Why does my new external drive used by time machine keep starting when no backup is being done

Got a new 2 TB Seagate GoFlex for Mac and run it over WireFire 800 because the old Western Digital was having a hard time starting up which held up the boot. I have a 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo desktop with 3 GB of RAM. Running OS X 10.6.8.
Seems like the every 10 minutes or so, I hear the external drive start up even when no backup is scheduled. I spend most of my time in a Win XP Parallels virtual machine.
What's up?

Why would you say that? The drive has passed several Seagate verifys. It does not exhibit any issues. It is doing backups and I copied my 39 GB virtual machine to it with no issues.
Seems to me a drive does not just start up by itself, no?

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New external drive... time machine?

I'm setting um my new external drive, which I bought to back up iPhoto and iTunes for the most part. When I plugged it in, a prompt for Time Machine came up first.
Should I use this as back up if I want to use my external drive or no? I have never used TM up till now, so I'm not sure...

Well..I got a new external and said yes to Time Machine. Now it appears I can't use the external in any other machine! I was hoping to back up my old iBook and clean it out, and use the external at Uni as well as home.
Maybe I am just not doing something right, but I don't want my external to be exclusive to my iMac at home. Is this what is supposed to occur? Can I de-Time Machine my external?
(Sorry to butt in on your question with further questions, but I figured the issue I'm bringing up might be relevant in your deciding whether or not to Time Machine)

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".

Can I restore a complete system to a bare external drive using my Time Machine disk?

My iMac hard drive appears to have gone "belly up"... no system disk found on boot up. I have a current Time Machine external drive for this iMac. Can I use the TM Disk to clone my old system onto a new EXTERNAL Disk. (I have access to several other Apple computers that would allow me to boot an external disk... IF I can re-create the one that died.)
Thanks much for your thoughts and ideas.

You can use the TM backup to Restore it to another External drive.I wouldn't call it Cloning as that is something different than doing a Restore from TM backup. You'll ned to connect both drives to the system and boot the system from the original reinstall DVD that came with it. then there should be an option to restore your system from a TM backup and you would point it to the other external drive. You may want to use Disk utility first to partition and format that othr external Mac Extended (Journaled) before you try doing the restore.

Making a new external drive available for Time Machine over wireless network

I connected a new Seagate 2T external drive to my iMac to increase backup capacity using Time Machine. I have a 1T Time Capsule. I am backing up to the Time Capsule wirelessly to another Mac in the house.
The Time Capsule is full.
How do I make the new Seagate available to be used for wireless backup? It does not show on the other Mac as being available in Time Machine?

See #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

How to restore my old hard drive into a new hard drive using my time machin

My HD in my Mac Book died. Thank to the apple care Apple change it to me.
Now I have a new HD with nothing on it.
How do I use the backup in the Time Machine to restore my old hard drive?
As far as what I knew I am supposed to have all my old data, applications, and more by doing something with Time Machine.
Thanks

hi,
i have been through this. First if apple techs replaced the drive you do have something on the drive. your internal drive can boot the machine although your user settings, network settings and third-party software applications are net set up.
here's what you do.. connect the time macine drive and turn it on. now boot your macbook. watch the 'welcome movie' and don't panic. you will recieve setup instructions from the macbook. you will of course designate the system language to be english. Now an option screen will appear. there are options for setting up the new computer include using a firewire cable and transfering stuff from another macbook. ignore that option. you will see an option to restore settings from a time machine drive. bingo! choose that.
get the transfer started and go away. usb restoration of big internal harddrives by time machine is **** slow. (it should be slow for alot of technical reasons. don't blame apple.)
make sure you have the macbook plugged into an electrical outlet, not running off battery because this can be an overnight process.
so now you're good to go

Can I drag files to an external drive used for Time Machine to store them?

Is that possible without doing partition? if so, what's the difference (with partition and without)? I'm undecided on whether to partition or not. Thanks!

stellamaris5 wrote:
Sorry to chip in - I'm having a similar issue.
Aaargh.
I want to delete about 8Gb worth of data from my internal HD on my iMac. Will I still have a copy in time machine?
For a while, until time machine runs out of space and deletes its copy.
Is timemachine then deleting them from the TM backup disk if they are gone from the internal HD.
Eventually, yes.
I have done a similar thing as the OP and cut the 8Gb folder from my MacHD and pasted it into the external disk where TM is doing its backups.
Then you are wallowing in a state of sin.
1. Should I leave it like that?
No.
or
2. should I cut and paste it back into my MacHD, leave TM to do a few backups and then completely delete it from my MacHD?
Neither. If you want to keep it, keep it on your MacHD, if you want to delete it delete it. Leave the Time Machine disk the **** alone.
Thanks
Not at all.

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.

I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

Do not worry about it.
Time Machine needs that your external drive is formatted in HFS+, or better known as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". This filesystem is used by Apple on Macs and Windows cannot read or write drives formatted with this filesystem, being this the reason why all your devices do not read the external drive except your Mac.
You can only use your external drive to make Time Machine drives. If you store anything different, you may damage the Time Machine structure, so it is better not to use it as a drive to store other data. Instead, get another external drive to do it or create a second partition on the external drive formatted in FAT32 by using Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html FAT32 can be read by Windows PCs

External hard drive used for Time machine is full and having a hard time backing up. what should I do?

External hard drive used for Time Machine is full and having a hrad time backing up. What is my best option moving forward? NAS?

For All things Time Machine see Pondini's Excellent Infirmation here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Start with FAQs and Troubleshooting.

Are all external FW drives used for Time Machine more prone to fail?

Within a period of just several months, I've seen three different external FW drives used for time Machine in three different locations fail terminally. They were different brands (Seagate, OWC and a nondescript generic from Fry's).
Is there something intrinsically different about how Time Machines disks function compared to plain data storage drives? Or was do these three drives amount to just a coincidence?
Thanks in advance.

Bus-powered seem not as robust as self-powered.
Soemtimes cables are flaky.
How did you decide these drives are "terminal?"

Why does my new MacBook pro retina with 16gb ram keep randomly freezing

Why does my new MacBook pro retina with 16gb ram keep randomly freezing

Hi ..
A new Macbook Pro should not randomly freeze.
You have 14 calendar days from the time your items are delivered to initiate a return as noted here.

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.

Why does my iPad I.o.s 7.0.4 keep crashing when I start to play game ex: HayDay

Why does my iPad I.o.s 7.0.4 keep crashing when I start to play game ex: HayDay

Try This...
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Why does my new external drive used by time machine keep starting when no backup is being done

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