Weird external drive behavior with Time Machine....

I have a 500 GB WD My Essentials USB hard drive. I've been using on Lion for 6+ months. I have the drive in 2 partitions, 400 GB for Time Machine and 100 GB for storage. Everything has been working fine for 6+ months. As of yeterday when I plug in my WD drive, the storage partition will mount on the desktop but the 400 GB Time Machine partition will not. The TM partion does show in the disk utility but cannot be repaired. I'm wondering why the problem is only with the Time Machine partition.
Any ideas?

Oh, the drive will not "eject" properly either. When I try to eject it the storage partion turns light in color but it still shows on the desktop and is still listed in the Finder side menu (but you can't access or see the actual drive).

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External Drive Stolen with Time Machine Back Ups

Hello,
Sorry if this has been posted before. I scanned through a few pages of posts and didn't see anything.
My home was burglarized and they took my G5, Cinema Display and my 500GB external drive with my Time Machine backup data. My question is: How secure is the data on the external drive? Can the theif just plug in the drive and see all of the files or does TM password protected? My G5 was password protected to log in to it. Does that log in transfer to the TM files?
Thanks!
DH

As Donald says, the data can be accessed.
Your backups are as secure (or insecure) as your Mac -- if someone steals either, they can get at your data fairly easily, if they know what they're doing, unless it's encrypted.
It is harder to get at Time Machine backups on an external drive, because Windoze can't read it; you'd have to use a Mac (running Leopard or Snow Leopard) to access it.
But most theft is not for your data; it's to resell the hardware.

Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

See E-10 in the first link.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

HT201250 Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller ext

Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?

50maz wrote:
Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in
Yes, it will do a full backup.
and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?
Only if you want to be able to go back in time to those previous Time Machine backups. When you plug in the new larger external drive, you will only be able to go back as far as the first day you plugged it in and ran the first Time Machine backup on it.

Is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

You do not have to use Time Machine.. but the TC is hardly suitable for a NAS.. it has no means to back itself up and is relatively slow. Still that is up to you..
CCC or Superduper are good backup softwares .. and there are a number of others.

Use external drive for both Time Machine and storage for Back to My Mac

Hi all,
I have been "a Mac" now for over a year and just keep finding cool new things that make me happy I switched. The latest thing is Back to My Mac offered with my Mobile Me account. With a rather convoluted mix of PC/Mac/iOS devices to manage - best $99 I ever spent btw...
I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that I have been using with Time Machine to back up all four of my Mac computers at home. Needless to say, the 1TB is really struggling to handle the amount of data being backed up and certainly leaves no room for anything else.
What I wanted to do was to attach a larger external hard drive via a powered hub to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use it for Time Machine backups while using the internal 1TB drive with Back to My Mac so that I can have remote access to all my data from anywhere without having to leave my computer running at home all the time in order for my laptop to "see" it when I'm away. And, yes, the amount of that data far exceeds what any level of Mobile Me subscription can offer! I should also mention that the hard drive is the only USB device connected through the hub to the Time Capsule at the moment. There are no other devices that might be "getting in the way".
I'm thinking maybe all this is asking too much without the addition of a dedicated file server (Mac Mini, perhaps - not a purchase my budget wants to make).
I understand that the Time Capsule doesn't support partitions, so I bought a Western Digital 2TB Elements drive, connected it to my Macbook Pro and used Disk Utility to reformat the drive from the incompatible NTFS it shipped in to a single, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. I then made two folders on the drive, one for Time Machine backups and one for Back to My Mac remote storage/access. Great.
However, when I connected the 2TB drive to my Time Capsule I could not see it at all. Time Capsule was reporting problems in the way of a disk error. From within my Airport Utility, I could see the trouble was the external drive. The utility suggested connecting the drive to a Mac and using it's Disk Utility to troubleshoot.
I followed through, checking the disk, etc. and ended up reformatted the drive on my Macbook Pro yet again with the same specifications as before but without the folders and reconnected it to the Time Capsule. Same deal. But now, I can't even remotely connect to the Time Capsule at all. I can see the Time Capsule in the shared area of my Macbook's Finder but can not connect. The connection tries and fails even before it gets to asking me for username and password credentials.
Long story short, first of all, I suppose I would like to know if I'm asking for the impossible?
Second, if what I want to do *is* possible, what steps do I need to take to make it so?
Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions you might have.

Well, I have now reformatted/partitioned my poor WD Elements 2TB drive about a dozen times as well as restarted my 1TB Time Capsule so many times it's no wonder it's as confused as I am! <G>
Last night, at your suggestion, William, and in respect for your continued support, I tried creating two 1TB Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions on the WD external USB drive, both with GUID partition tables. Both volumes mounted to my laptop's desktop flawlessly and without issue.
Once the external drive was connected to the Time Capsule, however, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not the drive was recognized at all, reporting a problem with the disk, or, even at one point, mounting one of the two volumes but not both. <sigh>
I read somewhere on the Internet that you need to restart the Time Capsule for volumes on an external USB drive to be recognized.
So I tried that. I connected the freshly partitioned/formatted disk to the Time Capsule and restarted it. This succeed in removing the issue of reporting a nameless drive with a capacity of 0MB. It then reported the drive with its correct name but would not recognize whatever volumes in whatever partitions that particular crack at it contained with the exception of the once, as I mentioned above, when only one of two volumes mounted correctly and was listed with the right name and capacity on the Time Capusule's Setup's Disk tab.
At this point I have given up on my goal to use the external drive with Time Machine to back up my Macs or to hope I will ever be able to see its contents remotely via Back to My Mac. All I would like to do now is simply find a reason why I can't get it successfully connected and playing nice with my Time Capsule in the first place!
Any further suggestions or advice as to what steps I might take next would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.

Using a single external drive for both Time Machine AND for manual backups?

I'm new to Leopard and haven't launched Time Machine yet. I would like to use a single (500 GB) external hard drive to use with Time Machine, plus I would like to use whatever portion of this external drive Time Machine isn't using to keep some other files upon it as well--things that I can drag-and-drop manually and then trash from my computer's HD (avi files, etc., so that they don't take up space on the computer). Is there anything special I need to do with the external hard drive before I let Time Machine have its way with it, so that I can also do drag-and-drop manual file backups with it?

I’m not terribly knowledgeable, but I’ll tell you what seems to be working for me.
I also have a 500GB external drive which I had planned to use for TM for my MBP. I partitioned it (using Disk Utility) into two partitions. One I created nearly the same size as my MBP drive, the other I used for TM.
I used the smaller partition for a backup using SuperDuper prior to upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. Once I tested that I was able to boot from it and that all my programs seemed to work, I upgraded to Leopard and told it to use the other partition for TM.
It then created a TM icon for the other partition and, to the machine, it looks like a separate drive. I’ve seen no performance hit at all.
Just one man’s experience, though I haven’t yet tried to retrieve anything.
Good luck.

I have suddenly become unable to access photo library iPhoto (vers 9.5) on my external drive. And time Machine will no longer back up to the same external (LaCie) drive. Appreciate all suggestions. The drive does show up on my desktop....

I have suddenly become unable to access photo library (iPhoto vers 9.5) on my external hard drive. Also time machine isnt backing up to same external hard drive (LaCie). The drive does show up on the desk top, but when i open iPhoto the library isnt listed, so I cant option click.

First, one should not try to run an iPhoto library from the same volume/drive that is being used by Time Machine for backups. TM will continue to fill up the drive thus squeezing out iPhoto from being able to be opened and used. Also that doesn't allow you to let TM backup your library as it does with other files on your boot drive.
If you partition the EHD into two separate partitions you can run the library from it but that won't let TM backup the library which is important.
Are you able to see the library on the EHD via the Finder? If so copy it back to your boot drive and open it there. You may have to do some fixing on it.
Solution is to either run the library from the boot drive or get a second EHD to run the library from and let TM back it up along with your boot drive.
OT

External drive use for Time Machine change to "Read Only"

I have an external hard drive set up for backing up with Time Machine on my Mac. It has been working well. Now when time machine tries to back up it tells me the external disk is read only. The hard drive does mount to the computer and will let me open the Time Machine folder. When I am in disk utility it also sees the external hard drive but will not let me click on repair disk permissions. Under the drive info's sharing & permissions window it said " You can only read." , After unlocking everything is grayed out, but the permission is set to read & write. Any thoughts on how to get this drive back to read and write? Its a 2TB drive with 1.79TB on disk. The drive has not been ever used on a windows machine or use on any other computer and is use only for Time Machine backups. One day it was read/write next day read only. Thanks!

The backup drive has malfunctioned and corrupted itself. If that has ever happened before, or if it ever happens again, replace the drive. You may want to consider replacing it anyway for the safety of your data.
You should start another backup now, on another drive, if you don't already have one. One backup is never enough to be safe.
If you choose to keep using the problem drive, turn Time Machine OFF temporarily in its preference pane, then launch Disk Utility, select the backup volume, and run Repair Disk. This operation may take several hours. If the volume can't be repaired, you'll have to erase it and start over. Don't do that unless you have at least one other complete backup. Remember to turn TM back ON.

How to format an external drive used for time machine

My 150 Gig external hard drive showed too full for a time machine backup. It only showed 20 gig left. So I moved the time machine backup on it to the trash to make room for a new one. This did nothing. With the files in the trash the drive still shows full even though it has no time machine backup on it.
So I would like to know how I can format this drive again to get it to accept a brand new time machine backup. Or how do I get time machine to recognize the drive as empty instead of full.
I now know I should have at least a 500 gig drive to let time machine make it's plethora of backups. But the 150 gig drive is what I have right now to backup an 80 gig hard drive and I would like to start from scratch.
Thanks,
JJ Bula

With the files in the trash the drive still shows full
You need to empty the Trash before anything is actually removed from the drive.
If you want to completely erase the drive, launch Disk Utility, select the drive, go to the Erase pane and click "Erase".

How can you configure a WD external to work with Time Machine??

I have an 1TB external WD MyBook drive that is connected to my network through my Linksys wireless router and am trying to figure out how to format the drive to use with Time Machine.
I currently use the drive to store files from both my PC and my MacBook but can't seem to select the drive to use with Time Machine. I figured that I could just format the drive through the Disk Utility program, but the drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility. This may be because it is a drive connected through my router and not directly to my MacBook?!
Here are a few questions...
Any ideas on how to format the drive so it will work with Time Machine?
Once formatted to use with TM, can I still use the drive to store other files from both my Mac and PC? or do I need to partition for this??
Is it possible to set up an automatic backup schedule that will happen via my home wireless connection?
Thanks in advance,
Todd.

You cannot use the drive with TM as you have it set up. TM will not work with a networked drive except a Time Capsule or a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station (current version.)
If you wish to use this drive for TM backups it must be connected directly to the computer. Other computers on the network can access the drive for TM backups if you turn on file sharing for the drive (select drive, press COMMAND-I, check the box labeled "Shared Folder," click on the Enable button.) The shared drive will have to be mounted on the other computers in order for them to use it as a TM backup drive.

Shared Hard Drive work with Time Machine

I've been having limited success with using a USB hard drive connected to my Extreme Station.
Is the Airport Extreme Base Station not really approved for use with Time Machine then? I know you can connect it and USE the hard drive but as far as Time Machine and successful incremental backups, it's not really made for that is it?

Welcome to the discussions, zamboknee!
Some users have reported success with using Time Machine for backups on a USB drive connected to the AirPort Extreme, but Apple does not officially support this function.

External hard drive problems with Time Machine

My external Samsung G3 back Up hard drive disappears off the desktop when my imac sleeps and I have to unplug and reconnect the USB for time machine to see it again. The initial back up is fine and the drive re-formatted and partitioned OK. Any thoughts?
www.mtbmitch.co.nz

Hi Nick,
Avoid the WD files completely, not needed & often a problem.
You need to erase the Drive, & to use it on both Format it MS-DOS/FAT32, on the Mac or PC, but will have a 4 GB filesize limit, as well as other limitations.
One option not mentioned yet is MacDrive for your PCs... allows them to Read/Write & Format HFS+, so no need to reformat it...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

USB hard drive used with Time Machine runs continually

I have a USB SATA external hard drive that I am using for my Time Machine backups. The drive is configured to run on USB power. The drive begins running as soon as it is connected to the port, and runs continually, as long as it is connected. I expected the drive to sleep between TM backups, to save the moving parts. Is there any way to keep the drive sleeping until a TM backup is done, and then go back to sleep?

Kenneth Mclauchlan wrote:
I have a USB SATA external hard drive that I am using for my Time Machine backups. The drive is configured to run on USB power. The drive begins running as soon as it is connected to the port, and runs continually, as long as it is connected. I expected the drive to sleep between TM backups, to save the moving parts. Is there any way to keep the drive sleeping until a TM backup is done, and then go back to sleep?
I believe that is up to the drive manufacturer. In the Preferences Energy Saver see if you have checked "put drive to sleep when possible" and see if the external drive sleeps when you put the computer to sleep. If it does not then it's not a "sleeper." Even if it does, it may not have an internal clock or switch to sleep after so many minutes of inactivity.
Can you use the drive with external power? See if that does anything.
My LaCie d2 quadro sleeps between backups. I don't use USB, I use FW800.

HT201250 How to retrieve external drive backups from time machine on hard drive without external drive connected

I am keeping my work files on an external drive which are backed up using Time Machine onto my computer's hard drive. I set it up this way so I can take my actual work drive with me if I need it. However, I just noticed that I can't see any of those files in time machine if the drive itself isn't plugged in, which makes this method useless. Is there any way to get to those, or do I need to reconfigure my backup system? I always thought if something happened to my hard drive I'd have a backup, but that won't work if I can't get to the files.

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Weird external drive behavior with Time Machine....

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