I would like to maintain an off-site backup, and plan to rotate a hard drive on a monthly basis. I'm running 10.5.5 with Time Machine. I understand that I may need to initialize a new backup drive every time I switch drives? Any thoughts? Is Time Machine really the best way to go here?
View 2 RepliesI have a question regarding Time Machine functionality. Here's my situation. I have two hard drives in my Pro: one that operates as a Boot drive, and one for storage. Right now I have Time Machine set up to backup my storage drive, but I was wondering if it was possible to have plug in a second external drive and use it to back up the Boot drive. I searched for a similar thread, but couldn't really find anything. Has anybody successfully done this?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm sure this is answered somewhere, but does Time Machine backup any mounted drive when it does a backup, or only the internal drives, or only the boot?
View 9 Replies View RelatedSo right now I have 2 external hard drives, a 2TB MyBook Mirror edition, set at RAID 0 so its a full 2TB, and a 1TB MyBook Home Edition. I also have three LaCie 1TB drives to back up the MyBook drives.
How I back up is basically copy the contents over to the backups once a month. The problem is, using USB (my only option) takes about 24 hours per TB. Backing up 3 days a month? Not fun.
Can Time Machine do this better? I still have Tiger, so can't test it yet but it seems tedious to do things my way. I would rather be able to plug them in and sync every few weeks and not have to replace every file, just the ones that changed or were added. Can this be done?
I don't keep the drives connected 24/7 so it would have to be manual, and also can Time Machine back up a 2TB drive to 2 1TB drives? The are stuck in enclosures so i have to connect the 2 separately through USB, can't use RAID.
If Time Machine is not the answer, is there some third party program the would not require me to re-copy every file? It would be great if I could save some time doing this.
Just a quick question, if I add a second drive in an Optibay, will TM back up both of my drives?
View 4 Replies View RelatedHow can TM take backups of external drives that are connected?
View 2 Replies View Related have all of my music/videos on an external Maxtor 750 GB USB drive. I have all of my photos on the 750 GB internal drive of my iMac.
I want to get a 2 TB external for BU purposes.
Can I set time machine to BU both 750 GB drives on the 2 TB drive?
I have two Western Digital drives for backup, one with pictures and one with other files. When I select the disc for backup on Time Machine how do I select both?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Here is what I want to achieve: I have my MBP with a 500GB hard drive that I want backed up to an external 750GB drive (A). Then I have an external 1TB drive (B) that I also wanted backed up to an external 1TB drive (C).
Or:
Internal -> drive A
Drive B -> drive C
Can Time Machine do this all for me or am I going to need a 3rd-party app to help. I know I can easily use TM for doing one of the backups, but will it handle both? If not, what's a good 3rd-party app that will help me accomplish this?
I have three Macs backing up via Time Machine. They are using an external hard drive connected to one of the machines. These back-ups take place on site every day, but I also want to use the same back-up system to back-up to a second hard drive which can then be stored off-site.I have initiated first back-ups OK using this system, but now when I look to change the back-up drive once a week the machines don’t seem to recognise the earlier back-up files on the external drive and start to make a new back-up each time. The back-ups are all large and I can’t afford the time this is taking. How can I make my drives recognize the earlier back-up files and just perform an incremental back-up rather than a complete new back-up each time.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have an external hard drive that I use with my MBP at work. I'd like to buy another external hard drive to keep at home an also use with Time Machine to backup when at home. Will this work with 10.5.6? What I mean is, will Time Machine work if I plug in another hard drive at home, and still work when I plug in my other drive at work?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a linksys wrt610n wireless router that isn't set up yet. You can attach USB drives to the router to use as a nas. I can't find if time machine will use it or let me use a drive attached to the router for my backups.
View 3 Replies View RelatedCan I use Time Machine to backup multiple drives of one computer?
Info:
iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I'm trying to do a favour for a friend. She has a 320Gb external WD hard drive which she used on her Macbook to backup with Time Machine. It is not partitioned and she keeps the "Backups.backupdb" folder with other personal folders she throws in there. Recently she sold her Macbook and all that was left was this hd. She now only has access to her work pc but it won't recognize her hd as she's apparently formatted it with option "Mac OSX Journaled". So she gave me her hd to backup and then format to FAT32.
I've been a Mac for a long time but have never used Time Machine, I simply copy my important files into an external hd as I feel it's cleaner and I've never really had HD problems with any Macs I owned. So basically I have no idea how this works. I managed to copy all of her personal folders into my hd as well as the one labeled "Latest" on the Backups.backupdb folder ("Latest" is actually an alias). But I can't seem to be able to copy the rest of the backup folders. I can copy them into my computer hard drive, but each folder (I'm talking about the ones labeled with dates, there are 35 of them) is around 70Gb. Now, of course that doesn't make any sense, as it would be impossible to have 35 folders of 70Gb each in a 320Gb hd. I can only assume they use aliases as well, but when I try to copy them individually or as a whole (enclosing folder) Finder says I have no space available for that (even though I have more than 320Gb available).
Now, in my mind it's completely idiotic to keep any folders other than the Latest one. She doesn't even own a Mac anymore. But she's freaking out that I'm going to lose her entire life (she's that kind of person). I don't want to open the Time Machine app because like I said I don't use it on my computer and these are not my files, so I do not in any way want to sync with this hard drive or backup to it. I'm on a 21" 500Gb iMac running 10.7.3.
I was using a 1TB drive for Time Machine; I've now upped it to a 3TB drive. The new drive is an exact copy of the old one. But when I try to do a Time Machine backup, it's been stuck in "Preparing Backup..." for over 12 hours.
Info:
Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.5 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I have looked into this a lot already. It is to much that Time Machine backs up every single hour! It would be nice to set it to something like 3 or 5 hours. I have tried a 3rd party app to do this, but... If my computer was off or asleep when it was supposed to back up, it would get an error. It would not just do the backup when i turned it on or when it came out of sleep like stock Time Machine does. I have also seen a way to change the time incraments in the Terminal.(I am very good with it, not a noob) I have tried this and it screws up time machine completely. Maybe it does not work with the newest OS X. By the way... I have a 2010 MacBook Pro, got it 2 months ago.
Does anyone know a solid 3rd party app, that will work seamlessly. Or has anyone changed the time in Terminal and are currently using something different than 1 hour. There is a lot of examples online, but I would like the codeing that you literally used.
So I guess when I first set up my Drobo I set it up with a 2TB limit per partition. Now I want to add more drives but maintain one bigger partition and not have to start a new one.Has anyone done this yet and would you be willing to tell me how?
I basically want to reformat my Drobo so I can set my limit to 8 or 16 TB limit.Right now my drobo is showing up as two separate 2TB partitions.
I am getting the following error from Time Machine when doing my first backup. The startup disk being backed up, and the TM disk are both the same size.
Macintosh HD: 465.44 (total); 393.99 (free); 71.45 (free)
Time Machine: 465.44 (total); 465.29 (free)
The Time Machine error is: Quote:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 472.7 GB but only 465.3 GB are available." why would this be? Other disks are excluded from the backup, and Time Machine is telling me that it needs more space than it actually needs. What should I do?
I've been having a few problems with my TM backups since I got my new iMac (my MBA is working fine).
Something strange that I've noticed is when I enter into Time Machine (the program). Sometimes I see a bunch of my backups with times and dates where I can scroll through the different saves and restore if I want to. Other times though when I go into TM I only see the current save point. I can't scroll back and it only says Today on the right without any other save points. It is almost like I've only done one TM backup.
The other strange thing that I see is if I look at iStat. Sometimes it shows two Time Capsule hard drives and other times it shows only one. If I choose to change disk in Time Machine preferences the Time Capsule is listed twice. I don't think it has anything to do with a partition (which I never did) because both drives show the same used and free info (something like 377 free of 461) and I only have a 500GB drive.
I was a PC user who recently moved to mac. I have a macbook (intel 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD). When I was using PC, I backed up all my data to a network storage device (Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB connected to a 802.11g netgear router which is supplied by Sky) using a program called SmartSync Pro, which worked very well. Although I can connect to and mount the Share folder on this drive when the macbook is connected to the network, Time Machine will not back up to it. It wouldnt even recognise the disk on the network.
So I went onto the trusty internet, and found that you can get time machine to recognise the Share folder. (This was obtained from: http://blog.imulus.com/george/software/using-leopard-time-machine-to-backup-of-a-network/)See my comment on their page at the bottom, number 66.
It recommended entering the following in to the Terminal: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Before attempting backup I have to go into "Network" and select the Share folder by double clicking on it. This seems to mount the volume. After this, it can be seen in Time Machine as a potential backup destination.
However, this method does not work for me. Time Machine "prepares" for a while, then gives the following message: Time Machine error. The backup disk image could not be created.
More internet searching took me to macosxhints which suggests creating something called a sparsebundle image on my local system. (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137) Have not tried this yet as I thought it would be prudent to seek some help first.
Apple have deliberately disabled the ability for Time Machine to back up to network attached storage, (except of course to their proprietory Time Capsule):
Is this because time machine requires a network faster than 802.11g?
Is this because a time machine backup to a network attached storage device is unreliable and the data is corrupted?
I dont want to shell out more cash for a time capsule. I would prefer not to have to hardwire to an external drive (which I will also have to go out and buy). Any thoughts?
I just purchased a Seagate 3 TB USB 2.0/3.0 external drive to use as my time machine backup drive. I have a MacBook Pro that was purchased about 3-4 years ago. The MacBook Pro has a 120 GB hard drive and is currently running MAC OSx 10.6.8. I also have another WD 1 TB FireWire external drive that I use to store all of my media files.
After I followed the instructions for installing the new Seagate drive for use with the MAC OSx, I initiated a time machine backup. It very quickly determined that it needed to back up almost 900,000 files totaling just about 400 GB. It started the backup process at a rate of about 1 GB per minute. In a little less than an hour it reach 53 GB and remained there for an additional two hours before I decided to stop the backup.
Once I got the backup stopped, I deleted the backup and decided to look at my energy saving settings. I noticed that the "Put drives to sleep whenever possible" check box was checked, so I unchecked that option and restarted the MAC. I then initiated the time machine backup again. Like the first time it quickly determined that it needed to backup the same amount of data as before and started the backup process at a rate of about 1 GB per minute. Before going to bed at around 11 PM last night it was at about 60 GB so I thought I was out of the woods (having gotten further than the 53 GB earlier). When I woke up this morning at 5:30 AM it was sitting at 69 GB.
I am really frustrated at this point and don't know why the time machine back up would be failing on a brand new hard drive. PS - I was previously using a Seagate 1.5 TB USB drive as my time machine backup and never had any issues with it. I decided to use the 1.5 TB drive for a different purpose, which is why I have the new 3 TB drive to use as a backup. And I still have the full backup on the 1.5 TB drive just in case anything were to go awry.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I have a external HD which has always worked fine under snow leopard. Since upgrading to lion I keep getting the following message The identity of the backup disk has changed since the previous backup.The disk may have been replaced or erased, or someone may be trying to trick your computer into backing up to the wrong disk. And after this the drive disappears from the desktop appearing agian only after restart. What can I do do rectify this? Delete and re-intialise the drive?
Info:
MacProQuad2.6 4gbRam, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Just wanted to check if he problem was unique to my MBA (Rev B, HDD) or you notice it too ;
My Time Machine backup takes up to 6 hours to do a backup of about 30GB. And each backup size is 31.5GB everytime !!
I have the following Config - 80 GB for OSX (53GB Free) and 40 GB (10GB Free) for Win 7 on Bootcamp. Sometimes I wonder if TM making a backup of Win 7 also everytime. (Does it mean - In a way its good, that means I should be able to restore the entire hard disk from TM including Applications, Win 7 , bootcamp and all the programmes installed in Win 7 in case I have a problem ?)
But the speed should still be fast... 6 hours to do a 32GB backup is torturous specially because then I have to leave the machine alone and cannot use it.
Is there a way to make a backup of your Time Machine backup on a 2nd hard drive? I want to be doubly sure that my data is backed up!Right now I get an error saying that the second hard drive isn't authorized to copy my Time Machine data from the original hard drive I have set up as my Time Machine.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I just replaced my HD on my 15"MBP. The install went well until restoring my data from Time Machine. The apps came over fine but none of my data did. Yes, I checked all the boxes on the "restore from backup" menu.
Of course now when I start up time machine the backup isn't there. How do I get Time Machine to recognize the backup? I have it on two places - a time capsule and a separate external HD.
I just replaced the stock 160GB HD in my unibody macbook with a WD Blue Scorpio 640GB HD. I used Super Duper to clone the old drive to the new one, approximately 115 GB.
Now Time Machine wants to backup the full 115GB to my Time Capsule, which kinda sucks because it's going to be a redundent backup that's gonna take up over a 10th of my TC's space. Is there any way to avoid this and still use Time Machine?
I have a 1tb external for time machine back up and have about 750 gb of stuff to back up. I was under the impression that when time machine backs up my stuff it will automatically delete the oldest backup to create room for the newer backup.
My problem is that i did a back up a couple weeks ago and then today i go to back up and it tells me back up failed only 718gb available for 740gb of stuff to back up
anyone have this problem? how can i fix it?
Well TM is acting up. I get an error that reads: "This backup is too large for the backup volume."
Both the internal boot disk and the external baclup drive are 1TB. The internal one has a two partitions, the OSX one that is 900GBs and a 32GB NTFS one for Boot Camp. The external drive is a single OSX Extended part. that is 932GBs.
Both the Time Machine disk, and the Boot Camp disk are excluded from the backup along with a "Crap" folder for temporary large files.
Time Machine says it needs 938GBs to backup only the OSX disk, which has 806GBs in use with the rest free. WTFFF?
This happened after moving a large folder (128GB in total) from the root of the OSX disk over to my Home Folder.
I have reformated the Time Machine drive and have no backups at all of my data and it refuses to backup!!
Why would it need 938GBs of space to backup if the disk has "only" 806 GBs in use??? Is there anyway to reset Time Machine completely???
Some quick screenshots:
my TM wil not back up! It states that this backup is too large for the backup disk. The back up disk requires 573.50 GB but only 225.23 GB are available. The TM needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Upen TM perferences to select a LARGER backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding file.
Okay I;m sorry but obvioulsy I dont get this. I've never called Apple for help! I have every product they sell practically including Protection Plans I never used and no one will help me with this. My MAC is starting to have black or white screens and i can hear it running but it will not do anything so i have to reboot it, it screws up Enturage and then I have to rebuild that ( 5 times this year) anyway... I would like to back everything up- can I delete everything on the Time Capsule or Time Machine; god I dont even know what it is called Im so MAD... help if you can please. I'm going to have to take this to the genius people at the store and probably buy another computer but like before they will not save my files.
Info:
Mac OS X (10.7.3), time cap or Time Machine
There are 3 macs:
A: an old macbook (the white one)
B: a modern macbook pro (retina)
C: another modern macbook pro (TBD)
I am giving away B now; I expect to get C in 2 months time; I keep A with me all the time.
The goal is to migrate all of the data from B to C. I have Time Machine backups of B.
Since the transition is a long time (2 months), I need to keep working on my data during this period. For this I will use A. This will generate new files, modify old ones, ...
Since A's HDD is much smaller than B's backup, I can move only part of them.
By the way, I have totally erased A and used migration assistant to restore part of my old data from B. So, when I use A now, I do it with my same account as in B (and the same I will use in C).
How do I manage my backups in such a way that, when I will get C, I can safely move all of the data I had in B plus all of the changes and modifications that I have done during the 2 month transition?
Can I just continue to use Time Machine (on A) to update the old backups? I am afraid that some mess could be created because the computers are different (before the backups were taken on B, while now on A), even the present data are different (because now A only contains a subset of the original B data, which I do NOT want to lose), the good point is that the user is the same.
