Time Machine

[napster846]

Hi

Im trying to use Time Machine to backup my Mac. But when I click 'select backup disk', it does not list any disk I can backup on. Can someone tell whats wrong?

Thank you.

 

[robbieduncan]

Do you have an external drive connected?

 

[miles01110]

Any disk needs to be HFS+ (Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)) formatted. If you are trying to back up to an internal disk (which makes no sense) you need a separate partition.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Hi

Im trying to use Time Machine to backup my Mac. But when I click 'select backup disk', it does not list any disk I can backup on. Can someone tell whats wrong?

Thank you.

Silly question: but do you have a backup hard drive connected to your mac? Is it turned on, plugged in properly, etc,

 

[napster846]

yes it is plugged into my mac. the lights are on

 

[Mac'nCheese]

yes it is plugged into my mac. the lights are on

Does the mac recognize the hd at all? Is there an icon on your desktop for the new hd?

 

[napster846]

Does the mac recognize the hd at all? Is there an icon on your desktop for the new hd?

yes there is an icon and i can access the files on the hard drive

 

[Mac'nCheese]

yes there is an icon and i can access the files on the hard drive

Did a quick google search...possible solution:


Click the Apple menu, system preferences. Click the "Time Machine" button, click "Change Disk", select the drive you want to us as a time machine backup, it will say "reformat required" probably, click "use for backup", it will say you need to erase it. Click erase, it will do it on it's own, and then it will allow you to use it for backup and it should just show up as a time machine backup on the desktop.

However, this sounds like you would loose files already on this hard drive. unless they are just test files to see if the hd is working, I wouldn't necessarily do this, of course.

 

[napster846]

Did a quick google search...possible solution:


Click the Apple menu, system preferences. Click the "Time Machine" button, click "Change Disk", select the drive you want to us as a time machine backup, it will say "reformat required" probably, click "use for backup", it will say you need to erase it. Click erase, it will do it on it's own, and then it will allow you to use it for backup and it should just show up as a time machine backup on the desktop.

However, this sounds like you would loose files already on this hard drive. unless they are just test files to see if the hd is working, I wouldn't necessarily do this, of course.

Thats my issue, it does not list my drives when i click "change disk"

 

[robbieduncan]

You never answered the question above: is it HFS+ formatted?

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Thats my issue, it does not list my drives when i click "change disk"

Gotcha, sorry. I'm out of ideas. Maybe someone else could help.... If the mac is new, of course, maybe a call to the help line would help?

 

[garcia2ko]

Two things that may be useful, as I just got a Mac and put Time Machine to use:

The external drive I already had would work for Time Machine backup, but the computer informed me it would have to be reformatted. I had been using it with my old Win PC but it still acknowledged it. I decided not to touch it and got another external HD...the set the new one to handle the back ups.

The second thing is I found a program (can't remember the name but a quick search will yield some options) to schedule the backups at different intervals than the "every hour" only option that Time Machine comes with. I do it once a day at 3:00am and it works for me.