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Time Machine???

F

fjs08

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 25, 2003
1,252
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Ok, Time Machine has been "preparing" now for the last 90 minutes. What's with that?? I have it saving to an external drive. It was a brand new WD 160 GB drive to start. I've been saving other items to the drive in other folders too. Does that interfere with TM's saving items to that drive. Does it have to be a "dedicated" drive???? I still don't understand this TM stuff very well.

I went to TM to restore some items that I had purposely deleted from iTunes. Found them but they were "locked" and I couldn't get them. Luckily, I had archived iTunes to another HD and DVD's. What's with that???

I'm really confused by TM.

Am I supposed to leave TM running for a day or so to do a backup, or does it backup incrementally???

Frank
 
fjs08 said:
Ok, Time Machine has been "preparing" now for the last 90 minutes. What's with that?? I have it saving to an external drive. It was a brand new WD 160 GB drive to start. I've been saving other items to the drive in other folders too. Does that interfere with TM's saving items to that drive. Does it have to be a "dedicated" drive???? I still don't understand this TM stuff very well.

I went to TM to restore some items that I had purposely deleted from iTunes. Found them but they were "locked" and I couldn't get them. Luckily, I had archived iTunes to another HD and DVD's. What's with that???

I'm really confused by TM.

Am I supposed to leave TM running for a day or so to do a backup, or does it backup incrementally???

Frank
Click to expand...

A lot of people have been saying Time Machine does not work after the first backup. I had a lot of problems with backing up after the first time too. But when I closed most of my open applications, the backup finally completed.

When Time Machine freezes I've actually had to hold down the power button to reset my Mac...
 
tibi08 said:
A lot of people have been saying Time Machine does not work after the first backup. I had a lot of problems with backing up after the first time too. But when I closed most of my open applications, the backup finally completed.

When Time Machine freezes I've actually had to hold down the power button to reset my Mac...
Click to expand...

Damn! I thought the delay on leopard was to FIX the bugs!!!
 
fjs08 said:
Ok, Time Machine has been "preparing" now for the last 90 minutes. What's with that?? I have it saving to an external drive. It was a brand new WD 160 GB drive to start. I've been saving other items to the drive in other folders too. Does that interfere with TM's saving items to that drive. Does it have to be a "dedicated" drive???? I still don't understand this TM stuff very well.

I went to TM to restore some items that I had purposely deleted from iTunes. Found them but they were "locked" and I couldn't get them. Luckily, I had archived iTunes to another HD and DVD's. What's with that???

I'm really confused by TM.

Am I supposed to leave TM running for a day or so to do a backup, or does it backup incrementally???

Frank
Click to expand...
Just to clear things up is this your initial backup or has one been completed before?
 
>>ust to clear things up is this your initial backup or has one been completed before?<<

To be totally honest, How can I tell??? I don't really know.

and my right click on my wireless Mighty Mouse doesn't work either. Yikes. Is this stuff made by Microsoft???<g>

Frank
 
fjs08 said:
To be totally honest, How can I tell??? I don't really know.
Frank
Click to expand...
The first time you plug in your external drive and tell time machine to back up to it, it will pull up a dialogue box and let you know how the progress is going. Depending on how much data you have on your machine it might take a while. I ran mine overnight so I'm not sure how long it actually took.
 
fjs08 said:
>>ust to clear things up is this your initial backup or has one been completed before?<<

To be totally honest, How can I tell??? I don't really know.

and my right click on my wireless Mighty Mouse doesn't work either. Yikes. Is this stuff made by Microsoft???<g>

Frank
Click to expand...

The Time Machine Preference Pane (System Preferences) will tell you when the Oldest and Latest backups were made.

On the MM, have you setup the secondary button in "System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse"?
 
>>The Time Machine Preference Pane (System Preferences) will tell you when the Oldest and Latest backups were made.<<

Hee, hee, the oldest is blank, and the latest "failed!!" I leave it plugged in all evening when I get home, which is for about 4 hours before bed, and it runs from when I get up until I leave for the office, which is also 3 hours. I initially read here that it will automatically pick up the back up when you replug it in. Does the external HD that I use have to be "dedicated" to Time Machine??? I could easily erase the other stuff I have on there or restart TM from scratch, if that's possible. Also, I thought about leaving it on all nite, but the bottom of my Mac Book Pro gets really hot. I'm concerned that may damage the computer????

>>On the MM, have you setup the secondary button in "System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse"?<<

I have it set on the 2ndary button. Works sometime, then fails so that I have to hold the CTRL key while striking. Real finicky!! I don't understand it??

Frank
 
fjs08 said:
I have it set on the 2ndary button. Works sometime, then fails so that I have to hold the CTRL key while striking. Real finicky!! I don't understand it??

Frank
Click to expand...

I have this issue as well, I have found that the only way I can consistently use 2nd button is to click on the very (right) top and outside edge of the mouse (almost on the side).

I agree it's too finicky
 
fjs08 said:
Hee, hee, the oldest is blank, and the latest "failed!!" I leave it plugged in all evening when I get home, which is for about 4 hours before bed, and it runs from when I get up until I leave for the office, which is also 3 hours. I initially read here that it will automatically pick up the back up when you replug it in. Does the external HD that I use have to be "dedicated" to Time Machine??? I could easily erase the other stuff I have on there or restart TM from scratch, if that's possible. Also, I thought about leaving it on all nite, but the bottom of my Mac Book Pro gets really hot. I'm concerned that may damage the computer????
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about leaving the MBP on 24/7. Just keep it on a flat surface or some other support to allow adequate air flow underneath.

Just to make sure: Is your WD drive formatted as HFS+?

I have it set on the 2ndary button. Works sometime, then fails so that I have to hold the CTRL key while striking. Real finicky!! I don't understand it??
Click to expand...

Make sure your index finger isn't touching the left side. It relies on only seeing one finger to detect the right click. Everyone's different, but for most people it requires more effort to keep the index finger down, while pressing with middle finger. Also, if you right-click too far towards the edge, it might not see it. I sometimes let my finger curl around the front. It's very reliable if I press on the top.
 
fjs08 said:
>>The Time Machine Preference Pane (System Preferences) will tell you when the Oldest and Latest backups were made.<<

Hee, hee, the oldest is blank, and the latest "failed!!"

Frank
Click to expand...

I had the same problem with TM. I found that by changing my Spotlight preferences to exclude the external HD from being indexed it resolved the problem after a reboot. The first backup of about 70Gb then too about 90 minutes.

Also, if you use either Fusion or Parallels, make sure you exclude the folder containing the disk images etc from TM.

Hope this helps as TM really does work once that initial backup is complete.
 
>> wouldn't worry about leaving the MBP on 24/7. Just keep it on a flat surface or some other support to allow adequate air flow underneath.<<

It's on a glass table, so nothing will catch on fire or anything. I'll leave it on all weekend.

>>Just to make sure: Is your WD drive formatted as HFS+?<<

Yes. It shows that it is but I have added a few extra folders of saved material. Might it be better to just erase those and use the WD HD exclusively as a TM backup??

>>I had the same problem with TM. I found that by changing my Spotlight preferences to exclude the external HD from being indexed <<

Where is that found?? I'm not familiar with that??
Frank
 
fjs08 said:
>>
>>I had the same problem with TM. I found that by changing my Spotlight preferences to exclude the external HD from being indexed <<

Where is that found?? I'm not familiar with that??
Frank
Click to expand...
Open System Preferences and click on the Spotlight icon. Above the list of categories there's a Privacy button. Open this and you'll see a list of items that Spotlight will not search. Click on the + button and add your HD to the list.
 
Did you go into the system preferences -> energy saver and turn off sleep mode (slide it to never)?

If not, chances are it will fail.
 
Wow, I feel like Marty in Back to the Future!!! It finally seems to be working. Lots of "prep" work that I didn't know needed to be done. Thanks!!!

Now if I can only figure out this wireless mouse!! <g>

Frank
 
Wow, it seems like Time Machine isn't going very smoothly for some. Personally I didn't have any trouble. I just did a clean install of Leopard on my Mac Pro. Restored all my stuff and selected one of the internal drives as my time machine drive. It started copying 100gb and finished after sometime (I didn't stick around to watch it). I actually used it last night to recover some mail that got deleted by accident because I forgot to adjust how long Mail retains deleted messages. Worked great.
 
fjs08 said:
Hee, hee, the oldest is blank, and the latest "failed!!" I leave it plugged in all evening when I get home, which is for about 4 hours before bed, and it runs from when I get up until I leave for the office, which is also 3 hours. I initially read here that it will automatically pick up the back up when you replug it in. Does the external HD that I use have to be "dedicated" to Time Machine??? I could easily erase the other stuff I have on there or restart TM from scratch, if that's possible. Also, I thought about leaving it on all nite, but the bottom of my Mac Book Pro gets really hot. I'm concerned that may damage the computer???? Frank
Click to expand...
I had issues very, very similar to yours. Here is what I think: you have not yet completed a full backup, because most likely something is interrupting the process (an auto-logout or going to sleep---see below). When this happens, it takes forever for TM to figure out what it has left to do; hence you see "preparing" for hours and then it seems to take hours more to back up more that a few KB. Eventually, it does complete if you make sure your system stays awake and you stay logged in. It appears from your latest post you're now running OK, but for anyone else experiencing these symptoms, here is what I'd suggest:

1) start over--turn off TM, then wipe the backup off your external by erasing it. I believe it is recommended to have a dedicated partition for TM; you don't have to dedicate the whole drive, but you should create a separate partition for your backups. I have a 500gb external that I've divided about 50/50 for this purpose.

2) before beginning your first backup, complete the following:

- disable the screen saver
- under System Preferences-->Security, disable "Log out after X minutes of inactivity"
- under System Preferences-->Energy Saver, set the computer to never go to sleep. Display sleep should be OK, but you can also disable this to be on the safe side
- under System Preferences-->Spotlight-->Privacy, prevent indexing of your TM partition

3) Now go to TM Preferences and select your newly-created partition as your backup disk, and then turn on TM. Allow several hours (or better yet - overnight) for the initial backup to complete.

4) After the initial backup is complete (check TM Preferences to verify this), reverse the settings changes you made in step 2, except I'd recommend to continue disabling Spotlight indexing of your TM partition.

Good luck.
 
>>elect your newly-created partition<<

Why partition the new disk, (considering internal or external) vs just using the folder that is created for the TM back up and continuing to use the same disk to save other items????

I don't understand exactly what the partition does or does not do for you??

Thanks.

Frank
 
fjs08 said:
Why partition the new disk, (considering internal or external) vs just using the folder that is created for the TM back up and continuing to use the same disk to save other items????

I don't understand exactly what the partition does or does not do for you?.
Click to expand...

You can do that however Time Machine will continue to use more and more space over time, so eventually you won't be able to put new files on that disk.

If you want to limit the space Time Machine uses then you need to give it a partition of its own. It's just easier to manage that way.
 
tyr2 said:
You can do that however Time Machine will continue to use more and more space over time, so eventually you won't be able to put new files on that disk.

If you want to limit the space Time Machine uses then you need to give it a partition of its own. It's just easier to manage that way.
Click to expand...

It definitely sucks that space up. I have a dedicated 250GB drive backing up my 150GB macbook drive and it's already almost full!!!
 
>>It definitely sucks that space up. I have a dedicated 250GB drive backing up my 150GB macbook drive and it's already almost full!!!<,<

Yikes. I started out using a new WD 160 GIG. Guess I'll keep it only for TM.

Thanks.

Frank
 
fjs08 said:
>>It definitely sucks that space up. I have a dedicated 250GB drive backing up my 150GB macbook drive and it's already almost full!!!<,<

Yikes. I started out using a new WD 160 GIG. Guess I'll keep it only for TM.

Thanks.

Frank
Click to expand...

Less and less will be used over time, its the initial backup that takes the most space...its not like you're constantly adding apps and large files...
 
I'm a little confused about time machine as well.

As I excluded my aperture database there is only 19gb of data on my MBP so I set off time machine and once finished I wanted to make sure all my data was backed up so I checked the size of the backup folder and it was just short of 16gb but the number of files were very similar to the MBP drive so job done I thought.

Its now done 4 backups and I've checked the size of each folder and in order they are 15.7gb, 8.6gb, 15.7gb & 15.7gb so thats 55.7gb in total so why is the time machine drive only showing 16.2gb used? :confused:
 
i've done everything is the thread yet my TM still causing the mac to crash everytime i start TM

I have got it to do the first back up but thats it.

If i try and restore some thing it crashes and i have to do a hard restart
 
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