TM by-passes external drive and creates its own (?!)

Hi everyone,
This is strange: TM can correctly identify my external HD as a candidate, I choose it, and it correctly turns into the blue "Time machine disk" icon. All is good so far. But when I start the backup, TM spends some time "Making backup disk available" and it ends up creating a new volume that says "Time Machine Backups". The problem is that, instead of merging with old backups (yeah, it was working before, I don't know what happened) it tries to copy a new backup to the new drive.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

MeMooMeM wrote:
This is new: I finally solved the problem by deleting MacBookPro.sparsebundle.dmg (or something like that, don't remember the name) from the HD.
Yes, those are the backups it made over the network.
But I would really like to be able to use mac#2 as a server. I don't have a time capsule, so I was trying to achieve wireless backup via the powerbook. I read that if the second machine is a mac and the drive is formatted properly, I am supposed to be able to do that (?).
Yes, you can do that. But you can't continue to use the same set of backups when you switch from directly-connected to network. Time Machine will start a new set, in a sparse bundle.
Are you also going to back-up Mac #2 to this drive? If so, it must be big enough to hold the backups for both Macs; usually 2-3 times the total of the data it's backing-up. And you should partition the drive, so TM on Mac #2 has it's own, exclusive space (see #1, 4 and 5 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum).
Don't try to delete the existing backups in the Backups.backupdb folder; either erase them with Disk Utility, or if you reformat and partition the drive, that will erase them automatically.

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    Good afternoon Lyssa,
    Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...these blogs are always comforting help!
    So, to answer your questions: For the age of the hard drive.Well, I added memory a couple of years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amount of gigs with photos of my kids and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced the original drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that in March 2010. If there is some way to verify that (whether or not I replaced the entire drive), I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigs free, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
    Question 1- What formats...
    The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At the time that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
    The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried to repair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
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    I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't change anything.  
    Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
    Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it is indeed present, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.  
    So, in summary...
    I can plug in the La Cie and it is functional on the MacBook, visible on Disk Utility but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and not functional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... Also, the iphone photos did, in the end, get downloaded, so it is not something more general.
    Causes...
    I forgot to mention that there is a "lost+found" file on the WD which apparently points to a UNIX /OS issue?   
    Some kind of "insurance"?....
    I'm curious about how people avoid this kind of issue. You just regularly replace back-up drives and hard drives before problems come up? Time Machine is great and saves many of us from disasters, however, knowing that your Time Machine back-ups are vulnerable makes the whole system insecure. No way to have alarms ring before the drive goes out?   
    As for ways ahead...
    It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD to the MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, I haven’t been able to see its contents except on random occasions. If you have any ideas on how to copy the Time Machineback-ups from the WD, again, I'm all ears!
    Good afternoon Lyssa,
    Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...
    So, to answer your questions:
    For the age of the hard drive. Well, I added memory a coupleof years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amountof gigs with photos of my kids ….and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced theoriginal drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that inMarch 2010. If there is some way to verify that, I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigfree, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
    Question 1- What formats...
    The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At thetime that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
    The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried torepair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible,reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
    Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me thiserror: "Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appearsto be 'read only'. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using DiskUtility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk forbackups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
    Question 2. Other cables...
    I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't changeanything.
    Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
    Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it isindeed accessible, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
    FYI...
    So, in summary... I can plug in the La Cie and it is “functional” on theMacBook but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and notfunctional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... ALSO,the iphone photos did, in the end get downloaded.
    As for ways ahead…
    It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD tothe MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, Ihaven’t been able to “see” its contents except on random occasions…
    Any further thoughts are welcome!

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    What I did next was poorly executed. I sorted iTunes by the Date Added and selected the first few thousand (roughly, A-J; seeing them according to the Date Added reveal that they weren't added in exactly a linear fashion). I hit the delete button and selected "Remove", but I then told iTunes to "Move to Trash." What I should have done, I imagine, is told iTunes to "Keep Files". So, my A-J songs are now deleted off the External Drive and gone (though I have backup DVDs generated by the iTunes "Back up to Disc" feature).
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