Using non-mac external hard drive with time machine

Is it possible to use a non-mac external hard drive (ie, anything other than Time Capsule) connected to Airport Extreme with Time Machine?
If so, how do I make the external hard drive visible in the back up disk list?

see this [link|http://www.macworld.com/article/132613/2008/03/airporttime.html].

Similar Messages

Can I use a non apple wireless hard drive with time machine?

Can I use a non apple wireless hard drive with time Machine?

Some NAS (network storage) systems do claim to support Time Machine, with varying levels of success. For example, the Synology units have this feature. They're not officially supported by Apple, though.
Matt

Hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

When you boot the new machine for the first time, you'll be prompted to import your data from a Time Machine backup.

I have just upgraded from a Macbook to a Macbook Air. I have been using a iomega external hard drive for Time Machine, which use a Firewire. However, Macbook Air's do not have a Firewire port and i cannot find an adaptor anywhere. Can anyone help?? Thanks

I have just upgraded from a Macbook to a Macbook Air. I have been using a iomega external hard drive for Time Machine, which use a Firewire. However, Macbook Air's do not have a Firewire port and i cannot find an adaptor anywhere. Can anyone help?? Thanks

There has never been a reliable firewire ---> USB adapter suitable for external high speed storage. This was a major issue when the MacBooks lost the firewire port a number of years ago (Apple subsequently brought it back).
The only high speed port on the Air is the ThunderBolt port. There are external ThunderBolt drive options out there, but they're somewhat more expensive than traditional USB/FireWire options.

Why does my Mac ask for my password when I try to make a change on my external hard drive with Time Machine?

I recently formatted the hard drive to do a fresh install of Mavericks on my Macbook Pro Retina. I then formatted my Western Digital 2 TB External Hard Drive for Time Machine. I then began storing others files and folders on the external hard drive along side the TIme Machine Backup folder. Everytime I added a folder or changed a foler name it asked for my password.
This has never happened to me before using any other OSX.
I apologize if this has been resolved before, I'm new to the communities and have yet to find a solution.

It is not a good idea to be storing other Stuff on your Time Machine drive. You may need an additional separate hard drive for those things.
Once you tell Time Machine to use a Drive, Time Machine owns the Drive. You (as a User) do not have permission to put things there. If you insist, it will do it, but wants your Admin password to do it.

Is there a way to backup my external hard drive with Time Machine?

Most of the memory used on my MBP is mainly used for applications and miscellaneous things for Logic and Final Cut. I have two external HD's. To save space on the internal HD, all of my music, pictures, and videos are one my external hard drive, while Time Machine set as the other. Is there a way I can back up my external HD using Time Machine? What would even be better is if I could only select specific files (My Music, Videos, Pictures) and not everything on my one external HD to be backed up in Time Machine.

TM can back up external HDs. If you have both of your external drives attached, go to the options in TM preferences. Be sure the data drive is not listed (this lists drives/folders to exclude from a backup). Then initiate a TM backup or wait for the hourly backup. That should back up the data drive.
You can only tell TM what to exclude from a backup, not what to include.

Restoring an external hard drive with time machine

I'm having a problem restoring an external hard drive using time machine. I'm on a macbook Air Running 10.7.5.
The external hard drive where I store all my photos crashed a few days ago. Not a total disaster, because it's backed up, but I can't figure out how to restore the drive onto a new hard drive. When I go into time machine without the corrupted drive attached, it does not show up in the time machine browser as an option for restore. (The files are definitely there, though, because I can see them when I look at the time machine files in Finder. I'm afraid if I just transfer the files by dragging, though, I'll mess something up.) I tried using the migration assistant, but I'm having the same problem there.
Anyone know how to do this? I'm a little frantic to get my photos back.
Thanks!

I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them.

Can I use any external hard drive with Time Machine?

I have a 1TB external hard drive and also a 16GB flash drive. Is it possible to use either of these with Time Machine?

IMO Time Machine should be on its own Dedicated External Drive... one that is twice the size of the drive that it is backing up... the 16 GB Flash Drive is not appropiate for the task.
See Here
TM 101
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
You may also find this Link of Interest...
Time Machine vs. Clones and Archives

HT3275 I encrypted my WD elements SE external hard drive with Time Machine and now everytime i enter my password it shuts downs my mac book pro. I contacted WD and they say its an issue with Time Machine?

Any advice?

Hi, I tried your advice and it tells me the external drive is ok, and the ERASE section is grey, probably because I encrypted the disk!?!
Still the same issue: every time I enter my password to access the external hard drive, it restarts the macbook and I get a screen that says: the computer restarted because of a problem... so frustrating!
Any other ideas?

Backing up an external hard drive with time Machine

I backed up my internal disk with Time Machine, but I can not back up an external drive that I use for my media. I see the drive in the options part of Time Machine system preferences, but the minus sign to take it off of the "do not back up these drives" is blanked out. Any suggestions?

I successfully backed up the contents of an external hard drive, but the next time Time Machine did a backup, I didn't happen to have that drive connected, so Time Machine said it couldn't find it and deleted the existing backup. Is there any way to get it to keep the backup? The drive I want to back up is only used occasionally (naturally, anything I use more frequently is on my Mac) and I don't want to have to plug in both hard drives every time I want to run a backup, only to risk losing all of that history if I ever accidentally plug in only the backup drive. But I do want to keep Time Machine backups of that drive because it contains my iPhoto Library.

Is it not recommended to use a partitioned external hard drive for time machine?

1. i hv a 1 tb seagate back up plus hard disc ..,,i want to make partitions for using it for time machine, mac, and window repectively . is it not recommended to use a partitioned drive for time machine? some where i have red that time machine wont be able to restore data from external partioned hard drive in case internal hard drive crashes.
2. if i use the seagate back up plus 1tb for mac only and use time machine to take backup (roughly 250 GB) , then the rest space i cant use to transfer movies, pictures from a PC
3. how should i best use the seagate back up plus hard drive (not seagate back up plus for mac) in a way that i use it for back up , and to work with both mac and PC?

I use a partitioned external drive for Time Machine as well as other things.
How you partition it is a function of yoru needs.
Barry

Accessing back-ups on external hard-drive with Time Machine.

Hi guys,
I hope someone can help me with this problem. I am a novice at this so please be patient and forgive my ignorance.
I backed up the internal hard-drive of my '06 iMac onto an external Iomega 500GB hard-drive using Time Machine.
A couple of weeks later the internal hard-drive of my iMac fried and I got the " grey screen of death ".
Now I have the external hard-drive connected to my '06 MacBook.
There is 300GB of data on the external hard-drive. There is only 50GB of space available on my MacBook.
I would like to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive but when I click on the iPhoto icon in Time Machine, I get "error code 10657 ".
I am NOT trying to do a full restore of the back-up onto the MacBook because :
1. There is not enough space available on the MacBook and
2. I will do a full restore when I have bought and installed a new bigger hard-drive into the iMac.
So, I guess my question is this : Is it possible for me to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive using my MacBook without doing a complete transfer and if so, how ?
Thanking you in advance,
Sean.

If this is a network device, you can't back it up with Time Machine. If it's directly attached, and in Mac OS format, delete it from the exclusion list in the Time Machine preference pane.

Backup External Hard Drive with Time Machine

I have several external hard drives and am wondering if I can use Time Machine to backup External Hard Drive #1 on Hard Drive #2? Or is it only possible to backup your Main Machine on an External Hard Drive?
Thanks

These issues with non-apple format drives that you mention, would they concern the dedicated Time Machine external hard drive, the external hard drive one is looking to backup, or both?
What are the issues raised? My current 500GB external hard drive is FAT-32 and I want to use an additional 500GB external hard drive [fresh out the box so I can determine whatever format it is fairly easily] as the dedicated Time Machine backup. Would you suggest reformatting my 500GB FAT-32 drive before initiating the new drive as the dedicated Time Machine backup? It's possible to do so, but would take quite some time. Also, this may move into a different subject, but I enjoy being able to share files with a PC with Windows XP using my external hard drive; would any of the formats you mentioned as being Time Machine-safe allow me to continue to do so?

Can I use the same external hard drive for time machine and storing other files

I have a 640GB external hard drive that I have been using for over a year for time machine backups. My mac hard drive is now starting to fill up and I am looking to move audio, video and picture files to my external hard drive. How do I do this without messing up my time machine backups? Can I do both on the same external hard drive? Do I just make new folders on the external hard drive to move the files I want? Thanks for the help.

If you move the files you will need to get another disk to back the files up to. You don't want to have only one copy of certain files (personal, professional etc.).

Can you use the same external hard drive for Time Machine backups and as an additional storage drive?

I have an external HD that I've been using exclusively for Time Machine backups. I need to clear space on my hard drive, so I was thinking to move music & photos to an external drive. Wondering if I can use the same one I have (which I'll aslo keep using for Time Machine) or if I need to get another drive.

Hi Jossydtaylor,
Time Machine can use either an entire external disk or a partition of that disk:
OS X Mountain Lion: Disks you can use with Time Machine
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11171
You can use Time Machine with a Time Capsule, and with USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt disks. The backup disk can be directly connected to your computer or be on a network. If the backup disk has been divided into partitions, you can use one of the partitions.
If the disk is partitioned using the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition type, some partitions may not be available for use with Time Machine. The GUID Partition Table (GPT) partition type is recommended.
For more info on partitioning, see this article:
Disk Utility 12.x: Partition a disk
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5845
Cheers!
- Ari

Using non-mac external hard drive with time machine

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for