Will Time Machine backup Time Capsule files to an attached usb drive?

Hi Everyone,
I want to put shared media files on my Time Capsule and then have Time Machine backup my imac and all the files on the TC to a usb drive attached to the Capsule. Possible? That way I have a shared media server that is being backup up regularly.
Thanks for the help!

No. Time Machine cannot backup any network attached storage device such as TC. TM can only backup a Mac's internal HDD plus and ATTACHED/LOCAL HDD to the external HDD connect to the TC USB port.

Similar Messages

HT201250 My macbook pro crashed and I had to install a new hard drive. I restored from Time Machine backup all the files from my old hard drive onto my new one.

Does it really back up the whole new drive or does it only back up what's been added? It seemed like it was doing the whole thing when I tried it. I stopped it. Don't want to use up all the space on my external. Is there something else I need to do or did I mess up by not doing the migrating thing? thanks!

If you installed a new hard drive, it has nothing on it and yes TimeMachine is going to take forever to restore everything back.
I guess you'll have to erase and start over again now.
Too bad, you should have made bootable clones in addition to TimeMachine, they can restore in a hour or two depending upon content, they are also option key bootable.
TimeMachine has to go through and calculate all the files it needs to bring forward, the files are strewn all over the drive. The read heads are moving all over the platters all the time from fast sectors to slow ones, not matching what's occuring on the internal drive.
With a clone the files are defragmented and optimized, the drive reads one file, moves the heads a tiny bit and reads the next all the while transferring exactly to the internal drive, they are more in step with one another, thus it's much faster restoring from a clone than TM.
Most commonly used backup methods

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.

Time Machine Backups of Pages file cannot be opened by Pages

I just restird a backup of a Pages file from my Time Machine backup volume. It's not a Pages file! Finder jusy says it's a document and if I double click it, a folder is created with the same name as the file with a number appended. There are sevarla files in the folder - none of them can be opened by Pages.
I'm aware of the Preference to save a backup copy but that saves just one copy, not a tru backup.
Is there some way round this? I'm not inclined to use a product if I can't back up it's files safely.
Pete

It's what I assumed.
An iWork document created with the format introduced by iWork '09 is in fact a folder packed with a specific tool.
If we remove the name extension, the system can't guess that it's an iWork document.
According to the structure of the file, it recognize it as an archive and it unpack it.
It's a variant of what I do when I want to study the contents of the index.xml file describing a document.
In my scheme, I rename wxyz.pages as wxyz.pages.zip
When I unpack it, I get a document wxyz.pages which is a Pages document in the old structure.
When Time Machine give you a document entitled wxyz, it's important to add the extension name by yourself.
If you forget and expand the beast as a folder, nothing is lost. Just rename the folder waxy as waxy.pages and Pages will open it.
From my point of view, the fact that Time Machine return a document without its name extension is a bug in Time Machine.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 2 mai 2011 22:30:54
Please :
Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community
To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

Accidentally I have deleted my Time Machine Backup but deleted files are in the Trash !

Hi Folks,
Accidentally deleted my Time Machine backkups but all files are in the Trash. I am copying my files from Trash folder to another Portable Drive just incase I will not be able to restore my files as Put Back is not working because seems Time Machine backups is a part large database.
Is there anyway I can restore the files to Time Machine again? If there is, could you please tell me step by step ! If there is not any procedures, please advise me what should I do in this stage?
Thanks in advance.

The following excellent Support articles may help you with that:
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine backup fails linking files

I recently had a external disk fail that was still under warrenty, so I dually went to the Apple store and got a replacement. After plugging it in I went into Time Machine and performed a restore (I was backing up the external disk to another external time machine managed disk). All worked perfectly so far. However, come the next backup I got
"Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume"
Searching the forums I don't see any obvious solution. In the system log I also see 'Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: MyBigDisk' every time there is a backup.
Anyone got any ideas how to fix this?

Ok, I finally figured this out. The problem is that the old and new disks both had the same name (MyBigDisk) and time machine was getting consused. To fix
Complete the restoration of the drive via timemachine
Rename the drive (on Leopard in finder under devices ctrl-click / right-click on the name and rename)
Go into time machine preferences and remove the drive from the exclusion list
Perform a Time Machine backup
This will re-backup the freshly restored external drive but this isn't a big issue as older files will be deleted from Time Machine as necessary.
Restoring files on the external disk from before the failure: Now the drive is renamed the older backups seem to have disappeared. Actually, they are there, just tricky to find. To find an old file on the old named disk:
Go into finder and make sure show path bar is selected
Go to you home directory in finder
Enter Time Machine
Select the date you want to go back to
In the path bar find the directory with the name like 2011-11-12-202011, click on folder
The old drive will be in that directory - use the normal restore process
Why is it broken
My guess is that to avoid accidentally backing up the wrong disk (after all every WD My Book is called MyBook when plugged in) they use the UUID (Universally Unique ID) to identify the drive. But, we see the MyBook name in Finder and Time Machine so they need to link the UUID to the MyBook name. This is a one shot, once done, never undone.
So, now when it tries to check that link with the new disk it will have a different UUID (that's the UU bit!) and complains. Renaming that disk breaks the link (there's no MyBook now, so no link to check)

Time Machine Backup to Tar File

Using the following command tar -cvpzf dec2014macprobackup.tar.gz /Volumes/Seagate_Backup/ I attempted to backup & compress a time machine backup. I just installed a new seagate internal harddrive. I performed a single backup to it and then turned off time machine. The Seagate drive is 3TB and the tar file command was performed on a 2TB drive. As a result, the 2TB disk ran out of space before the tar command completed. Questions:
1) Can time machine restore this backup? I could untar the file to the 3TB drive and try it. I want to know if technically this will work
2) Any other suggestions technical suggestions?
3) Time Machine will not complete a backup on my 2TB drive anymore. Hence the reason I bought a 3TB drive.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Nick

Archie Cobbs wrote:
Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
No. For possible destinations, see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Is it possible to reassemble a Time Machine backup from recovered files?

I have kind of a sad story that I'm sure some of you can relate to. My Macbook was briefly stolen but by the time I got it back, the partitions had been erased. I had an external backup... but the backup disk failed catastrophically a couple days before it was stolen. The external backup doesn't even mount anymore and makes grinding noises if it's plugged in...
The MacBook had two hard drives in it and one was rather large, so there was space for a partition that I used only for Time Machine. It was erased during the theft, but since nothing had been written to the disk yet, I figured that the chances of recovering data were pretty high. So I went online and looked around for utilities (I used StellarPhoenix... Not sure I'd recommend it to a friend) and managed to spend the next four days recovering the time machine backup to an external computer. I recovered a lot of directories with raw directory IDs attached to them and interesting recovered files inside.
I want to put these files back together as a Time Machine backup (haha, I know right?), because the alternative is around 60 gigabytes of data to sift through by hand.
Here's the top level structure:
MacBook:Root alleygator$ ls -a
.fseventsd
.journal
.DS_Store
.journal_info_block
.HFS+ Private Directory Data?
Lost Folder(s)
.Trashes
"HFS+ Private Directory Data?" and "Lost Folder(s)" directories contain about three hundred thousand directories altogether.
.journal is 33 megs of unicode-looking data that I have to believe is the HFS+ "Journal" part of a journaling file system.
.journal_info_block appears to be an empty file.
.fseventsd contains only a few tiny files that appear to be the the heads of .plists.
Anyway.
The HFS+ folder looks like this:
dir_2243617          dir_2255418          dir_2283556          dir_2383839          dir_880892
dir_2243619          dir_2255421          dir_2283558          dir_2383860          dir_880907
dir_2243621          dir_2255424          dir_2283560          dir_2383882          dir_880909
dir_2243623          dir_2255427          dir_2283562          dir_2383927          dir_880916
dir_2243626          dir_2255430          dir_2283564          dir_2383980
dir_2243628          dir_2255436          dir_2283566          dir_2383986
dir_2243630          dir_2255439          dir_2283571          dir_2383989
dir_2243632          dir_2255442          dir_2283574          dir_2383992
While Lost Folder(s) looks like this:
Folder 1919459          Folder 236881          Folder 346820          Folder 640530          Folder 999005
Folder 1919462          Folder 2368812          Folder 346824          Folder 640534          Folder 999016
Folder 1919465          Folder 2368813          Folder 346826          Folder 640591          Folder 999021
Folder 1919468          Folder 2368817          Folder 34683          Folder 640595          Folder 999024
Folder 1919471          Folder 2368820          Folder 346879          Folder 640599          Folder 999027
Folder 1919474          Folder 2368823          Folder 3468793          Folder 640603          Folder 999030
Folder 1919477          Folder 2368826          Folder 347019          Folder 640607          Folder 999035
Folder 19196          Folder 2368829          Folder 347083          Folder 640611          Folder 999044
Each of these directories seems to contain a few files that I'd want to keep, and Stellar Phoenix tells me that it recovered a couple million files total. A bit of "light reading" into the HFS+ file system suggests that HFS+ uses these integer file descriptors instead of file names, and that the file names are stored elsewhere?
I've looked around on the web for anybody who's had a similar problem and have yet to find anything. It'd be really neat if all you had to do was create a new .sparsebundle and throw all the files into it, but I somehow doubt that'd work...
I'm really concerned that I can't put humpty dumpty back together again at all.
If I can't, what would be the next best thing? I've considered copying the files back to the drive and letting Spotlight chew on them. Eventually, I would probably be able to find the most important files on the drive. But I would prefer something more user friendly than that.
Oh, and feel free to suggest your favorite online backup solution.
Thanks for reading,
Bill

Are you trying to bring all the stuff over? Use Migration Assistant in Applications / Utilities.

Does Time Machine backup open applications/files?

I recently lost my calendars (in Entourage, Ical, Mobileme, etc.), and wanted to restore from a time machine backup.
I tried to restore the Entourage identity from a day or two before only to see that the date in Time Machine for the file was way old.
I suspected that because I leave the app open all the time, particularly all night when my backups run at 11 pm that the file never got backed up. Does this sound right?
Ical, on the other hand (which is synched to mobile me and entourage), even though I rarely open it and use it, seemed to have the updated data.
How does Time Machine deal with files that are in use?

Entourage needs some special handling. I don't use it, so can't tell you exactly how to do it, but if you search this forum for Entourage you should find a post or two (by Kappy and/or Baltwo, I think) with good advice.

Time Machine backup to DMG file

Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
From my searching it doesn't seem possible. But why not??
Before you ask what the heck for, there are some perfectly legitimate use cases for this, for example, when the DMG file represents a network-backed resource. In my particular case I'd like to use s3backer ( http://code.google.com/p/s3backer/ ) to create a DMG file backed by Amazon S3 so I can do time machine backups to the "cloud". Voila, secure, encrypted & compressed backup over the network accessible from anywhere using free software.
If it's not currently possible, what can we do to get this fixed? Even if it were an "advanced" option that would be fine of course.
Thanks.

Archie Cobbs wrote:
Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
No. For possible destinations, see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

How can I "Put Back" a time machine backup from the trash to my external hard drive?

Basically what happened was I accidentally put an older time machine backup from my external hard drive into the trash on my macbook. Since then, time machine has made new backups onto my external hard drive. How can I either "Put Back" or replace the deleted backup back into my hard drive?
Whenever I try to move it it says "A newer item named “Backups.backupdb” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?" I click replace and after a few minutes of loading, it says "Cannot replace. An item named "" already exists."

As long as you don't delete the trash, the files should be recoverable.
I suspect using the Put Back command could take a long time, so be patient.
If your Time Machine backups are mixed with your daughter's backups you might want to buy a larger drive and move the Time Machine files to the new drive.
Regarding missing photos in iPhoto...There might be options to rebuild/recover that data from iPhoto rather than trying to revert to a Time Machine backup.
Check out this third party app, iPhoto Library Manager. It has a demo.
http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/
Options for a larger drive.
I like the Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives. Works on USB 2.0 ports. They come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.
I don't recommend Western Digital because of the boot problem with some of their drives.
LaCie makes good drives.
All Mac formatted drives will cost more and it’s easy to reformat with Disk Utility. Do not use the software that comes with the drives. It’s recommended that you use Apple’s Disk Utility.
Prices vary but this gives you an idea of what you’ll find. As you notice the second and third TB is usually only $15 more per TB. Normally, you’ll find these prices but right now the 1T is more than the 2T
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 $85
Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 $99
Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB USB 3.0 $115
I have seen the 3T on sale for $99.
Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

HT201250 Can I back up with time machine AND store additional files on the same external drive?

I just bought an external drive to move and archive some files off my iMac to free up some space. I'm being asked if I want to use the drive to back up files with Time Machine. Can I use this drive to do both? (Back up with TM AND store other files?
Your input is appreciated.

Technically you can but it is not a very good idea at all. The reason it is a flawed idea is if the HD fails (not really if but when) you will have defeated the whole idea of backup. A failure means you will lose the data files you stored on it and it's backup! A good backup plan has at least 2 forms of backup because backups can fail too. I would strongly recommend getting at least one additional external HD and use it for storing the data files you wanted off the internal HD and use the second for a Time Machine backup drive.
Personally I have 3 external HD's attached to my computer. Disk 1 is my Time Machine backup, Disk 2 is a Bootable Clone of my internal HD and Disk 3 stores my music, photography and movie libraries.
Please read these articles, they will discuss different backup strategies and I think you will see that each suggest redundant backups.
Backup Plan I
Backup Plan II
Backup Plan III

Can time machine backups and data live on the same external drive?

I have a 1TB drive, more than enough for my data and backups. Question is, I already have it partitioned as Mac OSX extended (Journaled), and when I plugged it in my new mac with my old data, it said, do you want to use this as a backup drive. I selected yes, not thinking anything. But then I wondered, can I continue saving new data on this drive (music, videos, photos, etc) AND use it as a time machine backup drive, or is it either or? Hope this question makes sense. Thanks!

To expand on Lyssa's answer a bit, it really depends on what other data you want to put there.
If it's something like "scratch" space for editing video, etc., then no problem, except perhaps some contention for the drive while TM backups are running. Be sure to exclude the partition from TM, via TM Preferences > Options.
But if it's important data that's not backed-up elsewhere, then you can let TM back-up that other partition along with your internal HD. That's better than no backup of it at all, but not much.
So, consider backing it up separately, either to another external HD or (especially if it's something like photos or videos that don't change a lot) to DVDs (that you can take off-site for extra security).
But whatever you do, don't put other data in the TM partition. That will probably bite you sooner or later!

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? What files?

Exactly what files get backed up with TM?
Does this backup and image the system as well as installed files?

You will find that all of your Time machine questions are answered here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Ciao.

Will Time Machine backup Time Capsule files to an attached usb drive?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for