Time Machine w/ external HDD question

Hello all! Just started using Time Machine with an external HDD. So, here is my question, if my HDD (USB) is not attached for a week, and Time Machine is running, will I get some sort of error message letting me know that the backup volume cannot be found? Also, when I reattach, say one week later, will Time Machine pick up and backup those items over the past week? Please advise. Thanks!

Time machine might give you an error but its very unlikely. And as for unplugging the drive, yes time machine will pick up were it left off and update the changes you have made. I usually only hook mine up every couple weeks cause I don't make very many changes.

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Time Machine: Must external HDD be a large or larger than internal drive?

I have a 2TB HDD in a new iMac, and I have a couple of spare 500GB SATA drives I can liberate from my previous Mac. Before I buy enclosures for the externals, I'd like to know if TM requires an external drive the same size or larger than the internal drive it is to back up.
Though I have a 2TB internal drive, it has 1.79TB available, and I could probably use a 500GB for quite a while before I need a larger backup drive.
Thanks.
BC
driven

BCDrums wrote:
I have a 2TB HDD in a new iMac, and I have a couple of spare 500GB SATA drives I can liberate from my previous Mac. Before I buy enclosures for the externals, I'd like to know if TM requires an external drive the same size or larger than the internal drive it is to back up.
Though I have a 2TB internal drive, it has 1.79TB available, and I could probably use a 500GB for quite a while before I need a larger backup drive.
If you have only 210 GB on that 2 TB drive, then yes, a 500 GB drive will probably work fine, at least until you put a lot more data on your system.
It does vary a great deal, of course, depending on how you use your Mac. If you frequently change and/or replace a lot of large files, you may fill it up rather quickly; if not, it may not fill up for quite a while.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

Time Machine: changing external HDD

Dear All,
I'km kinda new to mac, just recently made the switch so if my question has been answered already for like a hundred times I'm really sorry.
I started using time machine a week ago using my smaller External HDD, a 160GB one.
I have bought a new, bigger one (1 TB) which I'd like to use since I think the smaller one will be full in a couple of days. I was wondering however: is there a possibility to transfer the updates I already made (on the smaller one) to the bigger one so I can switch external HDD without losing the old back ups?
Thnx 4 ur help!

FeroX6,
You will get a quicker and better answer by re-posting your question at http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
,dave

Does Time Machine backup External HDDs?

Hello everyone, I plan to use a Mac-Mini as an HTPC, and want to use a large external HDD connected DIRECTLY to the mini as my storage (call it HDD-A).
If I connect a second external HDD dedicated for TM (HDD-B), will it backup content from HDD-A as well as the OS?
Q2: Are there any special settings in TM necessary to accomplish this?
Q3: Separate TM question: Anyway to get TM to backup an External HDD that's connected to an AEBS?
Thanks much in advance!

I am in the same situation, riesar. I have 2 time-machine-enabled macs connected to a 500GB Time Capsule. My Mac Pro has 4 drives (boot, bootClone, Video Archive, Video Archive Clone) I use Time Machine to backup my Main boot drive, with a couple of exclusions including all other HD's. I excluded my Parallels folder since Each windows installation is about 10GB and the ENTIRE file changes each time you open your virtual PC. I also exclude my parallels installation from my iMac Time Machine file as well.
Every couple of days, My Boot drive clones itself (using SuperDuper!) to the BootClone and the Video Drive clones itself to the Video Clone. I don't have incremental backups of my video (or Windows installation) but I save SIGNIFICANT space by excluding certain things from time machine. My iMac clones itself to an external firewire drive as well.
If you were REALLY cramped for space on the Time Machine volume, you could simply include only - say - the User folder. You'd sacrifice the ability to restore your system to a previous state, but you'd have incremental backups of all your regularly changing data files. Your clone could restore your system, but if you ever had to restore your system, your recovery is only as good as you last clone. YMMV.
Tom

Time machin backup external hdd Problom

hi
Unfortunately I've got a problem with my external hdd which i used as time machin backup. when i atache the hdd to my mac a warning say this disk is not readable and in disktools after verifing it said that disk need to be repaired and there is an issue with boot sector.
what should i do to fix this issue without data loss ?

Open Disk Utility>First Aid and run Verify and Repair. Data should not be lost.
Ciao.

Time Machine using external HDD docking stattion

Hi,
I have a Macbook Pro and a few internal HDD's lying around. I have found on the web some external SATA docking station for mounting internal drives using Firewire 800. I am wondering if Time Machine will recognize these the same as normal external drives and backup accordingly. Thanks.

No reason why that shouldn't work. TM knows when a drive is not available, and it will resume a backup once the drive is connected.

Time Machine and drive permissions question

I'm using Time Machine on a MacBook with two admin accounts (let's call them admin1 and admin2). admin2 is the account used daily. admin1 is the account used very infrequently.
Things were set up with admin1. I noticed today when I was logged in as admin2 that TimeMachine reported that the last backup was more than 2 week ago (when things were set up), and that the last backup failed because the user didn't have privileges.
I did a Get Info on the drive, and it seemed to confirm that (admin 1 had read/write privileges, but admin 2 had only read access).
To get around the problem I logged in as admin1 and turned Time Machine off. I then logged in admin 2 and selected the disk from there, and turned Time Machine on.
My question is - is this normal behavior? Or if there's something wrong, how to fix it?
Thanks...

Scott Newman wrote:
After a few minutes, an external drive that is mounted on the desktop will spin down--like it should. But...each time a "Save" or "Save As..." dialog box is opened in any application, things will grind to halt for a few seconds while the external drive spins up--even though I will not be saving files to that drive. I've always hated that, which is one reason I've always done manual backups.
Does that happen with Time Machine (either with a drive physically or wirelessly connected via Export Extreme) and is there any way to avoid that?
It happens with TM. I am not sure of any convenient work-arounds. You can of course eject the drive and reattach it when you want to make a backup, but that's a bit inconvenient, IMO.
Is it possible to manually turn on and turn off Time Machine (and the external drive) so as to only do manual backups like I'm doing now? I don't really care about looking up a prior version of file that I've changed. I just want a reasonably current whole-disk backup.
Yes, TM has an on/off switch. Just turn it off until you want a backup. It will simply continue where it left off. It will not create a completely new backup.

Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark - Problem and Fix

My MacBook over the weekend upon awakening from sleep showed that the Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark. The external drive showed as mounted in the finder but repeated tries to Back up Now ended in Latest Backup Failed. Hmmm. Never saw that before. Did a restart and ran Disk Utility Verify Disk on the start up disk and it came out OK. So I then ran Disk Utility on the external FW backup drive and as soon as it reported that the FW disk was fine, Time Machine started up on it's own and did a back up and all is back to normal after leaving the TM drive attached the remainder of the weekend. All backups are back to working fine with no repeat of the problem.

If for some reason the computer has trouble communicating with the drive it will report a failure when TM tries to back up, and will display that question mark. It's good you were able to fix it and get TM running again.

HT4859 How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?

How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?
I think I have missed something in trying to read all of the pages on apple site about icloud.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
You can't back up a computer to iCloud.
You can use any back up software, you should always back up to a different drive.

How do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved from old computer and system

how do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved off old computer and system. It's not letting me open the folder???

Once again here's how to restore an iPhoto Library from Time Machine:

HT3275 Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP feat

Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. "Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features." What are AFP features and how do I get Time Machine to backup to my current external backup?

This means that your NAS does not support the required encryption. Update your NAS to the latest firmware or ditch it and buy a Time Capsule (they are the most reliable when using TM).

Is a WD My Book Studio Desktop 3TB Hard Drive - FW 400/800, USB 2.0, Apple Time Machine Ready external hard drive bootable with my Powerbook G4 12" PPC 10.5.8?

Sirs or madams,
Is my Powerbook G4 12” PPC 10.5.8 'bootable' with a Western Digital My Book Studio Desktop 3TB Hard Drive - FW 400/800, USB 2.0, Apple Time Machine Ready external hard drive? Western Digital says officially no, but that it MIGHT be. I primarily live in China and bought a datastorage.com.cn Clearlight s400+ external hard drive enclosure with a 320GB disk drive a few years ago in China. My computer 'boots' fine from it, but since I got it in China all the paperwork, etc. is in Chinese; my Chinese isn't quite sufficient enough yet to read it. But there are references to something called "SATA", whatever that is.
My level of computer 'under the hood' knowledge is extremely low. I've been told that SATA has some relationship as to whether or not an external hard drive will boot a computer via the Firewire connection, something relating to 'interface', which I assume is how separate electronic gadgets work, or don't work, with each other.
I frankly don't care much for computers, the internet, or their related gadgets such as all these fancy phones. I longingly reminisce about the days when there were no such things. I use a computer & the internet because I have to, and unfortunately unlike a car where one doesn't have to have 'under the hood' knowledge to operate it, just knowledge of the steering wheel, brake, gas, etc., one seemingly must know a ridiculously great amount of 'under the hood' knowledge, including jargon, to operate computers.
So, please try to respond accordingly; thank you.
If this particular external hard drive won't, for certain, be bootable with my computer, can you advise as to what readily available brand/model would be in the 3TB range for a similar price, roughly $150ish??
Thank you very much.

Mr. BGreg,
Thank you very much. "...under the covers...". I think you meant "under the hood", as in a car. I suppose "under the covers" would be man/woman interfacing, which I am familiar with!
Actually, I'm back in the US now for a few months. I looked at the OWC web site, but only cusorily so far. I'll contact them; they appear knowledgeable about Apple computers.
As to what you wrote about Western Digital's cases, I certainly wouldn't want a poor case. In China I had over time gotten 3 different external drive cases, 3 different Chinese brands, and separately bought Hitachi brand disk drives that 'simply' plugged into the cases. The drives are roughly 80GB 120GB and 320GB. The two larger ones are in cases that have Firewire plugs/jacks, which are bootable with my computer.
So my understanding, as you wrote, has been that my Powerbook will boot from an external hard drive, provided it connects via Firewire, and the disk drive itself is 'normally' formatted with however my computer's own disk drive is formatted, (HFS OS extended (journaled) or some such??). So I was left wondering why Western Digital would indicate that even though their such-and-so external hard drive case/drive was Firewire capable, that they would then say it would not be bootable with my Apple PPC computer......
Well, anyway, since you indicated Western Digital's case quality is suspect, then I'll try OWC and disregard Western Digital.
Naturally, OWC should be able to address this, but your thoughts are also welcome. You mentioned the OWC cases are good with Apples. Would the disk drives OWC supplied with the cases also be of relatively dependable quality?? From my so far only cursory look at their web site they appear to have various options, including case only options where I could insert my own or their own drives. These sorts of options seem preferable, also along with quality components.
My Powerbook has been in use since 2004. In China I put in a 1.25 memory 'chip' in the bottom and installed the 10.5.8 operating system, which I understand are the maximum workable with my Powerbook. When I inquired with Chinese friends if my 1.33 GHz processor could be taken out and a more powerful one put in, they said it wasn't feasible because in my particular computer my processor was, as I recall them saying, soldered/'permanently' connected with the 'motherboard', that it would just be easier to get a new computer.
I would be with them and they would nonchalantly open it completely up showing me all its tightly arranged 'innards' while at least giving it a good internal dust/dirt clean job for cheap lunch and a beer (& so much dirt/dust/lint there was!)...these are the same folks who build the things of course...fast moving hands with tiny screws flying everywhere, but everything 100% all back in place when finished.
My Chinese friends also said that nowadays Apples are not as well built as when my Powerbook was built, that nowadays an Apple's life expectancy was considerably lower, so I fear that when I get a new computer that, though it will be more up-to-date and powerful, etc., it most probably won't last near as long as my Powerbook has. They also said that in an older computer the fan was often the first component to go bad, and if a new one couldn't be easily found, as they said was my case, then you're just left with having to get an entirely new computer. Part of why I dislike electronic computer gadgets generally is that they are obsolete so quickly.
So, anyway, thanks very much for your information.

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it?

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it

http://pondini.org/TM/21.html

Time machine to external USB vs. indexing of that USB

Time machine to external USB vs. indexing of that USB
To all who plans to use external USB as Time Machine destination.
Problem was found with 10.9.5. Other versions possibly affected as well.
No idea if external storage connected through cable of other kind affected as well.
Mavericks on iMac 2013 late. Addressed external USB is used as second Time Machine target.
It worked pretty well few months long after had declared that external usb as TM target.
Suddenly the backup gets stuck. It can keep to stuck for-ever.
However users here do not accept to be confronted with this state for-ever.
Longest attempts were approx 10 minutes long, in our environment and circumstances long enough to be called "for-ever".
Stuck in the stage of size calculation.
Part. Repair by Disk Utility did not help.
Unmount, disconnect USB, reconnect did not help.
Verify the part by Disk Utility did not help.
New Spotlight exclusion rule for all partitions on that external was the only measure which helped.
Before encountering the problem one could observe that partition verification by Disk Utility
always failed. Partition repair prior to Verify was always necessary for Verify to succeed - it is not normal!!!

Start with D1 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

My newish MacBook Air was just lost to a coffee spill, and I need to migrate back to my MacBook Pro using a recent back-up (Time Machine to external disk). Can I do this?

My newish MacBook Air was just lost to a coffee spill, and I need to migrate back to my MacBook Pro using a recent back-up (Time Machine to external disk) for a few weeks. This same disk was used to back-up the Pro earlier, and to migrate from the Pro to the Air. Can I do this "back-migration" from the Air to the Pro? Is it maybe better just to migrate the specific folders (Outlook email, Office docs) I am sure I need?

Do not attempt to copy files/folders from a Time Machine backup. Only use the Time Machine application to restore from the backup.
Click on a Finder window and select Help from the Finder's Help menu. Search for "restore" and select "restore items backed up with time machine" from the hints list. You will find these two articles:
Recover items using Time Machine and Spotlight
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can use Time Machine with Spotlight to recover lost or deleted items.
Note: You can retrieve earlier versions of TextEdit documents from within TextEdit. For more information, see:
View and restore past versions of documents
Open a Finder window and type a search word or phrase in the search field in the upper-right corner.
Select a location to search in the location bar.
Refine the results by specifying search criteria. Narrow down Spotlight search results
Open the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, then choose Enter Time Machine.
Use the arrows and timeline to browse the Time Machine backups. Your search is performed in every window.
When you find the item you want to restore, select it, then click Restore.
The restored item is returned to its original location. For example, if the item was found in the Documents folder, it’s returned to the Documents folder.
Restore items backed up with Time Machine
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can easily bring back lost items or recover older versions of files.
You can use Time Machine within many apps. If the iCloud Documents & Data feature is turned on, you can recover older versions of iCloud documents as well as regular documents.
Open a window for the item you want to restore.For example, if you accidentally deleted a file from your Documents folder, open the Documents folder. To recover an email message, open your inbox in Mail. To recover an iCloud document, open the document’s app, choose File > Open, then click iCloud to view the iCloud documents for that app.If you’re missing an item from the desktop, you don’t need to open a window.
From the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, choose Enter Time Machine. A message may appear while your Mac connects to the backup disk.
Use the arrows and timeline to browse the snapshots and backups.White tick marks represent snapshots stored on your internal drive (portable computers only). Pink tick marks represent backups stored on your backup disk. If a tick mark appears dimmed or grayed, there’s no backup available or the backup disk is not connected.
For more information about an item, double-click it.The windows in Time Machine behave just like Finder windows, so you can open folders, click items in the sidebar, and use the search field in the upper-right corner of the window.
When you find the item you want to restore, select it, then click Restore. You can restore individual items, multiple items, folders, or your entire hard disk.The restored item is returned to its original location. For example, if the item was found in the Documents folder, it is returned to the Documents folder.

Time Machine w/ external HDD question

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