What is encrypting on my time machine backup

i just bought a 1T lacie external hard drive
i chose to encrypt the the back up
not sure why..it just seemed to be the prudent thing to choose
it is still encrypting the data after 7 hrs
what's going on
can i change this
should i change this
why & what is it doing?
also can i change the schedule of backups the time machine does
i really do NOT need hourly ones!!!

The original backupnwith TimeMachine can be quite long and the encryption may have added more time to it. Once TimeMachine gets its initial backup it is much faster as it only addresses things that have changed. Hourly backups turn into daily backups and use less space than you might think. Let it run it's fine.
Best TimeMachine primer ever:
Pondini's Time Machine FAQ

Similar Messages

HT1578 I have found that I can't access the contents of the encrypted disk in time machine backups. The Finder window displays a grayed-out icon representing the disk. Can this be remedied?

I have found that I can't access the contents of the encrypted disk in time machine backups. The Finder window displays a grayed-out icon representing the disk. Can this be remedied?

Time Machine error: Apple Support Communities
OSStatus 5 when trying to use Lion...: Apple Support Communities

What are the stages of Time machine backup

I often leave my Time Machine to back up and am never really sure where it is in the process. For example, where does "Indexing backup" come in the process? Is it almost done when it's indexing?
I've seen many others have problems with this stage lasting a long time. What happens if I stop the backup during indexing? Are my files already backed up? Would I be able to restore from the un-indexed backup?
Thanks

If you see indexing for more than a few moments, and especially on a number of backups, there's likely a problem of some sort. Just what depends to some extent on what version of OSX your Mac is running.
If you cancel a backup before it completes normally, you cannot view or restore anything from it.
You can always tell if a backup has completed successfully, by clicking the TM icon in your menubar and/or going to System Preferences > Time Machine. If it shows a recent date & time for Latest Backup, that's when it was done.

What kinds of drives can Time Machine backup?

Please notice the absence of the word "to" in the subject. My question is not what kinds of drives Time Machine can write its backup to (a subject that is covered extensively everywhere on the web), but what kinds of drives it can backup, i.e. the data from which drives can be included in the backup.
My Mac mini is a little storage-capacity challenged, so I use an external USB drive for most of my work data. This drive is FAT32 formatted, because I need to access it from a Windows PC as well. I find that this drive (which I do not use to write the TM backup to - that's impossible because TM can not backup to FAT32 drives) is in TM's "Do not backup" list and I can't remove it from there. I suspect this has to do with the FAT32 formatting, but I do not understand why that is (again, it makes perfect sense that the drive TM writes its backup to has certain restrictions on the formatting because of the mechanism that TM uses to create its backups using hard links - to create a backup of certain data, I would expect all TM would need is read-access to that data, which clearly is not a problem for the Mac because I am happily using the FAT32 drive as storage).
So, my question, in a nutshell, on what type of drive does data need to be in order for TM to be able to create a backup of it? Is there a way to get TM to backup the data that resides on my FAT32 disk? Also, I plan to move the data on my FAT32 drive to a network drive. Is there a way to backup data that resides on a network drive with TM? What type of protocol (NFS?) would I need to use to access the data on the network drive? *Again, please, this is not the gazillionth question about where a TM backup can be written to, this is about what data can be backed up by TM.* Thanks in advance for any insight.

Why is that? Does it have to do with the fact that TM uses the same notification mechanism for changes on the filesystem that SpotLight does? I guess that if FAT32 won't work, with NFS or something similar I will certainly be out of luck?
That *****, I was looking forward to move the data from my FAT32 external drive to a network drive, reformat it and start using it as a second TM backup volume.
When I reformat the external drive from FAT32 to HFS+ will I then be able to back it up using TM? (I.e., it really is the formatting that is the problem, not the fact that the drive is external)? What about NTFS? (I really want to keep the data in a form accessible by Windows directly, in case I need to run Windows on the Mac).
Message was edited by: Eelke

What should be excluded from Time machine backups?

I was looking at the Time Machine options and it is showing my external hard drive( Seagate) as being excluded from backups. Is that correct? If not, how do I correct. Seagate is grayed out & does not appear it can be changed. I recently added SuperDuper to my Mac, so not sure if that is the reason.
I appreciate any help to my question. Thanks!

For some guidance see:
11. What should I exclude, and what should I not exclude?
http://pondini.org/TM/11.html

What files are excluded from time machine backups in Mavericks?

Is it mainly Cache files?
I had a report from Dr Light virus scanner that it had found a virus in my safari cache. To which I have had to reset safari to delete the cache. I am worried that time machine might have backed up the rouge file to my time machine.
Thanks

Time Machine backs up those files that are needed to recover the system.
Swap, Trash and cache are not required to recover the system so they are not backed up.
Allan

Migration Assistant not seeing OS X Server time machine backups

Hello,
I use my OS X Server box as a time machine server, to which my other computers back up, just like you would to a time capsule. However, I now want to use one of those backups to restore to a new computer. When I try to use migration assistant to do this, it sees my server machine, but it says there are no backups on it. I noticed on the hard drive the server uses to back up the clients, the sparse bundles are saved under a "Shared Items" folder, unlike what happens if you do time machine backups connected directly to an external disc with USB, where the backups directory is at the top level directory.
Any ideas what could be going on here? As it is it looks like no time machine backups managed by my server machine are usable by migration assistant.

In the sidebar of a Finder window on the client, select the icon representing the startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) At the top level of the volume are folders with these names, among others:
Applications
Library
System
Enter Time Machine and select the most recent snapshot, which is behind the frontmost window. Are those folders present in the snapshot?

Time Machine backup disk no longer available since upgrade to Mountain Lion

He everyone,
I've been using Time Machine for years to backup my iMac to an external USB harddrive (Samsung HD103Sl), and everything used to work just fine up until I installed Mountain Lion.
Now Finder nor Time Machine can see my external harddrive. If I go to DIsk Utility, the harddrive is listed there, and everything seem to be just fine. I tried to run a disk verification and a repair, but Disk Utility tell me everything is OK.
Is it a Mountain Lion bug? Can someone help me with that?
TIA
Charles

I'm not sure if I have exactly the same case as yours....
I got the problem with my external HDD (with 2 partitions) while I was using one of the encrypted partition as Time Machine backup. I could not erase it after I upgrade to Mountain Lion, and it shown "this patition contain a locked disk and can not be resized until it is unlocked" in Disk Utility.
You may have a look if that's the same in Disk Utility.
Finally I get it fixed by the "diskutil" command in "Terminal" in "OSX > Applications > Utilities".
I used the command "diskutil" to verify the UUID of the "Logical Volume Group (LVG)" of the locked partition.
Then use the command to delete the LVG.
** All logical volume under this groiup will be deleted!!
Once the operation finished, I am able to recreate the partition in Disk Utility.
Hope this help!!

Time Machine: backups lost

What has happened to my time machine backups?
I was backing up to an external drive. TM has always worked perfectly. Just a day or two ago I noticed Time Machine was not completing backups.
I think it may be because my external drive does not have enough room on it now.
But I thought TM was supposed to delete older backups if this happened.
I cannot find any trace of any backups on the external drive.
I cannot enter into Time Machine, there does not appear to be anything there.
I think the above window indicating that there is not enough room is because something has happened to my backups and it is now attempting to start a new one all over, this happened after I started getting the failed to backup options and I went into Time Machine and attempted to delete some backups but did not.
Anyway, before this happened I should have only been putting very little files in the backup, I should not have to make such a large backup now. I thought this was all done incrememtally and I thought that Time Machine was supposed to delete older files if space starts being a problem.

What has happened to my time machine backups?
I was backing up to an external drive. TM has always worked perfectly. Just a day or two ago I noticed Time Machine was not completing backups.
I think it may be because my external drive does not have enough room on it now.
But I thought TM was supposed to delete older backups if this happened.
I cannot find any trace of any backups on the external drive.
I cannot enter into Time Machine, there does not appear to be anything there.
I think the above window indicating that there is not enough room is because something has happened to my backups and it is now attempting to start a new one all over, this happened after I started getting the failed to backup options and I went into Time Machine and attempted to delete some backups but did not.
Anyway, before this happened I should have only been putting very little files in the backup, I should not have to make such a large backup now. I thought this was all done incrememtally and I thought that Time Machine was supposed to delete older files if space starts being a problem.

Looking to format and start fresh....time machine backups

I have a 13" MBP purchased with Snow Leopard, currently running Lion. I am looking to start from scratch - just because I have a ton of stuff on here that I don't need, a bunch of junk. I just feel like it is time to start over.
That being said, I have my re-install disk that came with the laptop. I also have time machine backups from earlier today.
My questions are - if I go through with this and re install fresh-
1. How do I get back to Lion (I ultimately want to get to mountain lion)
2. What will happen with my time machine backup from my laptop now (pre-format) once I start running time machine on my laptop post-format? Will it over write? Will I still be able to access the archived data?
Thanks
sb

You don't use the 10.6 disk or the TM drive.
You need to copy your Users folders to a regular external storage drive, not just TimeMachine as it will restore stuff you don't want.
10.7 has a Recovery HD partition on the drive which you hold command r boot into to erase and install OS X Lion onto the Macintosh HD partition. Provided you have your AppleID and password, fast, good Internet connection.
Create the same named user on the machine as before.
You then hit AppStore and update to 10.8 if your machine qualifies for it.
You then hold option key and click on Purchases to redownload any software you installed from there.
You if 10.8, then need to turn Gatekeeper in System Preferences to "Install from Anywhere"
You then install 10.8 compatible software from outside sources.
http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
Last you connect the external storage drive and go through your folders and cherry pick what you want and don't want on the new setup. Nothing from the User/Library folder.
Then once that's complete, you create a couple of bootable clones, each on their own external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, these are hold option key bootable drives for restoring or use when the hard drive dies or becomes corrupted.
You then hook up TimeMachine, it will update to 10.8 and your new configuration wiping all the old stuff pretty much away due ot the large change, or else you can keep it disconnected to restore back to 10.7.5 with, but you need to erase the drive c booted from the 10.6 disk first as you can't go backwards with TM, only on a wiped drive.
Most commonly used backup methods
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

What happens if you Time-Machine backup an encrypted file-vault HD?

This is related to my previous post - but deserves special mention for those people who are using time-vault AND Time-Machine.
My question is this: If the backup of my Hard-drive is encrypted, and I then reinstall from backup, what will this situation likely produce?
This is what I have done. I also Archived and installed my Mac prior to installing from my Time-Machine backup.
I now have an error message that displays the following message at the login screen:
"Unable to log into the file-vault account "......." at this time. An error has occurred."
My password IS CORRECT. I have not changed it, and the log in window does accept my password, but it doesn't progress any further than the error message I gave above.
I'm wondering if the encryption process of file-vault is linked directly with the original installation I had of Mac OS-X before I Archived and installed.
Any thoughts/knowledge/Insight?? I want my old Mac back! (I don't recommend using file-vault). Any body else had this problem or can see what is happening to me here?
Thank you
Greg

I just did a backup, moved a folder with 600mb of images into a different folder, and did another backup. The free space on the backup drive dropped by the size of the folder's contents. The backup copied the files as I watched in System Preferences, and it looked like it was really copying the files to the external drive again. It looks like Time Machine isn't as smart as I hoped in this regard.
Still - I'd think the wasted space is only in the every-hour-for-the-last-24-hours bucket of Time Machine. I'm guessing the every hour backups are like a sliding window, where a backup that's 24 hours old drops out every hour rather than all the hourly backups getting wiped at midnight and starting over.
Regardless, only one version of the moved folder will eventually be stored as the daily backup for that day. I don't have proof, but that's what I think.
So, if you've moved a bunch of folders around or renamed them, the extra copies of the same exact files should drop off within 24 hours.
That's my interpretation, but I'm in no way positive!! The lengthy Ars review didn't offer an answer to this question.

Encrypted Time Machine Backups on a shared drive

Hello community,
the following situation:
I have an iMac and a MacBook Air, both running Mountain Lion.
Both use FileVault 2 encryption of the whole MacOS partition.
The iMac is connected to an external USB hard drive, which I use as Time Machine volume. I've set up Time Machine to encrypt the backups on the external volume (it took abou 2 days until the whole drive was encrypted).
So far no problems. No let's get to the tricky part.
I want to the MacBook to use the same USB drive for its Time Machine backups. However I don't want to connect the volume directly via USB. Instead I have shared the USB volume on the iMac. And now I want to use this shared drive as my backup drive in the MacBook. (Hint: I want to use the same partition both for the iMac backups as well as for the MacBook backups.)
I can mount and select the drive on the MacBook. However Time Machine on the MacBook asks me, if I want to envrypt the backups. Which of course I want to do. But the USB drive and therefore the entire mounted volume is already encrypted (from the iMac).
Now I'm scared to opt in for encryption on the MacBook because I'm afraid the MacBook will again encypt the whole volume. Will that be the case? If so, what will happen on the iMac afterwards? Or will Time Machine recognize, that the volume is already encrypted (encryption passwords are the same of course)?
Or is it not necessary to activate backup encryption on the MacBook since the drive is already encryted? Or will the MacBook somehow manage to write unencrypted backups on an encrypted volume?
I would really appreciate any help to get the backups up and running. In short: I want both Macs to backup to the same drive. And I want both to encrypt the backups (with the same password).
Regards

meistermilchreis wrote:
(Hint: I want to use the same partition both for the iMac backups as well as for the MacBook backups.)
That's usually not a good idea; for best results, they should be in separate partitions. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #4 for an explanation, and #22 for setup instructions.
I can mount and select the drive on the MacBook. However Time Machine on the MacBook asks me, if I want to envrypt the backups. Which of course I want to do. But the USB drive and therefore the entire mounted volume is already encrypted (from the iMac).
Backups made over a network are placed in a sparse bundle disk image, separate from the backups made directly. The disk image is like a disk-within-a-disk; it has it's own partition map scheme and format. So it will not be encrypted unless you tell TM to do so.
In short: I want both Macs to backup to the same drive. And I want both to encrypt the backups (with the same password).
Since the backups are separate, they must be encrypted separately. You may use the same password for both if you want.

Time machine backup fails; error creating folder. Western Digital drive requires password which is perhaps/likely the issue. I can't eliminate the password/encryption.

Time Machine backup fails on new WD external drive (My Passport Studio); error creating folder (after several hours of Time Machine apparently working).
Background: I purchased a Western Digital drive from an Apple Store to use for Time Machine backup. I followed the Western Digital instructions that came with the drive for Mac. I didn't get the Time Machine prompt which the instructions indicated I would receive--namely to select whether I want to encrypt my Time Macine backups. (I already have a Time Machine backup I use at another location, which is perhaps why I didn't receive a prompt.)
I decided to install the Western Digital utilities and security software that comes on the disk--with a view to potentially encrypting the disk (since I still wanted to have an encrypted backup since I was mobile). I forgot that (from experience 2-years previous) that I shouldn't install Western Digital software because it just makes life really complicated.
I tried several times to do a Time Machine backup with failures each time (error creating the backup folder). I tried to get help from WD but I don't think the technicians were following what my issue was. Potentially I was not helpful in explaining it. I deleted the WD applications from my system after the first contact with WD. However the problem persisted--I still had an encrypted hard drive. After three phone sessions with three different WD techs I still could not get a solution. (By the second call I was not at all interested in having an encrypted drive--I just wanted to format and restore the drive to an unencrypted state so that I could have SOME kind of Time Machine backup.)
I still don't have a solution--either to get Time Machine working with the WD encryption/password on the drive, or to remove the encryption so I can backup. Right now my options are to return the drive to the Apple Store -- or get a return authorization from WD. Seems crazy since the drive is fine and I have the working password.

Never install "helpful software" provided by WD and Seagate (or any HD mfg.)
All such stuff is fluff and nonsense that interferes with normal HD operation.
Always when you buy a new HD, format it for Mac and then use it to TM backup or clone a HD, or archive data.
Less is more on HD new out of box. A "blank brick", no fluff and cotton candy software

Time Machine Backups of Encrypted Disk Images, Part 2

Hi:
If Time Machine is backing up a hard drive that contains a subset encrypted disk image as part of its contents, and this encrypted disk image is mounted (in an unencrypted state) where the enclosed data has been changed/manipulated in any fashion, what and when does Time Machine backup?
In other words, does the data in the encrypted disk image only change when the encrypted disk image is unmounted? Or is it somehow backed up real time even when the encrypted disk image is mounted on the desktop in an unencrypted state while Time Machine is working?
Sorry I can't explain this very well, but hopefully the gist is clear.
Thanks!
(OS 10.8.2)

Time Machine doesn't back up a disk image file while it's mounted, whether encrypted or not.

HT1338 Error preparing Time Machine backup disc- size error usually not being multiples of 512, encryption

Trying to encrypt Time Machine backup disc getting message - Error preparing Time Machine backup disc- size error usually not being multiples of 512, encryption.

I got the same problem.
But I think it cannot be related to not being a multiple of 512.
As when I devide the number of bytes 3.000.592.982.016 by 512 is equals 5860533168.
3.000.592.982.016 / 512 = 5860533168.
So what could be the real problem?
With kind Regards

What is encrypting on my time machine backup

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