Time machine uses wrong volume for backup

jm75 · #1 February 20th, 2009, 04:13 AM

Hey,

I recently replaced my HD with a new SSD. All worked fine. Now I decided to use my old HD as a backup drive using Time machine. Unfortunately when I plugged in the old HD as an external drive and started Time machine, I realized that both HDs had the same name and somehow time machine got confused. So I simply changed the name of the external drive, and started a new back up on this drive. All good so far. (Just mentioning: I could not change the HD drive's name that easy, cause Macosx always changed names of both drives - seems it kind of references them by name? Had to plug the external drive into another computer to change its name)
Now whenever I start my computer without having the external drive plugged in, time machine recognizes my internal drive as the Backup drive. It even starts to back up the internal drive on the internal drive, throwing an error. When I then plug in my external HD, I need to go to the time machine preferences and tell it to use the external drive as the back up volume. Back ups work fine then, but time machine still marks my internal drive (as well as the external) as the back up drive.
Since backup is really a sensitive topic, I would like to have this fixed. I don't like the thought of sitting here one day realizing, something went wrong with the backups, when I really need them...

Anyone ideas?

Thanxalot.

**fryke** · #2 February 20th, 2009, 04:31 AM

Yeah, start over. Turn off TimeMachine. Then use Disk Utility to reformat the external harddrive. Give it a _unique_ name. Then, finally, start TimeMachine again and select the external drive as the destination volume. Should work fine, then.

jm75 · #3 February 20th, 2009, 04:48 AM

I did that already. The external HD has a unique name and I used it fresh for an completely new back up.
Somehow time machine stored the old drives name as well and always uses this when it cant find the external drive...

**fryke** · #4 February 20th, 2009, 04:50 AM

Not if you deactivate Time Machine and set it up anew. There's no "as well" in TimeMachine, it only confused the harddrives before. But if you reformat it externally and let TimeMachine handle the new volume as a new volume, it'll work.

jm75 · #5 February 20th, 2009, 04:54 AM

Ok...means I loose all my back up'd stuff...really sucks...

**fryke** · #6 February 20th, 2009, 05:58 AM

Yes. (And so you _didn't_ format it before.)

You can first copy backed-up stuff back to the internal harddrive, before you format the external.

jm75 · #7 February 20th, 2009, 07:32 AM

I wish I could...there where lots of other things on the external drive, that did not fit on my internal since the internal drive is much smaller...but seems to work now, I'll be back in case it doesnt

Thanx again