Trouble using "Time Machine"

I really should say......Im a Mac NewB and havent fully figured out how to best use Time Machine. Here's the real issue:
I have an HP EX495 MedaSmart Server that I would like to use for my Mac Backups. The first problem with this is that HP has discontinued the product, and the second problem is that the Connector software that came with the unit apparently no longer works as of the release of Lion (Which I have on my brand new MacBook Pro). I can see the server out on the network as a "Share" via finder and can successfully get into any folder I want to, but when I open up Time Machine, it doesnt see it.
I just figured that there was some way that I could make it work, but havent figured it out yet.
I do notice that the drives that Time Machine see's on my system that are available (USB External Drives) appear as an orange drive on my desktop, and that the folder shares from the MedaSmart server that Time Machine cannot see are blue in color. (As I said.....Mac NewB)
Any Ideas ????
Bill

The orange drives are directly connected to your Mac; the blue drives are network drives.
Officially, Time Machine backups are only supported to: 1) directly connected drives; 2) Time Capsules, or 3) network drives on another Mac. Some people have reported success at getting Time Machine to work with other network drives, but doing so is complicated and is not guaranteed to be reliable, so if you are a newbie I would strongly recommend against trying to use an unsupported network drive with Time Machine.
There are other backup solutions out there such as Carbon Copy Cloner, which can use your existing media server to at least some extent.

Similar Messages

I having trouble using time machine

I having trouble using time machine on my mac. When I click it, it wants me to set it up. When I click on that it says to select backup disk but there is nothing on the page, it's blank. What do I do next?

Have you connected the Hard Drive you want to storage your backup? If the answer of this question is yes, you need to format it in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" It can be a NTFS drive and you are probably using macfuse to have permission to read and write it time machine can't write on NTFS (As far as I know) Hope it helped

ICloud notes deleted; trouble restoring using Time Machine.

All of my notes got deleted via iCloud on both my Mac and iPhone. I tried using Time Machine in the Mail app but for each note it says "Message not cached" and when I try to restore them my Notes folder remains blank. Any suggestions?

Time Machine backs up the file 'as it is'. Its just like copying and pasting the file to an External HD and then dragging it back, would keep the file exactly the same.
The best way to find out, is to try it! This is what I did. Even though there was no need. Get a random photo from the Internet, add it to iPhoto - make sure TM has backed up. (Does it every hour), then delete it and go to TM and restore.
I tried it with a whole album, and restored it. It just came back. Fantastic.
So in answer to your question - Yes TM will bring it back as it was.
The only problem is TM only backs up every hour. You cant do it yourself. (I dont think). So if you were to change a file, save it and then undo or delete it - All within an hour. TM wouldn't have backed up the changes.
Hope this helps.

How can I replace just the corrupt page(s) in the domain file of iWeb using Time Machine?

I back up with Time Machine and have an extensive elaborate website I created in iWeb '09 over a couple months and publish to a local folder and then upload to my server, but in the last few days I notice certain pages (that I haven't even worked on or touched) somehow become corrupted or "cross-contaminated" with elements and images from other pages. Once I see they are corrupt I make sure not to publish them (if the current published versions are the correct, non-corrupt versions) or if they did get published I can use Time Machine to retrieve the .html file and page files folder for that specific page and replace it in my published folder/server so it shows correctly on the Web. However, that does not replace the corrupted page(s) you see and work with when you launch iWeb and try to edit or continue working on that page.
I am confused as to how I go to the package contents of the domain file and replace just that page with a previous version from time machine. I don't want to replace the entire domain file because I have new changes I made to other pages even in the past hours. How can I keep the good pages and just get earlier, non-corrupted versions of the corrupt page(s)? I know it's not as easy as with the published site folder where you can just replace the page's .html file and folder, but I don't want to have to re-create the corrupted page(s) from scratch or have to replace it with the last non-corrupted domain file and then have to redo all my recent changes to new pages I made before discovering the corrupt page(s). Thanks for your help as now I can't make changes to the page(s) within iWeb itself.

Thanks for the response, Wyodor. I don't know what that is, but I'll have a look. Is it an alternative to iWeb or a way to transfer pre-existing iWeb sites? When you say merge domain files, is that like so multiple copies of the same site show up then you can pick and choose the non-corrupted pages and group them then delete the corrupted ones? I am on Snow Leopard with no plans or need to upgrade anytime soon.
And yes, I will read your links but just wanted to ask those questions. Maybe they'll answer my questions, maybe not.
I was able to discern that within the domain file is a domain folder with all the site folders, each with their own page ".gz" files which expand into ".xml" files. I was trying to figure out if you could simply drag the corrupt pages out that way and replace them with backup copies that are still good. I am having trouble discerning which pages are which as they all have random names like site-page-30F175E3-AE33-4F10-A490-1A096D9B185B.xml and although I expanded and opened each in Text Wrangler, I still couldn't discern which were which for sure, and trial and error proved cumbersome. Also, I did notice some of the later corrupted domain files had one or two more pages than the site itself has, so not sure how they got added or duplicated or what.
Again, I'll look at your links, but do you know about swapping out individual page .xml files this way within the domain file?

How can I back up only selected files using Time Machine?

I'm a graphic designer, I use a number of Time Capsules to periodically back up my entire computer. But I also want to set up another Time Capsule (bus powered external hard drive) that will continually run as I work and only back up a single folder and all it's sub folders - in this case a folder called 'Client Files'.
QUESTION: How do I use Time Machine to back up only my 'Client Files' folder and all it's sub folders?

Frankly, this is probably not worth the time and trouble that it will take to set it up.
Time Machine backs up your entire Mac by default.
Time Machine Preferences / Options gives you the ability to Exclude items from backup, so to do what you want, you basically will have to Exclude everything else on the Mac from being backed up. That is going to be quite a task depending on where your Client Files folder resides and you have your Finder files set up.
It will not be that difficult to Exclude major folders..... things like Applicatons, Pictures, Music, Documents, etc.....but to get to the point where you want may not be that easy.
Take a look at things by opening Time Machine Preferences, then click on Options
Since you will be adding items to be Excluded, you would need to click the + button at the bottom of the window and then navigate to find the general folder that you want to Exclude.
Unfortunately, you cannot simply tell Time Machine to only back up the items that you want.....you have to tell Time Machine what NOT to back up.....which is going to be most of your Mac.
And.....whatever you set up in Time Machine /Options to be Excluded will apply to all backups to all Time Capsules. You cannot specify what is Excluded on one Time Capsule and not another. It's all or nothing. Not what you want to do, I am sure.
Good luck

Intermittently using Time Machine with an External Hard Drive

Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up. However, in the online article I read dated 2009, the author suggested that he didn't know how well Time Machine would work making up for the two weeks, or however long, no files had been backed up.
Specific questions: I have 10.6.3 SL (I have not yet been brave enough to download 10.6.4) and a 4 month old iMac. 1) Have any of you had experience with only periodically using Time Machine for back up and 2) with my current system would you think I might run into some trouble if I only intermittently backed-up using Time Machine?
Thanks for reading this and thanks if you feel my questions warrant answering.
Note: I do have another external hard drive where I occasionally manually back-up photos, gifs, music, etc.

JohnHusk wrote:
Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up.
If you go several days between backups, Time Machine may have to do a "deep traversal," comparing every folder on your system to the backups, to determine what's changed and needs to be backed-up. This depends on the volume of changes, so can happen after an OSX update, but in other circumstances might be after several days. This isn't a big problem, but it does take longer, and the more data you have, the longer it takes.
Worse, after an extended period, Time Machine may do a new, full backup of your entire system, rapidly filling-up your TM drive.
If that's the way you want to back up, Time Machine is not the backup app for you. One of it's main features is the way it can do quick hourly backups of what's changed, so you have an excellent chance of recovering a previous version (or versions) when you change or delete something in error, or a file comes up corrupted, or your Mac fails.
Why don't you want to just leave the drive connected and Time Machine running, to protect you best, as it was designed to do?
For alternatives designed to do less frequent backups, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup.

Using Time Machine for an external startup drive

I've never used Time Machine; I just kept on using my older backup startup drive software when starting with Leopard three years ago.
My husband is getting a new iMac with an external drive for backup because I convinced him that Time Machine is so easy to use. Yes, I have a lot of faith that Apple knows what it is doing.
However, I don't know how Time Machine works for making an external drive bootable. If it's not super easy for that purpose, I'm thinking that it might be easier to partition his external in setting things up for him, and putting SuperDuper! on one of the partitions.
What do you think? Would Time Machine all by itself be super easy if he needed to startup from the external drive? Do you have to do anything other than to hold down the option key during startup to boot from an external drive backed up by Time Machine?
He's getting an iMac with a 1T drive and an external Iomega 2TB eGo Desktop Hard Drive.
I'm assuming that his new iMac will be coming with Snow Leopard, but it hasn't arrived yet and I don't know for sure about that. But I think if it doesn't come with Snow Leopard, I'd upgrade it for him before installing anything else.
Thanks for any help!
Mary

Thanks so much to you for taking the trouble to help me learn something about Time Machine. I think I've learned enough now to get it set up for my husband without doing anything particularly stupid.
Dave, there's no chance my husband would swing for a second external drive. I had to talk him into having one at all. He's not into managing a computer and doesn't want to think about stuff like backups. Once in awhile I'm in synch with that kind of orientation too, but then I recall the times I've been overjoyed to have good backups for myself... and my backup software is extremely reliable and easy to use.
Pondidni and Thomas, thanks so much for all the links. I've spent enough time reading them that I think I've made up my mind to go with a SuperDuper! partition for the expected way to boot from the external drive. It's also a great reassurance that it would be possible to use a Time Machine backup partition for restoration via an install CD if SuperDuper! should fail, though. SuperDuper! did fail for me once, but fortunately I had another partition with a SuperDuper! backup.
If the single backup drive fails, of course, that would be a nasty inconvenience. On the other hand, at this point I doubt that the actual losses in that unlikely event would impact my husband so horribly as it might for many who have work or school-related necessities stored on their computer. This is mainly a fun computer that he has at home, and if there ever are particularly important documents that he can't afford to lose, extra backups of those files could go onto a CD, DVD, or keychain drive. The chances of needing that are pretty slim.
I know that eventually the backup drive will fail if it's used over a long enough period of time, but he seems ready to follow my advice to only even connect and turn on the external drive once a week and leave it connected only during the time it's actually actively making backups. (Unless some very important work is going on, in which case he knows to keep it connected during that period of time.) An external drive will likely last a good while longer than average under that kind of very limited use.
Thomas, I do also believe in having extra backup external drives and hope to get one for my own computer in the near future. I noticed in shopping for my husband how much less expensively you can get a large external drive now than just a few years back.
Thanks again so much to all for helping me to think through how I can help him get started with his own backups.
Best wishes,
Mary

How do I back up Wireless Hard Drive using Time Machine

I have a MacBook Pro and I'm running OSX Lion.
I'm having trouble setting up time machine to back up two USB external hard drives (named Portable iTunes and Portable iPhoto) connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. I have a time capsule with a 3TB USB WD MyBook external hard drive that I'm using as the Time Machine Hard Drive.
Portable iTunes, Portable, iPhoto and MyBook are wirelessly mounted to my desktop.
Will someone please explain how I can set up MyBook to wirelessly back up the two portable drives using Time Machine?
Thanks in advance.
Wyatt.

Will someone please explain how I can set up MyBook to wirelessly back up the two portable drives using Time Machine?
Sorry, but Time Machine can only backup a hard drive that is connected directly to your Mac using USB or Firewire.

Trouble with Time Machine (runs constantly). Erase and install?

Trouble with Time Machine (runs constantly). Tried re-installation (equivalent of archive install) of Snow Leopard. Time Machine still unable to complete a back-up. Erase and install recommended at Genius Bar. Have backed up data to external HD using Super Duper. Should be a bootable backup. Last successful backup through Time Machine was 6/1/11. Not sure if I can access this back-up if I erase and re-install.
Computer shipped with Tiger (7/2007). Have original disks. Now running Snow Leopard. So: erase HD, install Tiger, then update to Snow Leopard? Start-up from Tiger disks does not appear to work (starting up holding "C" key). Suggestions? Want very much to transfer data to new iMac, but do not want to carry bugs forward. Very nervous about erasing HD. And have the questions above about reinstalling system software.
Advice desired! Thanks.

Well if you can hold option and boot off the Superdupes clone and it works fine then you should be set to do what you need to do to the original boot drive.
Disconnect all drives and c boot off the Snow Leopard install disk, use Disk Utility to Erase > format HFS+ journaled your internal boot drive.
Quit and reinstall OS X Snow Leopard, setup (do not use Setup/Migration Assitant!) and update to 10.6.8
When you setup the new install, use the same hard drive name and user name as you did before.
Now the free iLife that came on the Tiger disks you won't get naturally, but you can pick them off the disk with the shareware program called Pacifist.
install your programs from fresh sources, this way you don't get the "crap" from the older setup.
Once your machine is up and going. Hook up the clone and transfer your user folders over manually. With iTunes just replace the whole folder. Because you kept the same user and boot drive name as before, the playlists should be fine.
Once your all peachy, take the opportunity to clone this new setup to a external drive, label and disconnect.
Make another clone for day to day, or week to week clone updates and your just a hold option boot away for recovery.
You know Superdupes and Carbon Copy Cloner both have auto-scedualing/updating ability, so you can leave them plugged in and it will perform a update so your clone stays fresh and recent.
But you should keep a clone timed back about a couple of weeks back just in case you install something bad and don't learn about it right away.

Recovery using time machine impossible. No permission !

I'd like to recover one application from the hard disk where I save regularly my files / applications using time machine.
Result is : you do not have the permission. Recovery is impossible.
What to do ?
Help - Thanks
Marc

Do you have more than one user account?
If so, try doing the restore from a different one.
If not, there are some items even an Admin user doesn't have permission to. They're mostly system files, but it's possible some applications are protected, too.
What apps or files are you having trouble with?

Cannot back up using Time Machine - MacBook OS X 10.5.8

Hello there
I am having trouble backing up my files using Time Machine.
I was using an old external hard disk. When I started using Time Machine, I didn't know about partitioning it. It worked for about 2 years until around the February of this year. I kept getting the error message "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." The advice on the Apple web page suggested only restarting the computer and trying again. This didn't work. I then read about partitioning the external hard disk. I tried that and I still had the same error message. I came to the conclusion that my external hard disk was just getting old and wasn't up to the job.
So today I bought a new external hard disk. I partitioned it and then tried again with Time Machine. And I had the exact same problem. With about 10GB to go on the back up, the same error message appeared.
What can I do to get Time Machine working again? Could it be a corrupt file? Any advice would be very welcome. I am very nervous that I currenlty have no back up.
Thanks.

Pondini, one of the high level users of these forums has compiled a great reference page for Time Machine. It includes this page which seems like it addresses your question.
Best of luck.

Using time machine to recover iTunes database for metadata

In short, when I go back beyond a week in time machine I cannot find any .itl or even any of the .itdb or .xml files on my mac that I can restore with time machine. The only version that is there is for the current library which is missing 99.9% of the content.
The context:
1. I had itunes folder on my hard drive and an external with all of the content. Over the years the external must have been disconnected or what not as a sizeable media folder had also developed on the hard drive.
2. In order to free up space on the hard drive I consolidated the media and moved the library to a second external that had much more free space.
3. I ended up deleting the iTunes library on the hard disc on or around 6 april 2015. I believe I deleted the whole folder.
no dramas - everything worked for weeks
4. Today I noticed that the iTunes library was pretty much empty but for purchased music. All the podcasts, playlists and basically anything not purchased was gone.
5. I look into the iTunes folder on the hard disc and I noticed that there is a music folder with two songs that my kid likes to play. It leo has all of the usual library xml files and the .itdb / .itl files (which to be honest I have never noticed before, I had only remembered ever seeing the .XML files).
6. The "new" .itl file was created on Sunday 26 april at 5.30 pm. The whole iTunes folder it sat in on my hard drive also did not exist before this time.
7. If I use time machine and scroll back further in time than sunday there is no iTunes folder on my hard drive.
8. I thought I would just need to find the .itl file that predated this new library that was created on Sunday. Trouble is I can't find one. On any disc, hard disc, the first external or the second external. The only iTunes folder I can find with any of the database files needed is the one created on Sunday that is empty.
9. I have all of the media organised on the second hard disc however I don't want to reimport and lose all the metadata that I have built up since 2001 at least.
THE QUESTIONS
A - where should I be looking for the old iTunes database files using time machine if I used the advanced features of iTunes to move the database to the new disc
B - Can I perform some sort of system wide restore that would take me back in time to a point before last Sunday to get my old iTunes database back?
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Len

In short, when I go back beyond a week in time machine I cannot find any .itl or even any of the .itdb or .xml files on my mac that I can restore with time machine. The only version that is there is for the current library which is missing 99.9% of the content.
The context:
1. I had itunes folder on my hard drive and an external with all of the content. Over the years the external must have been disconnected or what not as a sizeable media folder had also developed on the hard drive.
2. In order to free up space on the hard drive I consolidated the media and moved the library to a second external that had much more free space.
3. I ended up deleting the iTunes library on the hard disc on or around 6 april 2015. I believe I deleted the whole folder.
no dramas - everything worked for weeks
4. Today I noticed that the iTunes library was pretty much empty but for purchased music. All the podcasts, playlists and basically anything not purchased was gone.
5. I look into the iTunes folder on the hard disc and I noticed that there is a music folder with two songs that my kid likes to play. It leo has all of the usual library xml files and the .itdb / .itl files (which to be honest I have never noticed before, I had only remembered ever seeing the .XML files).
6. The "new" .itl file was created on Sunday 26 april at 5.30 pm. The whole iTunes folder it sat in on my hard drive also did not exist before this time.
7. If I use time machine and scroll back further in time than sunday there is no iTunes folder on my hard drive.
8. I thought I would just need to find the .itl file that predated this new library that was created on Sunday. Trouble is I can't find one. On any disc, hard disc, the first external or the second external. The only iTunes folder I can find with any of the database files needed is the one created on Sunday that is empty.
9. I have all of the media organised on the second hard disc however I don't want to reimport and lose all the metadata that I have built up since 2001 at least.
THE QUESTIONS
A - where should I be looking for the old iTunes database files using time machine if I used the advanced features of iTunes to move the database to the new disc
B - Can I perform some sort of system wide restore that would take me back in time to a point before last Sunday to get my old iTunes database back?
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Len

Restore to previous version of OS X using Time Machine

I made a backup of my iMac and then upgraded to Mavericks from Lion. I don't like Mavericks and wish to restore back to Lion. Is this possible? It it just a simple case of using Time Machine? Thanks

Hello there Arucarn,
It sounds like you are wanting to revert to Mac OS X Lion from Mavericks after you performed an upgrade. The following article should help you do that, named:
OS X Mavericks: Revert to a previous OS X version
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can easily revert to a previous version of OS X if you experience trouble after installing an update.
Important: Reverting erases any changes you made to the files on your Mac since you installed the new version of OS X. To save new or revised files, copy them onto a different disk or back them up before you follow these instructions.
Print these instructions by opening the Help Viewer’s Action pop-up menu (looks like a gear) and choosing Print.
Choose Apple menu > Restart. Once your Mac restarts (and the gray screen appears), hold down the Command (⌘) and R keys.
Select “Restore from a Time Machine Backup,” then click Continue.
Select your Time Machine backup disk.
Select the Time Machine backup you want to restore. To restore your computer to the state it was in before you installed the new version of OS X, choose the most recent backup.
Follow the onscreen instructions.
If you backed up files as described in the Important message above, you can restore them now. If you backed them up using Time Machine, open the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, choose Enter Time Machine, then retrieve your files.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Regards,
Sterling

Using Time Machine to "go back" before Mac Mail problem

My wife's Mac mail account stopped receiving email 3 days ago. Attempts to fix it have been futile. (It can send but not receive. The activity monitor suggests that it is getting hung up on a particular email as it stalls at 13 out of 233.) Considering using Time Machine to go back to just before the problem. Questions: Is it possible to limit TM to (1) my wife's acct only or (2) Mail only?
My wife will definitely provide me a gruesome death if I lose her emails!
Cheers,
Nigel

Thanks, applefandan. I just haven't used Time Machine quite enough to a gained confidence, but after a little bit of experimenting and a bit of Youtube coaching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fes93NW_KE0) I went back to pre-problem, and had no trouble getting back the mail my wife had lost over the past several days.
Now on to the next problem! . . .

Using Time Machine with My Book World on a second computer

I've just installed a 2TB My Book World on my wireless network and am able to use Time Machine to backup my Macbook Pro, using the log-on WD_Backup but I don't know how to backup my wife's Powerbook, as this seems to be the only log-on name accepted by the My Book World when using Time Machine.
Should I enter the same log-on details in Time Machine on her computer and will this create separate backups for each computer (as I'm worried that the same user name might mean it will overwrite my backup)
Any help or advice most appreciated, as if this is the case, I assume that Time Machine backups will just have to be set at different times for each computer on our network
Many thanks in advance to anyone who takes the trouble to respond
Kind Regards
Bernard

You need to use the same log-in/password details with all computers and Time Machine will sort it out (or at least it has with my MyBook World). Apparently it helps to give the MBW a static IP address, which you do by logging into the browser interface and changing the option from DCHP to Static. Otherwise I've read that Time Machine can struggle if the IP address of the MBW changes.
There are instructions here on how to set it up:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11110771
And then there are some more details here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11110771
especially the bits about the different potential user names/passwords to try if you keep getting an error message when setting up Time Machine.
I had trouble setting it up, but once I'd got it working (to date) Time Machine has worked like a dream, so I wouldn't believe all the criticisms you might find, as I think that so long as your MBW has the latest firmware, Western Digital seem to have got their act together to make it Mac friendly.
You can also check if you need a firmware update via the browser interface - you just need to put the address of the MBW into your browser and I'm sure there must be other ways of finding it, but personally I log into my router via my browser (eg. http://192.168.0.1 for Netgear routers) and click on "attached devices" to find out the allocated IP (192.168.0.??). Once you put this into your browser you will be offered the set-up process for the MBW.
Hope this helps. From my point of view I can only advise you to persevere, as once you get it sorted with Time Machine, it's definitely worth it
Kind Regards
Bernard

Trouble using "Time Machine"

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for