Hardware :: Wireless Hard Drive To Use With Time Machine?
Mar 30, 2010
I just can't figure this out for myself. I've tried. And failed, miserably.
I have a 27" iMac. I'm connected to the internet wirelessly via a O2 Wireless Box II.
I need to buy an external hard drive on which to back up my data. I want to use it with Time Machine.
Ideally I'd like the external hard drive to work wirelessly. Is there such a thing (apart from Time Capsule)?
I was thinking about buying a Time Capsule. However, I only have one computer (no file, etc. sharing required here), so maybe I would be wasting my money??
Could the Time Capsule replace my O2 wireless box II or would I still need the O2 wireless box II to connect to the internet? (Sorry, I don't understand about 'routers' and 'modems'.)
I had Time Machine making wireless backups from my MacBook to a LaCie hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme Base Station. It's worked great for at least year. The 10.5.8 upgrade seems to have broken it. It's still not an Apple supported configuration.
why I tryed using their wireless service, which would seem screwed my Hard drive. I installed a small application from Telstra (main telecommunications company in Australia) that allows you to connect via a USB modem to the internet wirelessly. After completing the installation, it prompted me to restart and I did so. However, before it shut down a dialogue came up saying it had to clear/reset the system cache or something like that. I clicked ok (only thing i could do) and my computer restart as normal and I had internet. The problems started when my time machine tried to backup; where it stopped while "preparing to backup" and came up with an error dialogue saying something like Time failed because it couldn't find the directory. I restarted my mac once more without the USB modem attached and tried the backup again, whereby i new error came saying it couldn't mount the drive. One more restart later and I now have a Time Machine that doesn't backup or see prior backups, and a Hard Drive that not only can't be mounted but isn't recognised as even a Media device by Disc Utilities.
I have a 2 TB western digital hard drive connected via USB to my airport extreme (Y2012) that i've been using the past 2 years to connect to wirelessly. The hard drive has 2 partitions, ~1 TB each. 1 partition for backing up, the other for storing media. Recently I deleted my macbook pro backup. My macbook pro has a 500GB hard drive, of which about 120 GB is free.
Since I deleted the old time machine backup disk image and told time machine to start a new backup, I am now receiving an error. It's telling me there isn't enough room on the drive, when the 1TB partition i'm trying to use (as i've sucessfully done in the past) has nothing on it. 1 full TB free, and my macbook pro can't backup a 500 GB hard drive, which isn't even full itself.
I have a macbook pro early 2011, and I never know when the board is going to go koput again and I don't currently have a backup of my stuff while this problem persists.
Info: Macbook Pro 2011 Thunderbolt, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I have just set up an external hard drive to my wireless router and am now wanting to set up Time Machine to back up to the hard drive. I can see the hard drive in Finder and can even send files to it manually. I just don't see in setting up Time Machine any option to backup to that hard drive.
I was trying to set up my Time Machine to an external hard drive. I didn't continue because it asked to "initialize" the hard drive which I had a lot of important things on.
I have another external hard drive I'd like to use but, my Time Machine has this error code of -43. What is this and how can I use my Time Machine on another external hard drive?
I would like to use FileVault to encrypt both my hard drive and time machine back up external drive. Does encryption noticeable slow down the computer.
Info: MacBook Air (13-INCH, MID 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Basically I have a 750GB hard drive in my Macbook Pro and over 300GB is taken up with 'BackUp' data. This is more than the total of everything I have on the drive other than that. Time Machine has always been setup on an external drive and when searching all files on the Macbook there is nothing for backup files so don't know where it is coming from.
Well my last couple of Time Machine back ups have been huge like 60GBs and my initial was approx. 100gbs, I thought time machine made smaller backups after the initial one not huge ones. Also, it seems like something is eating up my hdd space; last week I had 100gbs free and now I have only 50 and no major changes have been made to my mac so I am quite confused. Also, in my Music Folder I see a list of all of my artists and a folder called iTunes with all my apps but it also has a folder in that called iTunes Music which is 32 gb. That folder has a list of all my artists but I don't see a couple in the other folder that are in my iTunes Music folder. I used Disk Inventory X which gave me 10gbs.
I recently bought a small capacity external hard drive. I don't download and store music, movies, et cetera so I purchased a 250gb Western Digital portable one.
I want to mostly back up my writing (I do a lot), some photos (for convenience, although I don't have many), and files (I have client information on my computer). So for the most part, they are small things.
If my computer was to crash, my worry is mostly that my writing would be lost. My question is, if I use Time Machine, does it automatically back up everything ? Or do I select things? Am I better off dragging and dropping? I am new to this.
Also, I also run Parallels as for one of my jobs, I have to use a Windows based program. I don't do anything else in my Parallels. If I was to lose the info on my computer, and Parallels was backed up, would I have to reinstall it on a new computer? This concerns me as I no longer have my Windows CD that I needed for the initial installation.
I was just wondering if there is anyway to use time machine as an external hard drive? i'm running low on storage with my macbook and wanted to move some files to it permanently for storage
I was trying to move all of my movies on to my external hard drive and I copied all of them (took two hours) on there. Then I deleted all but three of them off my computer and emptied the trash. I then look back at my hard drive's files and they aren't there!!! The only thing that was there was the 3 files.
But I also have time machine saved to update my external hard drive. It did and I can see the previous computer times/events/whatever you want to call it. I go to Hard drive>backups.backupdb>My Mac Book Pro>2010-05-04>Macintosh HD>Users>Me>Movies which only shows my iMovie library. I do the same thing but with Music>iTunes>iTunes media>movies to which only one file shows up.
I will be getting a MBP but I will need more storage, hence the external hard drive. I wanted to buy time capsule but I read that it is not possible to partition it. So, would I be better off with an external hard drive(FireWire 800) that I can actually partition or get time capsule which offers the wireless connection. As for the speed I guess the wireless connection with time capsule must be pretty slow?
I am a new Mac user. I want to set up Time Machine on my Mac mini as well as have an external hard drive for my audio projects. Can I use one hard drive for Time Machine and extra storage?
Just finished setting up my new 27" iMac and the last piece of the puzzle is to setup Time Machine. I have an external 500GB hard drive that Im not using (even though my hard drive is 1TB, Im only using 157GB right now so the 500GB should be fine). My concern is...will it slow down the computer when its backing up since the drive is USB? Would it be worth buying a Firewire 800 external drive (~$150)?
I have a Macbook Pro 13.3" running 10.6.4. I've had this computer for a year now and I have always wondered. Can my 500 GB Toshiba Hard Drive be used for Time Machine and for storing files at the same time?
I've heard about partitioning it, but will that delete the files on there? I dont have enough space on my hard drive to backup my external HD.
I have an external hard drive that I use to back up my Mac with Time Machine. Where on that drive would I be able to find web bookmarks that I have since deleted from Safari?I don't want to reset all on my bookmarks, just look up one.
I recently purchased a Time Capsule and love it. However before getting the Time Capsule I used an external hard drive for Time Machine. My question is how do I get Time Machine to work on the external hard drive while it its plugged into the Time Capsule? When I connect the external hard drive to Time Capsule, it recognizes it and I can access the other data I have on the drive. However, when I try to access the Time Machine backups I get The alias ... could not be opened, as well as getting a failed message when I try to do a backup. I've been trying to find a solution online but haven't had much luck.
I'm new to macs, having just bought a 24" iMac on the 2nd. So I qualify for the Leopard upgrade. The Time Machine feature really sounds cool, and I'd like to use it. 'Cept I haven't a clue about which external hard drives are the best, or in particular... which one is the best.
I'm assuming firewire is the way to go for speed, but I have no idea how large a drive I'd need. My internal drive is 500GB. Anyone have any suggestions for a durable, quiet external drive? What can I expect to pay?
We also have a second 20" 2.4 Ghz iMac in the house that has the 320GB drive in it. It will be getting the Leopard upgrade as well, so I could use a suggestion for an external drive for Time Machine for that iMac too.
I started installing Leopard last night before going out. I came back late last night (or early this morning) and sat down to explore the new OS. There was a pop-up about using Time Machine with my external hard drive. I clicked okay.
It began loading and running Time Machine before telling me my external hard drive was the wrong format or something. It then gave me the option to delete (which I assumed ment delete the Time Machine files from my external hard drive). I clicked on it.
A few minutes later I realized that it had erased my entire external hard drive, renaming it "Time Machine Backups". I had JUST moved my entire music and movie collection to that hard drive and am wondering if there's any way I can recover those files.
I was thinking of getting an external hard drive for use with Time Machine. On Amazon I found a Seagate 1.5 TB unit for $129. However there is a similar model "for the mac" for $192. I am wondering if the cheaper unit would work, or if the one for 50% has some indispensable feature.
As you may have read in other threads, I upgraded my hard drive today with plans to restore from Time Machine. I left for class with the restore on a screen that asked me to select which items I want to restore (everything). When I left, it said it was calculating the size of the transfer. The transfer button was grayed out. When I came back 6 hrs later, it was still calculating. What on earth is going on?
I was just wondering if the big ol' hard drive that I use for Time Machine backups, if I can store other files on there also or can it only hold Time Machine backups?
I just purchased a seagate 1.5TB drive - can I put 2 partitions on it - one for time machine (mac formated) and one for Windows (NTFS formatted) will that work if connected to the Airport Extreme and if so how do I do that with the disk utility?
I need some help on this matter. I have a Western Digital external hard drive hooked up to my AirPort Extreme; and I am able to view it as a drive on my MacBook Pro but when I go and try to start up "Time Machine" its no where to be found. The hard drive is formatted as a FAT32 drive, does this matter in regards to recognition by Time Machine?
i have a Mac Mini and two mac notebooks that run Snow Leopard. I've been backing these machines up to a 300 GB drive that is now full.Today I brought home a 2TB drive so that I can use Time Machine to backup the desktop Mac Mini.
Can I use the same hard drive to use Time Machine for the two notebooks, as well? What about storing other backups on that drive as well? I'm just trying to map the most logical approach to having safe backups. Let me know what you think.
I may need to take my new 27" iMac in for a replacement and only have with me a 250gb usb hard drive. I have used 182gb's of space on my iMac as of right now. Should I be OK for this one back up? While on the subject, what size external back drive should I be looking at?
I have a 500 gb ext HD, that i will be partitioning to 2 sections, one will be mac os extended for time machine, the other will be fat32 for storage and so that i can use the hd with windows and mac.
so my questions are:
1. how many GB should i leave for back up so that time machine works effectively?
2. any suggestions on how i should divide the 500 gb between mac os extended and fat32? such as 250/250 or 400/100?
Time Machine is backing up my internal 1Mac hard drive fine to an external drive ("backup ext drive"). I have another external hard drive attached to the Mac that I would also like to back up to the back-up ext drive. I've looked around on Time Machine as best I can but can't find any place that lists drives to be backed up, so I can tell Time Machine to back it up, also. I have found a list in Time Machine of drives I can back up to. That list shows both external drives. But of course, I want to back this one up, not use it as a back up drive. Should be something simple I'm missing. I've seen a lot in the forum about issues backing up external ard drives via Airport Express (or Extreme), but though I have Airport Express, both external drives (back up ext drive and the one to be backed up) are directly connected to the iMac, so I'm not trying to use Airport for this.
