Why no disks listed for time machine

I got my MACBOOK yesterday. When I ran time machine for the first time. it shows: A storage for time machine backups isnt set up. I clicked "set up time machine" , and click: choose backup disk. Howeve, none disks are listed, neither the internal HD, nor a portable disk connect to my MAC.
Don'tknow whether i missed anything, or just did something stupid. Can anybody help? Thanks a lot!!

I have the same problem with my EZQuest 120GB HD that I have been using for many years. I sent all folders/files to trash before trying Time Machine which failed to see this disk. In disk utility, it checks ok (repair permissions and repair disk) but it fails to recognize the disk for partition.
Any suggestions? The "Get info" results are pasted below.
David
Name : Indigita
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
Disk Identifier : disk1
Media Name : Indigita Generic 1394 dev Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 13753799005283824
Device Tree : /PCI0/RP04@1C,3/FRWR@0/node@30dd01e005a5f0/sbp-2@c000/@0:0
Universal Unique Identifier : E2117719-B767-3D51-8FCC-5D78AAAFA5F2
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
Location : External
Total Capacity : 111.8 GB (120,034,123,776 Bytes)
Free Space : 89.9 GB (96,504,556,544 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 0

Similar Messages

New larger disk drive for Time Machine ..having trouble using it.

I must be missing something simple here. My Time Machine drive was getting pretty full so I went out and bought a larger drive. I assumed I could copy everything on the old drive to the new one ..then start up Time Machine and point it to the new drive and be in business. Not so. When I tried to copy the contents from one disk to the other the process locked up after about an hour. All activity stopped and I had no files on the new drive. To troubleshoot I simply copied a small folder from the smaller Time Machine drive to the new one..and it copied fine. However I noticed the date on the copied file was current so I assume my process is not a good one anyway as all the dates will be lost. Guess that will screw up Time Machine (after all what is time if its all the same ?). So ..how do I use a new larger drive for Time Machine..without loosing all the old stuff that is already saved. If I just select change disk from the Time Machine panel I assume I will only get backups from now ...and nothing older (from the old disk). I do not want to keep the older disk connected. So what am I missing here ??

Pondini wrote:
And I forgot to add: Disk Utility will do it.
I missed your post this morning.
I looked around and found the keys to get Disk Utility to do it. No $$ needed.
Thanks for the info.
For the rest of the viewers:
*How to change the Time Machine backup disk and migrate the current data to the new disk*:
This procedure performs block transfers, not file-by-file transfers. It avoids all the extended attribute, ACL and hierarchical problems. It just works - it's a Mac!
System Preferences:
..1 - Time Machine:
....1.1 - Turn OFF
..2 - Spotlight:
....2.1 - Privacy:
......2.1.1 add current TimeMachine volume to prevention list
......2.1.2 add new TimeMachine volume to prevention list
Disk Utility:
..1 - Select the target drive in the left pane
..2 - Select Partition tab
....2.1 - Volume Scheme: *1 Partition*
....2.2 - Options: *GUID Partition Table*
....2.3 - Select Apply -> Partition
..3 - Select Restore tab
....3.1 - Drag source Volume into Source window
....3.2 - drag destination Volume into Destination window
....3.3 - Check box: *Erase Destination* ( +this is the critical step+ )
....3.4 - Click Restore button (Wait for transfer to complete, minutes to hours depending on size & disk connections)
The source and destination volumes will now have the same name. Change the volume name(s) as desired.
System Preferences:
..1 - Spotlight:
....1.1 - Privacy: add new TimeMachine volume to prevention list
..1 - Time Machine:
....1.1 - Turn ON
Done!

Can't install ML. Disk used for time machine

When I choose my machintosh HD drive to install mountain lion says "This disk is used for time machine backups". HELP!!!

Although this may be too late for the OP, here's the answer: If you see a Backups.backupdb folder on your main harddrive, either remove it or rename it. That seems to be the only qualifier for calling a disk a Time Machine Backups disk as far as the installer is concerned.

Verify Disk failed for Time Machine backup disk

Thread <http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7930301&#7930301> discussed a similar issue, but it was closed without an answer so I'm opening a new one.
After a power failure I ran Disk Utility to Repair Permissions on my boot disk and Verify Disk on another that I use to store media files; neither had significant problems. Then I ran Verify Disk (verify, not repair; and disk, not permissions) on my Time Machine backup disk. It started spitting out the errors shown below. The time remaining counted up to 16 minutes, but wasn't coming down very fast so I left it running overnight. My machine is set to not sleep or spin down the disks. The next evening it was down to 12 minutes left, and was still spitting out the same errors. The second evening it was done, having failed out as shown in this log file excerpt:
2009-06-20 22:25:48 -0400: Verifying volume “Backup”
Starting verification tool: 2009-06-20 22:25:48 -0400
2009-06-20 22:25:50 -0400: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
2009-06-20 22:25:50 -0400: Checking Extents Overflow file.
2009-06-20 22:25:50 -0400: Checking Catalog file.
2009-06-20 22:35:21 -0400: Checking multi-linked files.
2009-06-20 23:08:17 -0400: Checking Catalog hierarchy.
2009-06-20 23:16:59 -0400: Checking Extended Attributes file.
2009-06-20 23:18:34 -0400: Checking multi-linked directories.
2009-06-20 23:31:05 -0400: 2009-06-20 23:31:05 -0400: Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 3763501)
2009-06-20 23:31:05 -0400: 2009-06-20 23:31:05 -0400: 2009-06-20 23:31:05 -0400: (It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
2009-06-22 15:14:54 -0400: 2009-06-22 15:14:57 -0400: Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 7746623)
2009-06-22 15:14:59 -0400: 2009-06-22 15:15:00 -0400: 2009-06-22 15:15:02 -0400: (It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
2009-06-22 15:20:35 -0400: Checking volume bitmap.
2009-06-22 15:20:37 -0400: Checking volume information.
2009-06-22 15:20:39 -0400: 2009-06-22 15:20:41 -0400: The volume Backup needs to be repaired.
2009-06-22 15:20:43 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-22 15:20:44 -0400:
2009-06-22 15:20:44 -0400: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Backup” because the following error was encountered:
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
At that point the whole system was extremely sluggish, and the access light on the backup disk was flashing steadily. The pmTool process seemed to be running away, but the system wasn't responsive enough for me to do much about it, so I held down the power button to shutdown. Upon the 2nd restart the system booted and seems to be OK, but I'm leery of running another Verify Disk.
What's going on? Are those errors anything to worry about? Is it possible to run Verify Disk on a Time Machine backup disk? What about Repair Disk?

John Seal wrote:
2009-06-22 15:20:43 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-22 15:20:44 -0400:
2009-06-22 15:20:44 -0400: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Backup” because the following error was encountered:
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
At that point the whole system was extremely sluggish, and the access light on the backup disk was flashing steadily. The pmTool process seemed to be running away, but the system wasn't responsive enough for me to do much about it, so I held down the power button to shutdown.
Any time Disk Utility says you need to repair a disk, you need to repair it. Period.
So run it. If it fails to repair everything, run it again (and again) until it either repairs everything or can't repair any more. If it can't repair it, post back and we'll discuss options.
There's no point in running +Verify Disk+ on an external drive; just run +Repair Disk.+ The only time +Verify Disk+ is needed is for your internal HD (because you can't repair the disk you're running from).
And you need to do that again because of the forced power-down. Any time there's an abnormal shutdown, it's possible the file system on your internal HD can be damaged. Usually it isn't, but it's possible. If that says you need to repair it, you'll have to boot from your Leopard Install disc and use it's copy of DU. Post back if you need to do this but don't know how.

Extend disk space for Time machine?

Hi,
We can now use 2 disk drives at one location to keep our backup files with Time Machine, thanks to Mountain Lion
Behavior is that both disks will end-up with the same backed-up files.
Is it possible to make it such that the 2 disks complement each other so that a file is back up on one disk only? The outcome being that MacOS sees the 2 disks more as a single but LARGER disk for Time Machine.
The problem I am trying to solve is that my Time-Capsule is starting to be too small for my needs and I would like to extend the storage capacity through a 2nd drive connected directly to my Mac.
Thanks

There are ways you can continue using the TC by just adding a larger external drive to it. See:
My Time Capsule is too small to back-up my Mac(s). Now what?
Note that third-party NAS drives won't work reliably with Time Machine, and neither will a hard drive connected to a wireless router (even an Apple AirPort base station). As long as you've already got the TC, you might as well continue using it in conjunction with a larger drive or hardware RAID setup.

Video editing causing enormous disk usage for Time Machine

As I do a lot of work with iMovie, my hard disk is rapidly running out of space. Should I be excluding certain folders from backing up by Time Machine?
Anything I can do to recover the hard disk space?

If TM backs up while you are editing a large file of any type, yes it will backup the file.
I suggest using a separate folder for all your video editing and exclude it from the TM backup.
As to recovering HD space, that's a touchy point, but once you exclude your video files, at least it won't fill up any faster than normal.
I would let TM take care of deleting old files in the normal manner.
The only work-around would be to delete the entire TM backup and start over. If you use a new HD you can still recover data from the old TM backup until you are sure you never need it.

Anyone find a way to use an airport disk for Time Machine?

Apple says it is not possible ( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306833 ). Yet I have seen some posts of people who claim they are doing it. How?

Here's the workaround that has been posted ...
(NOTE: Caution!!! There is a reason Apple did not include Air Disk support for Time Machine in the current release of Leopard. I would strongly discourage implementing any workarounds, especially if the data you are backing up is critical to you. However, if you're just curious to see if it is possible, then proceed with caution.)
Here's a workaround for the Airport disk problem that may or may not work for you:
1) disconnect airport disk and plug into computer as a USB drive directly.
2) Set up time machine to use this volume.
3) In terminal cd to volume "cd /Volume/HDD"
4) In terminal "touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported" this will create an invisible file.
5) In terminal "sudo chown root:admin .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
6) In terminal "sudo chmod 1775 .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
7) In terminal "ls -l -a" the .com.apple.timemachine.supported file should be -rwxrwxr-t
8) eject disk, unplug from mac, plug into Airport.
9) mount at mac using connect to server in finder (command k) and afp://airportname.local./HDname
10) see if time machine now sees the drive and tries to use it.
As reported at Macrumors (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4387985&postcount=50)

Can i use time capsule for external h drive and also for time machine?

Can i use time capsule for external h drive and also for time machine?

Hello, vascocaco.
If I understand correctly, you're wondering if you can use your Time Capsule's internal hard disk both for Time Machine backups and as an ordinary drive. Is this your question?
You can, but Time Machine backups may take longer.
To do it, you should partition your Time Capsule's hard disk to create one volume for the backups and one for other files.

Use a DMG for Time Machine Disk?

Hello everyone,
After extensive googling, it seems at first that Time Machine will not allow you to use a mounted disk image for a backup drive. I was wondering if there was a way to rig it up so that it would work, somehow disguising the mounted image as a hard drive.
My situation is as follows: I have an external FireLite Smartdisk hard drive for Time Machine backups. And yet, the drive is plenty big, while my computer's hard drive is fairly small. I want to have the backups not take up the whole drive, as they have. I attempted to partition the drive via Disk Utility, but it gave me the following error:
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled.
I tried it with all file systems, including free space. I finally decided to try a sparse bundle disk image, with a size of 100 gb. I mounted it, went into Time Machine prefs, and it did not appear on the list of available disks.
Does anyone have any ideas?

I'd quit trying to outsmart the backup system (Time Machine is picky already) and focus on the hardware. I don't have one of those drives, but I'd be looking at why you can't repartition or format the drive. Firmware? Using a hub? Does it have a USB port you can try?
Many hard drives like the MyBook series have had problems with FW on Leopard and there are firmware updates for them. The USB ports worked fine.

I am setting up a time machine backup to a external Hard drive. I want to backup by Mac book Pro running OSX 10.8.5. I would like to Partition the disk and use one partition for Time machine backups and the other for my Lightroom backups. How to do this?

I want to create a two partition disk. One partition for time machine, the other for Lightroom backup. Currently Time Machine is using the entire drive and it is doing the intial encryption and is about 29% complete after two days. I've decided that I want to turn encryption off and partition the disk. So I do I start over?

With the external drive attached, open Finder>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility. Select the external drive from the list in the left side panel of the DU window. In the main window panel, click Partition in the buttons top center of that panel.
Select the number of partitions you want and adjust their sizes.
For the first partition, click to highlight the partition, then select the format, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then the partition table as GUID [both of those are the defaults]. Click Apply and it will ask to confirm and erase and format that partion...oh, give the partition a name, like Backup.
Then repeat those steps for the second partition..and remember to name it...something like Lightroom.
Close Disk Utilitty and you are ready to send TM to the one partition, and do your backup of Lightroom to the second partition.

Why do I get message "back up disc is not available" for Time Machine? It

why do I get message "back up disc is not available" for Time Machine? It's plugged in.

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:
☞ 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 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 ▹ 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.

HT201250 How do I reformat a disk to use for Time Machine?

How do I reformat a disk to use for Time Machine?
The disk is from Seagate, a GoFlex Home unit that was used originally by someone else with a PC.

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Install problem because disk is used for Time Machine backups?

I am currently running OS 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro 15 inch. I just purchased Mountain Lion from the App Store and I am trying to install, but it tells me that it can't install on my hard drive because "This disk is used for time machine backups". Which as far as I can tell is not even true, because I have set up an external hard drive for the Time Machine backups. So I can't get past this screen and install. What can I do?

Low possibility, but check System Preferences/Time Machine to make sure the hard drive isn't listed. While there, turn off Time Machine and try the install again. If that doesn't work, disconnect your external drive, restart and try the install again.
Also see these discussions.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19033168#19033168
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15699444#15699444

Using 1 disk for time machine and to back up and windows machine

ok so my parents need to back up their machines, my mother on a mac and my dad on a pc (has to use it for work). we have a single disk drive from OWC and im trying to figure out if i can partition it so my mom can use TM and my dad can still back up his machine on it?
if i partition it on mac both the partitions get in the journaled format, and if i leave free space on the drive it doesnt show up on mac (didnt try to see if it shows up on my dads pc)
how should i go about doing this or will it not work?
-matt

Some more info would be helpful. Depending on the Mac your mom has it should be partitioned to APM (PPC) or GUID (Intel) although this has been called into question. It should not be MBR.
The external HDD needs to be plugged into the Mac for Time Machine to work. For Time Machine, that partition needs to be formatted HFS+ (Mac OS Extended - Journaled). The PC partition may not matter as the PC should treat that partition as a network share. However, if your intent is to occasionally plug that external directly into the PC, you need to format that partition FAT/FAT32. The Mac can read and write FAT/FAT32, but it cannot write NTFS (without a paid third party app), hence why I didn't recommend that format. Leave lots of room for the TM backup (2-3 X the Mac's content) as that will gradually grow in size.

Can two macs use same disk for Time Machine backup with Airport Extreme?

Hi
I use a Western Digital disk as a wireless Time Machine backup connected to the USB port on my Airport Extreme and it works great. My question is: can my girlfriend use that same disk for Time Machine backup from HER computer too? (I don't mind formatting the disk if needed.)
If she can't, is it then possible to connect a USB hub and have two disks hooked up to the Airport Extreme?
Thanks for helping. I am constantly in awe of all the help people like you give people like me. Thanks!!!
Jakob

I've gone through the manual setup and the assisted setup and can't seem to get my MacBook to use the Time Machine. Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.
Well, as the Jolly Giant points out....+this type of configuration is not supported by Apple+, so it's difficult, if not impossible, to provide a fix for something that Apple says that you cannot do. Reference these Apple Support documents regarding this topic:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2038
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
Your situation is not unlike other users who try this and find that one computer may backup...(usually for a limited time before corruption issues start to creep in)...but another computer cannot backup. Count me as one of those users who thought that because things seemed to work that I had somehow "beat the system".
I started getting the corruption error messages after 4-5 weeks of successful backups, so I figured that it did not make sense to continue to try to get a second computer to backup (yes, I too could not setup a second Mac to backup).
Sorry, I could not get a second machine to backup, so can't tell you how to accomplish that goal. If you want to continue to try backing up this way, you might want to also think about a second backup strategy...just in case backups become corrupted on the WD drive.
Maybe if Apple says you cannot do this, they just may be right?
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

Why no disks listed for time machine

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