Time Machine problem - will not resume backing up to first backup drive

[valdore]

I've had a backup drive sitting on the floor plugged in continuously for a year, and everything's been fine. Then, yesterday I brought in another external drive to do a Time Machine backup for the intention of keeping that drive off-site in case my building ever burns or blows up or whatever.

So now, I cannot get Time Machine to continue making backups to the first external drive that I keep on the floor, after having made that other backup yesterday to the new drive. When I try to have it resume backing up to the old drive, I get this stupid message that I cannot move this file ".0019e3f8eec6" to Time Machine, or whatever. Screenshot attached.

Help appreciated.

 

[jacg]

I didn't think you could sync to more than one drive at a time with Time Machine. I wanted to do the same thing as you and couldn't do it. Ended up using CCC to just make a duplicate of my boot drive for the off-site back-up.

Would be interested if you can do it though.

 

[valdore]

I didn't think you could sync to more than one drive at a time with Time Machine. I wanted to do the same thing as you and couldn't do it. Ended up using CCC to just make a duplicate of my boot drive for the off-site back-up.

Would be interested if you can do it though.

I had wondered about it as well, but after fiddling with the Time Machine settings in System Preferences, it gave me the option of backing up to the new drive I had just plugged in. So I figured there'd be no issue.

Of course now I want my Time Machine to resume backing up to the previous drive, and when I try to get it to do that, I get that error message above.

 

[mrkgoo]

I had wondered about it as well, but after fiddling with the Time Machine settings in System Preferences, it gave me the option of backing up to the new drive I had just plugged in. So I figured there'd be no issue.

Of course now I want my Time Machine to resume backing up to the previous drive, and when I try to get it to do that, I get that error message above.

I don't think Time Machine can back up to more than one drive at a time. You can select a NEW drive, but it should dissociate the old drive as a TM backup (although it should probably still retain the backup data). Did you re-select the first drive and make it a 'new' Time Machine drive? I wonder if this re-associates the old one, and if it does, whether it deletes it and restarts, just restarts, or continues from where it left off.

You know, I know it is deliberate for the simplicity, but I wish there were just some added functionality, such as an advanced pane where you can adjust just a few more things like multiple drives, scheduled times, frequency and so on (and yes, I know there are third-party solutions).

 

[valdore]

I don't think Time Machine can back up to more than one drive at a time. You can select a NEW drive, but it should dissociate the old drive as a TM backup (although it should probably still retain the backup data). Did you re-select the first drive and make it a 'new' Time Machine drive? I wonder if this re-associates the old one, and if it does, whether it deletes it and restarts, just restarts, or continues from where it left off.

You know, I know it is deliberate for the simplicity, but I wish there were just some added functionality, such as an advanced pane where you can adjust just a few more things like multiple drives, scheduled times, frequency and so on (and yes, I know there are third-party solutions).

I believe I told it to disassociate from the old backup drive so that it would run an initial backup to the new drive that I want to keep off-property. The old drive does indeed retain all the backup data, but I am just unable to get Leopard/Time Machine to resume using the old drive for backups now (unless, I suppose if I just wipe the old drive and start anew with it as well).

Agreed there needs to be more advanced options for this. Kind of rotten in my opinion if indeed it's such a big hassle to use two or more different drives for Time Machine.

 

[mrkgoo]

I believe I told it to disassociate from the old backup drive so that it would run an initial backup to the new drive that I want to keep off-property. The old drive does indeed retain all the backup data, but I am just unable to get Leopard/Time Machine to resume using the old drive for backups now (unless, I suppose if I just wipe the old drive and start anew with it as well).

Agreed there needs to be more advanced options for this. Kind of rotten in my opinion if indeed it's such a big hassle to use two or more different drives for Time Machine.

Kind of different needs for different users. While I would LIKE for it to resume an old one, that may not be possible or even desirable for some people. For example, it's probably better that it doesn't recognise the old one, because some people may WANT to start a new backup on the same drive (though I suppose they could always just delete the old one).

A great option would be to have Time Machine simple make an archive copy. But even then, that's not what Time Machine does - if you wanted another copy of your drive for archival purposes, I suppose you should have just used Disk Utility (can it do that?) or some other software to make a clone of your drive.

I think people tend to get mixed up with 'backing up' and 'archiving'. Time Machine is not for archival purposes, because it deletes older and in between backups.

 

[valdore]

Okay, following up on this thread - problem has been solved and I can in fact now backup to two different drives. Something after the 10.5.6 update messed up something...

I had run another search this evening, which took me to this thread here on Macrumors, which detailed the same problem, with a link to a guy's blog detailing a fix by using Terminal commands.

Funny how half of the time when I Google an OS X troubleshooting problem, I'm brought right here to this forum.