OS X :: Can I Use A Time Machine Drive As Regular Hdd?
May 18, 2009
this may seem strange to ask but i recently purchased a 1 TB drive and formatted it correctly to use it as a time machine archve.
after a few HOURS my 160 gig mac primary disk was backed up.
i then created a second folder entitled "not time machine backups" and am copying my iphoto library etc to it.
i plan on using that drive to store my photos from now on. it this ok?
can i use this so called "time machine" drive as a second hdd? i figure as long as i dont actually touch the time machine folder, i should be ok, right?
i'm about 9gb into my 200gb backup, and its been going 3.5 hours. i always knew this first one would take forever, i should have bought the firewire version i knew it.
anyway, does anyone know if i can still access my shiny new Western Digital drive as a regular external hard drive now i've set it for time machine?
i'll only be able to find out around wednesday next week at this rate.
this is obviously how i roll at work over three different servers/drives. i'm just wondering if time machine kills its ability to be a plug and play storage facility.
I have a seagate 320 gb external hard drive(with usb). Currently I am using a hackintosh and I will switch to Mac in a month. In my external HDD I have 200gb of pictures-movies-tv shows-documents. It is formatted with NTFS so I use it with Macfuse and NTFS 3G. When I get a macbook pro 15" i5 with 320gb hdd I will transfer all 200gb to my MBP, format the HDD to Mac os journaled instead of ntfs and use the hard drive for time machine.
After that I will still have some space. I want to use that space for carrying around documents for example to carry my presentation with me to the school. Can I use it like that? Also computers at school uses Windows, can windows read and write Mac OS Journaled format? Additional quick question: In windows if HDD is full pc gets slower, do macs get slower when hard drive is near full?
Is it possible to convert the backups.backupdb folder on an external HD I've been using for Time Machine into a regular folder? Or to otherwise move around and delete files within the backups.backupdb folder on the Time Machine HD? My old Macbook Pro was stolen and I got a new MacBook Air. I had full Time Machine backups of my MacBook Pro on an external HD. I restored the majority of the data to my new Air, but I want to leave my iTunes music on the external HD in a separate folder or partition. Unfortunately, to do this, I need to move (rather than copy) the Music folder. I can't seem to move folders around on the HD; instead, I get a message saying "The operation cannot be completed because backup items cannot be modified." I've seen a few solutions but they haven't seemed to work--I tried something in Terminal, logging in as a root user, etc. Note that I cannot enter Time Machine to turn off backups for the Music folder, because the Music folder that was being backed up was on the stolen computer.
I'm no newbie but this one has me stumped. I can put file onto a Time machine backup disk that I don't use as a backup anymore but I can't take them off. The Disk still has some backups on it that I would like to keep. But I would like to use the extra space for regular file storage. What gives. When putting a file on the disk it asks for the password but moving them to the trash it will delete everything in the folder but it won't actually delete the root folder. So my question is
1. Can I use the disk and keep the backups on it? 2. How do I get permission to read and write to the disk
I have been the proud owner of a 17" MacBook Pro that I have owned for 4 years now without any problems and still running perfectly. I am not interested in picking up a 15" MBP and once question that I have kept on asking myself is whether or not to go with the less memory of the SSD or just get more memory with the older hard drives. My question is if I go with the default hard drive can you swap that out and use a SSD drive later on? Or do they both fit into the MBS's differently?
I have an older tme capsule and I'd like to use it as just a 1-tb extenal hard drive with my Mac Pro. I messed around with the Time Capsule configuration and finally have a green light, yay! BUT, I was hoping it would show up on my desktop like the other drives.The Time Capsule: Is connected directly to my Mac Pro via a cat 5 cable. It is showing a solid green light. I have wifi turned off. I have a time machine set up with a western digital 2TB external drive. I see it show up in my finder side bar as a shared device. When I right click it the TC icon in the side menu and select open, the window shpw "not connected" at the top. (Even thought the light is green)
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 have an external 500gb drive plugged into my brand new Time Capsule. The 500gb drive basically stores my entire library of music and my iTunes points to this external drive.
Is it possible to have time machine backup all information on the 500gb drive to the time capsule, so encase the external drive takes a dump, I don't loose my entire music library? Maybe time machine is already doing this, I am not sure.
As my 160N series Linksys router neither has gigabit ports, usb connector or dual band networking, I am looking for a replacement.
When it comes to Apple routers I am looking at 2 options - either the base station with an external USB drive or get a 1TB capsule with the buildt in drive and worries regarding reliability.
What I like about the Time Capsule is that it is neat to have all in one, takes up less space and only has 1 plug to attach, while Iike the idea that I can just connect a bigger drive later on the base station solution.
1. Will the connected USB drive function just like the internal drive in the Time Capsule for Time Machine use?
2. Will everything be transparent to Snow Leopard?
3. In case of both units with an attached USB drive - can I control who actually can see the drive and access it?
4. Do they support this DNLA thing so that e.g . PS3 can access an attached drive??
I have a Mac OS X install on a hard drive which I've removed from my system due to installing a new SSD with a brand new install of OS X. I'd like to use the old 500GB drive as a storage/backup drive, but the file system/all my data is still intact on the drive. This could be useful as I want to keep all my data and would save me having to copy across to another drive, format the entire disk and then copy it all back.
I'm just a bit worried about what to do with the system files that were on there... can I just move all the files I want to keep out of the usual Mac home folders and then just delete all the system folders as if they were never there? Or do I have to re-format/re-partition to get the most out of the 'new' media drive?
I've got an external drive that was a Time Machine backup drive. It's at the police station as evidence for something and they will not let me take it back. However, they will let me come down and make a copy of it. I might only have one shot at this so I'm trying to think of the best way to do it successfully and quickly.
Can I just bring another external with me, my Macbook, and then copy the files from the Time Machine backup external drive to the other external drive? If so, what is the facility for doing this quickly? I'm kind of new at Macs and am unsure. I do not have an extra Mac that I can simply use Time Machine to restore to to replace it's contents.
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.
I'm a graphics professional taking the plunge into a Mac Pro. After some research, this is my notional drive setup:??GB SSD Boot Drive in the optical bay2 x 1TB 7200rpm SATA in RAID0, partitioned for 1.Data and 2.Scratch (therefore <2TB data)I obviously need to make sure that RAID0 is safely backed up. I've got an online backup service in case my house burns down and I'll be backing up individual projects onto optical media, but I will of course want to Time Machine the Data partition of the RAID.Now, for that Time machine drive I can either create another RAID0 from the same kind of drives (with the risk that entails), or for about the same money get a 2TB 5400rpm (leaving a drive bay free for future use, possibly another backup).
I upgraded the hard drive in my MBP (4,1 Mar '08) this weekend from a stock 5400rpm 250Gb to a 7200rpm 320Gb WD Scorpio Black. I used Time Machine to restore the system onto the new drive - via a new 1Tb external drive which I first prepped for network use via my AEBS but hooked up via FW800 to do the first backup before upgrading the hard drive. Laptop is fine - everything pretty much seems as it was - but Time Machine isn't. Every backup appears to be of the full hard drive contents (have only excluded the Parallels folder)! My otherwise empty 1Tb drive now has nearly 300Gb of backups of a 140-150Gb disk!!
Here's the du stats from inside the /Volumes/Backup of../Backups.backupsdb/..MacBook Pro : 144080500 2009-05-03-000434 142168476 2009-05-03-090644 142754912 2009-05-03-093113 35032544 2009-05-07-025139.inProgress]
3rd May was when I did the hard drive update so it was already doing the full drive backup right away, I had originally thought it was something to do with swapping out the hard drive but that's not so. I haven't been able to complete a backup since as its also incredibly slow. Left the laptop plugged in overnight and it had only completed ~30Gb in about 5-6 hours - over FW800! The drive is OK - I can copy over large files and that goes super fast as you'd expect. Ideally I'd like to keep at least the first backup from before the drive upgrade. Should I (can I?) move this onto another drive then reformat and start again?
I have a MacPro, OS X 10.5.7. I have TM configured to back up to an external 1 TB firewire drive. I use Adobe Lightroom for photography. it provides a checkbox to allow you to backup all photos as you import them from your camera card. Adobe recommends selecting an external drive for these backups. But for some reason, it does not allow me to select the external drive that TM uses.
I have had my mac for a little of year, a few days ago I downloaded a few things. Since then it takes it about 10-15 minutes to start up, even after it starts up it takes a few more minutes for things to work at a regular speed. I have cleared firefox cache and reset the Pram.
There have been a few threads about how to move a time machine backup to a new disk and maintain the existing backups. Some have done this with carbon copy cloner.
This also works with the built in disk utility in Leopard. I turned off time machine first. Then I booted with the Leopard install DVD and ran disk utility. I partitioned the new disk and gave it the same name as the old time machine drive (not sure if that's necessary). I then used the restore function to clone the old time machine disk to the new one. I rebooted, turned time machine back on and it picked up where it left off. The first backup with the new drive took a little longer than expected considering nothing had really changed but all the prior backup data is intact as if nothing had changed.
Just wondering what experiences other people have had using time machine on a Mac Pro OS 10.5.2 with an external FW400/800 HD.
I am looking at a Lacie D2 Quadra 500GB to back up the standard 320GB internal drive. Never used time machine before, is it any good or is it better to use retrospect or similar. I never use more than 100GB of my main drive as most is backed up to DVD for extra safety. Is it worth getting a SATA card.
I just setup my mac pro, and started to install my applications. Then I realized I had an older drive from way back that might have some useful stuff on it. This drive was my boot drive, with old apps installed on it. Is there a way through Time Machine (or otherwise) to install these apps on my new boot drive? I can't find the proper install dmg's.
I finally got my copy of Snow Leopard and want to do once more backup before installing. And now, my Macbook isn't detecting my Time Machine drive. This is sudden. It worked this morning. Macbook running 10.5.8. Time Machine drive is a USB WB MyBook.
I've just made some space on a USB passport drive and made a FAT32 partition in windows with partition magic (I already have files on it that I needed to keep). Now should I let time machine reformat, it'll only wipe the partition right? Or should i format it with disk utility? I'm thinking I can let time machine do it's thing but just double checking as I've managed to wipe a whole hard drive of data before now trying to make new partitions.
I've searched for this here and elsewhere and have not found a satisfactory answer as yet. Here's my problem:
I've been using Time Machine on my MacBook for a year and change, backing up to an external LaCie 500GB drive. Recently I acquired a 1TB drive to replace this and find that there's apparently no easy way to get the Time Machine database from the old drive to the new. I used Carbon Copy Cloner (as someone here suggested) and it got everything but the TM data. I've tried copying individual folders from within the old TM data structure but it tells me it's "Sorry" and refuses to do it. I would hate to have to start from scratch with TM since it has occasionally saved my bacon by finding old versions of files that I desperately needed. Does anyone know how to accomplish this?
MacBook 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo 3GB 160GB HD Leopard (10.5.8)
I have regularly been using TM with my Leopard. I just wiped my MBP clean and installed Snow Leopard. I have done a manual restore of all the files I need. My question is, can I use the old TM hard drive as the new TM backup drive, without losing the old backups? In other words, if I plug in the old TM drive and designate it as a backup disk, would my old backups be removed?
I'm planning on buying an Airport Extreme and hook an external drive to it so it can do TM backups wirelessly. Will Time Machine allow the external drive to handle two separate Time Machine backups (my MBP and my wife's MBP) or will Time Machine only allow the drive to do one of them?
I've been using a 500gb external usb drive with Time Machine for some time now. I recently bought an Airport Extreme router so I could move all of my external drives onto my network. The idea was to continue using the 500gb drive with TM, just over the network. But TM wanted to start all over like it had never used the drive before now that it was on the network. So I reformatted the drive and let TM do its thing but at the end of the 1st backup it said it had failed. Is there a way to get that 1st huge backup over with? Can I plug the usb drive into my computer and then move it over to the network and get it to pick up where it left off?
Alright I have a June09 13in Macbook Pro. I had the 160GB hard drive and upgraded to a 1TB hard drive. I have a time capsule and tried to do a restore onto the new 1TB HDD. It took about 30 hours to complete and said restart. I restarted and then it went to a screen that told me to hold the power button and restart. I looked it up and I guess it means there was a corrupted file in the backup. So I installed OSX onto the new hard drive and tried to do migration assistant and for 2 hours it said it was copying my files and would take less than a minute. I got tired of that and I'm really tired of this whole mess...what is the best option to get my 100GB of data onto this new drive? I have tons of backups on the time capsule but I don't know if I should attempt another 30 hours for it to not work.
I am looking at some OWC external drives to use with time machine on my new iMac. Is it better to go with a bus powered drive or one that has it's own power supply? I like the idea of only having one cable back there to keep with the clean look of the iMac but will go with an AC adapter if need be. Also I have a 1 TB hdd and only using a fraction of it right now. Do I need to go with a 1 TB ext hdd or can I save money with something smaller? Thanks.
