Why can't Time Machine backup iDisk Docs?

I would like to be able to keep Time Machine like backups of my iDisk docs. Is Backup my best option?

Ah, but I think it is already backed up by Time Machine. It is harder to find particular files, but if you know when it was correctly there, I believe that you can restore it as follows:
Go to user/library/FileSync then
Open TimeMachine
Go back to the correct saveset then
choose the sparsebundle and restore it.
You will be given a location to restore to so don't worry about it overwriting your iDisk. Once restored, you can double-click the new sparseinage to open a disk image and find the individual files.

Similar Messages

Why is my Time Machine backup so much larger than the files being backed up?

Mac Mini Server 10.7.1 on a 2011 Mac Mini Server
Here are the drives on my system:
Here are the items excluded from backup:
Note that Server HD and Archive are the only non-excluded disks and the estimated backup size is 563.2 GB (this corresponds with the actual usage on those drives.
However, when I run time machine, it keeps going until by 2TB backup drive is nearly full! And that's with only a single backup instance and nothing else on the drive:
What's going on here??? If I don't backup the other external drive, the backup size doesn't blow up like this.

Just to clarify, the reason why Time Machine backups are generally small is that TM makes extensive use of hard links. symbolic links are small files that point to a different file system entry, while hard links point directly to the original file data on disk (hard links are unintuitive - they are like having multiple doors into a room, except that you can place the doors anywhere you like and still get to the room). So even though there may be dozens of backups of a disk, most of the backed-up items will only have one data source on disk, with only items that have changed needing new representations.
I suspect that when you try to backup a time machine backup, it is converting the hard links into separate on-disk representations - basically taking every pointer to a given piece of on-disk data and creating a new file from it. I'm not sure if that would be a linear or geometric size increase (it sounds like the latter), but either way it's going to get ugly fairly fast.

Why is my Time Machine Backup Taking More Space then my Hard Drive?

I have a Late-2009 MacBook model with a 250GB hard drive. My external drive is 1TB. I use it for Time Machine backups as well as other storage. My backups on that drive are a bit less then 900GB, which is 90% of that disk. My hard drive is only 250GB so how is it over 3 times as large? I would like to have more storage for other files. What would you recomend doing? Can I partition the external disk?

How time machine works is that it makes an initial back up and from there it scans your system for changes. When it finds a change it adds the changes on top of your current backup. So if you have a folder full of pictures then rename them or change them, etc it'll resave/archive the pictures ontop of what it already backed up. It doesn't keep a single "state" of backup. This allows you to "look back in time" and see if you can find something you might have accidentally changed or deleted or etc. Once the disk becomes full it will delete the oldest backups to keep archiving newer files.
I would suggest that you partition your external drive to a size that allows you to keep free the desired extra storage space you're looking to use. For example partition the drive to two 500GB partitions one for storage one for time machine.

Can a time machine backup also be used for archive storage?

Can the same time machine backup drive also be used for archive storage from another Macbook?

The way TimeMachine works you can guarantee that anything on your computer now will be backed up and archival copies kept. But there are two caveats. First, TimeMachine trims backups. For 24 hours they are hourly (approximately). Then the most current will be trimmed and a week worth of daily backups will be kept. Then the week will be trimmed to the most current version and the weekly backups will be kept until the drive is too full. At that point the oldest weekly update(s) will be erased to make room for the next hourly backup. When trimming occurs, files that were backed up but are no longer on your computer will be trimmed. This is the second caveat.
Since this trimming is automatic rather than under your control TimeMachine isn't a good archival backup system. Two programs that I can recommend that do have true archival ability are CarbonCopyCloner and ChronoSync. Both allow you to decide what gets archived and how many archival periods to allow.

Why is my time machine backup to large to install from?

I'm trying to setup my new MacBook from a time machine backup of my old IMac. My backup file is 250gb and there is over 400gb of space on the hard drive but it keeps coming up with a message saying there is not enough space to do the install.
I've had to leave my IMac at home interstate and need my iBook setup the same - unfortunately doing another backup with only the essential files and configurations is not an option. The situation seems strange though - is there another way?

lplex wrote:
I need help with TM, too, as it tries to do a full backup after I restored my Macintosh HD from TM as suggested by Disk Utility.
If you're on Snow Leopard or Lion, and did a full system restore by starting from the Recovery HD (Lion) or your Install disc (Snow Leopard), Time Machine should have figured it out and done an incremental backup.
If it didn't, and you're on Lion, and your backups are on a local disk (ie, not on a network), you may be able to tell TM to "associate" the restored disk with the backups manually, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. That usually works, but not always.
If you're not on Lion, or your backups are on a network, there's no way to force it.
Message was edited by: Pondini -- omitted the link!

Can the Time Machine backup drive be Internal?

Does the backup HD for Time Machine HAVE to be an external drive?
I want to install an 2nd internal drive into my 2006 Mac Pro and use that as the Time Machine backup for the main boot/storage drive.
An internal drive would save space and eliminate the extra cables and power supply.

Kappy is correct, of course.
But I'd add a strong recommendation that you also do some sort of secondary backups, so if something truly awful happens to your Mac, you don't lose everything.
See Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.

Why can't time machine delete old backups when full?

My time machine disc is full and sends a message that it will delete older fileson next try. It did that before I installed OS 10.8.4.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
â Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
â In the Finder, select Go â¹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
â Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View â¹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to a failed backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

After upgrade to Mavericks I can do Time Machine backups but I cannot have access to them

After upgrading my iMac 20" (early 2008) from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, I can backup with Time Machine and I can see that the copies have been made. But when I enter to Time Machine mode, all these copies in the right bar goes from pink to translucent in some few seconds, and I cannot have access to them.
I have a dedicated external 400GB HD for the copies, formated in Mac Os Plus, and I can go there and open, copy, etc. any file "manually", so, the copies are right (I guess).
Any idea about why I cannot "go back" in Time Machine, although it "sees" the disk, and the copies exist?
Thanks in advance for your help.

After upgrading my iMac 20" (early 2008) from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, I can backup with Time Machine and I can see that the copies have been made. But when I enter to Time Machine mode, all these copies in the right bar goes from pink to translucent in some few seconds, and I cannot have access to them.
I have a dedicated external 400GB HD for the copies, formated in Mac Os Plus, and I can go there and open, copy, etc. any file "manually", so, the copies are right (I guess).
Any idea about why I cannot "go back" in Time Machine, although it "sees" the disk, and the copies exist?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Can a Time machine backup be moved from one hard drive to another.

Hello
There are a few questions tucked away in here...
1
My Mac crashed due to a Kernal Panic (screen was flashing) this was happening over 2 weeks so I decided to restore from Time Machine. During a restore the Mac crashed again. So I aborted the restore. When I sparked up the Mac again the Mac's drive had been wiped So I used the OS Snow disc to restore again. When I went to my Iomega back up drive it's power had failed. The upshot is, is that right now i have lost everything. No Backup and no Mac. My external drive is with a data recovery company. I am hoping that they can access the drive and drop the backups onto another external drive (very expensive). Before I commit to this expenditure, if they are successful in accessing the drive, can the TM backups be moved in that way (from one HD to another) and will my Mac recognise these as backups for my machine and thus successfully restore?
2
If all else fails can my Mac be recovered
3
Once that is done i am hoping that the Kernal Panic is resolved, if not I may seek advice also on this. Right now i need my data..
Thanks for any advice
Mark

Pondini Wrote..
the first folder shown (343775 - rycaft DATA) doesn't belong there. I'm guessing it contains some of the "loose" files that the recovery software couldn't figure out where it came from. And/or, it may contain the system files and folders that are normally hidden on a Time Machine drive.
Hi there, the first folder is where the recovery company dropped the recovered hard drive (root) - In an attempt to put the backups at the 'top of the tree' so TM could see the files i pulled the backups file out of there..so what is left?..... I believe it is other files I had on the BU hard drive before it failed. You can see that I have an apvault on there. This is aperture's internal back up. I have not yet tried installing aperture to see if these files can be recovered into aperture. It's an old vault but the best I can get so far. As you can see though, my Itunes folder seems to be a carbon copy of what was on the original HD. I've included a screen shot of this structure also.
Pondini wrote
Did you get the original Time Machine drive back? If so, it's a very long shot, but if it wasn't tried before, see if you can repair it with Disk Utility, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
funily enough I have requested it and since paying the fee to recover this HD they wont respond to emails or calls requesting (My) hard drive back.....
So i tried right clicking the iPhoto Library and Aperture Library and I cannot see Show Package Contents.
ds store wrote:
Just thought I'd mention this software, if it assists in your TM recovery efforts or not, may have special abilites or assets to recover your files.
http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html
Now then.... here is a screen shot from your suggestion.........
Looks like we've cracked it..... after i've stopped shaking I will let you know how i get on.....

Why can't Time Machine find FreeAgent Drive suddenly?

FreeAgent Drive is listed as the backup disk in Time Machine preferences but hasn't been recognized by my iMac since October 6.
Where else can I look?

Thank you for the assistance. I don't know what WD stands for but I will call Seagate and inquire whether or not they will honor their 5 year limited warranty. It's coming onto 5 years quickly so I'll move fast now.
Thanks again.

I can see Time Machine backups for only last 10 days.

I lost majority of my Documents content.
To my surprise Time Machine has partial backup of that folder for only last 10 days.
Can I somehow access previous backups (that are not visible)?
thx

When you Enter Time Machine, do the older backups appear in the timeline on the right at all?
If they do, but the little "tick marks" are faded-out and you can't select them, see the pink box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #15A.
If the backups don't appear at all, Time Machine probably ran out of space on the backup disk, and had to delete old backups to make room for new ones. If so, your backup drive is probably too small. See #1 in the above link.

Why does my time machine backup turn itself off all the time?

This has happened to me several times that I notice that the icon on the menu bar is grayed out for the backup... I just noticed that again for the 10th time, and that the last backup was on December 30th, but I never turned off time machine. I was wondering if this was a glich in the system? Has anyone else has this problem? Never had it before till last year...
Thanks!
Miguel

Miguel.Miami wrote:
what has happened before is I look at it and see that its grayed out and when I opend Prefs panel I see that the time Machine has been switched to OFF. Which is very wierd, I was wondering if anyone has had this problem. It just happened to me today, I saw that is was grayed out again, and looked the last backup was Dec 30th....
No, I've not seen that posted here before.
A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. The widget may not go back to Dec 30, so you may have to use the Console app to look at your older logs, per the pink box there.
Either way, see if you can find the Dec 30 backup. If it says it completed successfully, look for the next attempt -- if so, copy and post all the messages here.
If not, keep an eye on it, and the next time it happens, the widget should show something that will help pin it down.

Why did my Time Machine backup drive need 712GB for initial backup

I recently replaced the failing 1TB drive in my wife's old mid-2010 27" iMac with a 2TB drive (OS X 10.9.4, 3.6 GHz, 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3). After bringing all of her data on board, I erased and reformatted the backup 2TB hard drive and initiated a fresh backup using Time Machine. I was surprised to see that Time Machine needed 650+GB for the initial backup. I checked the new HD and sure enough, it reported 652GB of data.
What puzzles me is that the hard drive has only four visible folders, Applications, Library, System Info and Users Info, holding 15GB, 9GB, 6GB and 30GB respectively -- a total of roughly 60GB.
Any idea what the additional 590GB of required storage is holding and whether it's necessary? Could there be old data hidden somewhere on the iMac's new hard drive? I've looked at hidden folders and files in the top level folder. There are a couple dozen or so, including one named .DocumentRevisions-V100 (from old Mac).
However, I can't display the contents of the hidden folders and they won't calculate or display the folder sizes, so all that leaves me a bit in the dark.
Any suggestions on how to identify and reduce the amount of data I'm backing up? I'm afraid the 2GB drive will soon be overwhelmed with data.
Thanks.

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Can I time machine backup using 2 separate Ext. HD?

I have a MBP.
I have 2 ext HD.
Can I make a time machine back up on my Lacie ext HD and later make a backup on the WD ext HD?

It is a link that explains 'how to'.
http://pondini.org/TM/34.html

Why is my time machine backup so slow even when directly connected with usb 3.0?

On my new 15" Retina running OS 10.7.5 the backup of about 225 GB would estimate about 17 hours and then stall out around 22 GB or so.
Now it seems to hang on the setup.
I've just gone back to my old machine (late 2008 15" MBP running OS 10.7.4) to see if it would work any faster I am getting an estimate of "about a day" on about 280 GB. (Backwards compatible at USB 2.0 speeds of course).
In both instances I am directly connected via USB 3.0 to a Seagate 3TB desktop drive that I reformatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) right out of the box.
I bought this drive to replace my old 500 GB Time Capsule which is much too small to maintain backups for my MBP and my wife's Air. My plan was to run the initial backups hard-wired (for speed) and then attach it to a new Airport Express for subsequent backups.
No network or wireless to potentially cause this lag.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

It's true. I love Google. Miss the maps on the iPhone5 for sure.
Like you say, I end up expanding all my searches in Google to give me more results within apple discussions rather than search here.
I moved the external 3 TB drive over to the Time Capsule via its USB port and it is showing up. So that's one bullet maybe dodged so far.
On a grander scale, I'm currently in the midst of trying to redo my home network and I'm in a little over my head.
I will try to explain...
My previous network ran as follows:
Time Warner cable coax ----------> their provided Motorola modem ----via ethernet---> My old 500 GB Time Capsule creating the WIFI network for my place and feeding three other old style Airport Express devices in various rooms extending the network but essentially just for AirTunes
Also, the Time Capsule ran ethernet cables to my Western Digital TV and Western Digital MyBook Live Duo 4TB drive. Both of these Western Digital devices have wifi built in but I wasn't getting the playback speeds I was expecting so I hardwired them with ethernet for faster service which has been working for a while.
NOW.....
I am replacing the three old Airport Express devices with three new Airport Express devices and making one of them the Master device to create a new network (dumping the old one and trying to start fresh).
Here's my plan and what I have hooked up so far.
TWC coax ----> Motorola modem ---ethernet----> Airport Express #1 (creating WIFI network for Airport Express #2 and #3 AND ---------ethernet-------> Old 500 GB Time Machine-----ethernet #1-----> WDTV Live AND ----ethernet #2------> WD MBLD 4TB AND NOW -------USB-----> 3TB Seagate external for Time Machine drive expansion. ALSO POSSIBLY -----ethernet #3------> Apple TV 2 for the same reasons I have the WD devices hooked up via ethernet. I don't trust the wifi to be fast enough for video streaming.
Now, despite having read wikis and other explanations for Bridge mode, DHCP and NAT settings for routers (in this case, the TM) I still can't figure exactly what mode the TM should get setup with.
Also all of these devices are set up in different pockets on the same shelf so I was worried that all the WIFI signals would interfere with each other (hence all the ethernet).
My plan was to turn of the wireless in the TM and have all of these devices branch off via ethernet. Which brings me back to my uncertainty regarding whether to set the TM to Off (Bridge Mode), DHCP, or DHCP and NAT.
From what I've read I would think it should be in Bridge mode but I also read some things about how bandwidth use in bridge mode can be very high and could cause problems using the internet possibly over my overall wifi network? Although I'm not sure I'm understanding that correctly.
I apologize for my lack of understanding in setting up a complicated network. I've just been wanting to get all of this working the way I've hoped (correctly) for a long time.
Thanks in advance for any more advice!

Why can't Time Machine backup iDisk Docs?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for