is telling me I need to reformat the drive and restore from backup. Only problem is that my 3TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive I was using for Time Machine recently failed (think it may have happened during an electrical storm brownout). Yep, I know, ***** to be me
The issues with the internal HD are preventing the iMac from booting and I would prefer not to have to purchase various repair software to find one that really works such as Disk Warrior or similar ((despite it getting very good reviews). I suspect it make be HFS corruption but no way to really tell that I am aware of.
I have setup an external drive with Yosemite and booted from that so now my old internal drive is seen as an "external drive".
I am using Disk Utility to make an image copy to a new 3TB external drive I purchased. Writing the DMG is going to take some time.
What I would like to do is to set up Time Machine to backup to a separate external 3TB hard drive (the second one I purchased) and have TM create a backup of ONLY the old internal drive - not the new system as well as the old internal unit.
Is this possible and if so can anyone advise how to do this. Does not seem I can exclude the system drive I am now booted from so that it is not backed up. (This makes sense that TM would be designed this way given its primary purpose is to backup a system).
If TM cannot be configured in this way, is there another option I can use?
Thanks
Andrew

Thanks for that advice. I have heard of it but a friend who does IT support at a University nearby suggested using Disk Utility to save an image - hence this is currently underway at present. Once this is finished I will try Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have another friend who has an older version of CCC - do you know if an old version will work ok or if only the latest supports Yosemite?
Also once I have the clone completed from CCC, is the process then to reformat the old internal drive and then clone from the CCC external drive back to the internal and then reboot and trust all is well?
Appreciate your help Csound1.
Regards
Andrew

Question: Time Machine b/u vs bootable external drive

I wanted to make an external bootable drive and planned on getting Carbon Copy Cloner. However, I see some discussion strings on Time Machine that suggest that if your hard drive fails, you can boot the computer using Time Machine backups. Surely the TM b/u's do not allow you to boot from scratch too (or do they?)

gangof4 wrote:
I wanted to make an external bootable drive and planned on getting Carbon Copy Cloner. However, I see some discussion strings on Time Machine that suggest that if your hard drive fails, you can boot the computer using Time Machine backups. Surely the TM b/u's do not allow you to boot from scratch too (or do they?)
Use both

Can't set up Time Machine to backup to WD external drive

Hi, I have a WD external drive that I want to use to back up my Mac book Pro 10.8 files.
I connected the WD to the computer's USB and it appears in the "Devices" list in the Finder Window.
I opened "System Preferences / Time Machine" switched it to "On", clicked the option "Other Time Capsule" and the "Set up..." button
A new screen opened and I couldn't find the option to choose the WD drive as the Time Machine backup location.
This screen only says:
"no new Airport base stations discovered"
"no remote Airport base stations discovered"
"no configured Airport base stations have been found. AirPort utility will continue searching"
Am I doing something wrong? Why can't I find the option to save the backup to the WD drive?
Thanks

Not only should it be OSX Extended (journaled), it should also
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is Disk Utility (make sure you have the WD drive selected),
reset to create one or however many partitions you want,
click the Options button. Select GUID partition map, then
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Time Machine incomplete backup on new External Hard Drive

I have a LaCie 2TB firewire external hard drive I bought 2 years ago. I made 3 partitions, one called "Time Machine" for TM backups of my iMac HD, one called "Video" for video files, and one called "HD2" that I used to install new programs and store edited photos and img files. I ran TM onto this HD for the last 2 yrs with no problems. I recently decided that I needed to have a backup of my iMac HD --- AND the 2 partitions (Video and HD2) on my LaCie. So I bought a Seagate 2TB external USB HD that I planned to use ONLY for Time Machine.
So I hooked it up and formatted it (no partitions), then went to TM options and selected the new Seagate Hard Drive to backup to, and in the options I excluded the Seagate (by default) and the Time Machine partition on my LaCie. Nothing else was excluded. In other words, I wanted to backup my entire iMac HD, and my Lacie Video and HD2 partitions.
My internal iMac HD has 116 GB used, my Lacie Video partition has 355 GB used, and my Lacie HD2 partition has 175 GB used. So I was expecting the Seagate to backup 646 GB.
When my Time Machine backup started at 1 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed "Backing up 1 GB of 646 GB." When I woke up at 8 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed
"Backing up 536 GB of 646 GB."
But it stayed stuck on 536 GB until 12 Noon, then started slowly working again. By 7 PM, the status showed "Backing up 623 GB of 646 GB." Then at 8 PM, the status box disappeared and it seemed like everything was backed up. But my Seagate HD shows only 629 GB of used space. So I decided to check the backup in Finder to see what went wrong.
In the Seagate backups folder, I have three folders - one named "Macintosh HD" which shows 112 GB on disk, one named "Video" with 341 GB on disk, and one named "HD2" with 175 GB on disk.
So it appears that my iMac HD was only backed up 112 GB out of 116GB, my Video partition was only backed up 341 GB out of 355 GB, but my HD2 partition backed up the entire 175 GB out of 175 GB.
So my question is - is this normal, or is my backup really missing 4 GB of files from my iMac hard drive and 14 GB of files from my video partition? I started to look at them file by file to see if they matched, but there are so many files, so I thought I would ask in case any of you might have heard of this before. If your answer is that my backups are corrupt or incomplete, should I reformat the Seagate and start over?
Also, is it safe for me to manually delete all the files in my time Machine partition on my LaCie hard drive, since I won't be using that anymore for Time Machine backups? Or is there a process I must follow to delete those older backups?
Thanks for reading this far and for any advice you can shoot my way.

Thank you for your well thought out response. It was really helpful by showing me where to look at things more closely.
Time Machine automatically excludes some things that aren't necessary for a restore, such as system work files, most caches and logs, and trash.
This is good to know. Although I didn't have anything in the trash, I have no idea how much is in the various caches and logs. I'd be surprised if they totaled 4GB, though. I'm still worried about this backup, as explained below after doing a Console log check.
If any files were open, they may not have been backed-up (a partial file wouldn't be of much use). I don't know of any special exclusions for video files or apps, but there may be some. You might want to try the Terminal command in the yellow box of #11.
I didn't have anything else running except TM, so no files were open. I checked the exclusions in the yellow box #11, the Terminal Command, and /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.pl ist, but nothing seemed to point to the video files I have saved. So I'm still at a loss with this part of the backup.
You might want to look at the log of that backup
I looked at the log - thank you for the link on how to see it - but the entries show that the size of the backup was even less than I thought - It seems I am actually missing 0.2 GB from the HD2 partition, 6 GB from the iMac HD, and 14.4 GB from the Video partition. And since it shows the exclusion amounts, I'm really at a loss for the iMac HD now. Here's what the Console listed for this backup:
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 174.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume HD2
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 355.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume Video
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 116.3 GB excluded items size: 30.5 MB for volume Macintosh HD
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 776.02 GB requested (including padding), 1.82 TB available
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Waiting for index to be ready (909 > 0)
Aug 29 02:37:30 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 3275 files (174.5 GB) from volume HD2.
Aug 29 05:49:40 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 5412 files (515.9 GB) from volume Video.
Aug 29 19:18:46 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 146976 files (626.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Is it possible to see how many files are in each drive that I was backing up? If I could match the file count, it might give me a better idea. I used Finder, but it only gives me the GB Capacity, Used and Free. For example, if I could see if the LaCie Video partition has exactly 5412 files (or 2137, if the file count above is a running total), I will believe that all the files backed up but may have been truncated. If the partition shows more than 5412 files, then I'll know that not all files were backed up. So at least I can start looking manually.
It will be much faster and easier to erase the partition with Disk Utility.
Thank you for this advice. This should save lots of time. I won't erase my other partitions when I do this, right? Also, will it leave a blank partition there so I regain my space?
I'm really bummed out by this backup. I haven't used my iMac for anything except Safari since this happened, because I do not want to start working again until I know that I have a safe backup, and I don't want to make any new files until I can resolve this. I thought of just reformatting the Seagate and starting over, but I have a feeling it may do the same thing. So at this point, I don't know if the Seagate is faulty, if the TM is not working properly, if I am making a dumb user error, or if this is perfectly normal. The worst thing that could happen is that my iMac HD or Lacie HD fails and I try to restore from my Seagate TM backup, only to find out that my TM backup is incomplete or corrupt.
So I really do appreciate your help and any additional insight you or anyone else might have. Thanks.

How do I set up Time Machine to backup to an external hard drive on my wireless router?

I have just set up an external hard drive to my wireless router and am now wanting to set up Time Machine to back up to the hard drive. I can see the hard drive in Finder and can even send files to it manually. I just don't see in setting up Time Machine any option to backup to that hard drive. Is it even possible?

Well, I figured out a way around it that works for me but may not be suitable for everyone. Instead of connecting the external hard drive to the router I tried connecting it directly to my computer. I then right-clicked the hard drive's folder on my desktop, clicked "Get Info" and checked the box that says "Shared Folder". I then went to the bottom of that window and under "Sharing & Permissions" and next to "Everyone" checked that they could all "Read and Write".
The hard drive is now shared over my network, so when I got on one of my other Mac's that I was wanting to set up Time Machine with, the Time Machine Application had no problem finding the hard drive and backing up to it.
I have all computer's setup for file sharing too, so that may need to be checked as well.
This was a simple enough fix but the reason I said that it may not be suitable for everyone is that the other computer's backing up to this hard drive via Time Machine is now reliant on my computer being turned on. I'm okay with that though.

Using Time Machine to backup data FROM external disk to ANOTHER external

i have my itunes library and my iphoto library on an external WD disk connected to my MacBook Pro. So, i have a lot of nice data on that disk that i want protected... but Time Machine is not playing nice with the external hard drive. It's not listed on the list of items "Not to backup", yet when I go into the Time Machine interface, i can't go more than 1 level deep in Finder when selecting the external disk.
has anyone seen this behavior? it's supposed to work.
thanks!

Did you backup your data from that external disk using some other backup software before?
I am also trying to figure out problems with external HD using time machine to back it up. Am not quite sure yet why it is not working right.

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

Hi. I've been working with a lot of family video lately and my internal hard drive has filled up significantly. iMovie doesn't seem to have a good archiving facility like Adobe InDesign which I use at work were all the relevant files are gathered together into one folder. Apple advised me to relocate my movie files to an external hard drive and herein lies my query.
Is there a way for me to set Time Machine to backup both my iMac's internal drive and the external hard drive that would contain my movie files? I've been using Time Machine for my backups for a few years now, but backing up the external as well has me stumped. If Time Machine could be used then all the necessary file accociations etc would be safely backed up as well - that's why I don't want to have to manually backup the external.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

7string48 wrote:
Thanks so much Pondini!! You just quickly answered a question that none of the Mac people in 3 stores or Apple Care have been able to answer.If you can format it HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
I'm not too surprised about the Apple Stores, as they don't get much training on Time Machine. But AppleCare sure ought to know.
Oh...what about if the external drive is an array...like a Drobo with it's own proprietary formatting...I guess that would not work...??
I've never used a Drobo. A number of folks here have used them as their Time Machine drives, but I don't recall seeing anyone try to back one up with TM, so can't say for sure. But if you can format it as HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
At least part of the reason is, Time Machine uses the File System Event Store, a hidden log of changes that OSX keeps on each Mac-formatted disk/partition, to figure out what's changed and needs to be backed-up. See How Time Machine works its Magic for details.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations of backing-up multiple volumes with Time Machine.
However, even if it will work, that may not be your best strategy, depending on your circumstances:
Since Time Machine keeps copies of things you've changed or deleted, the destination needs to be considerably larger than the data being backed-up. How much larger varies widely depending on how you use your Mac, but a general "rule of thumb" is, it needs at least twice the space to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
If you have a large internal HD, fairly full, plus a large external HD, and the files on the external don't change frequently, you might want to use Time Machine for the internal, and a different app to a different disk or partition, on a different schedule, for the external. Especially if space is a consideration, you might not need to keep previous versions of files on the externals. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some alternatives.

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini (256gbSSD + 2tbHDD)?

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup what I have on my Mac Mini?
My Mac Mini has one 256 SSD and one 2tb HDD. I want to use Time Machine to do a backup of everything.
Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
Might I suggest as an alternative that you not use Time Machine but a third-party backup utility that simply overwrites older files with new ones such that the backup drive can be the same capacity as the drive backed up.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

Time Machine restarts backup of external drive

I have two external hard-drives: a 4TBer I've been using for Time Machine, and a 1TBer I've been using to keep media. I'd like to be able to backup the 1TBer, as it has a about 500GB of data I don't have stored anywhere else, but I've found that if I disconnect it and a backup occurs while it is disconnected, the next backup will attempt to re-backup all 500GB. A similar problem was reported here: Time Machine restarts backup of removable drive and solved by a full reset procedure, but that doesn't seem to be helping in my case. Does anyone have suggestions to deal with this?

The problem can be caused by backing up a volume on a drive that doesn't have a GUID or CoreStorage partition table. Time Machine doesn't work reliably with other partition types.
To confirm, launch Disk Utility and select the icon of the drive in question—not any of the volume icons nested below it. At the bottom of the window, note the Type. If it's not GUID Partition Scheme or Logical Volume Group, see below.
This procedure will destroy all data on the drive. Afterwards, restore from a backup. To be safe, you must have at least two complete, independent, up-to-date backups. One is not enough.
Select the Partition tab. From the Partition Layout menu in the window, select
          One Partition
From the Format menu, select
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Click the Options button and select
          GUID Partition Table
in the sheet that appears.
Click the Apply button and confirm when prompted.
The next time you back up, you may be prompted to "inherit" the backup history. Confirm. Even so, TM may copy all or almost all the files. After that, only the files that have changed should be copied.

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

You are not alone. Thousands have this problem, on various models of Macs. Short answer, it has something to do with the disk going to sleep (possibly?). You can't do anything about it and Apple won't address the problem. Maybe you should buy a time capsule. Just keep giving them money and use their proprietary equipment.
For a more complete answer, see this thread (all 65+ pages of it with NO SOLUTION IN SIGHT... except for some 3rd party solutions that sometimes work, sometimes don't): Disk Drive ejecting itself

Time Machine to backup a bootable external HD

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