Time machine hints

[jarome]

Time machine really hosed me when I installed Leopard. It asks if you want to use a disk as backup and then proceeds without asking you which disks you want backed up! I canceled it, and hosed it completely. Every time Time Machine launched, it was unable to do a backup and my system eventually froze.

Quicksilver (the new one that is supposed to work in Leopard) also kept freezing and would not force quit. So I have dumped it. Their Web site is down too :-(. So I removed QS, but TM was still hanging.

Solution:
1) Turn off Time machine
2) Delete the backup directory it makes. Reboot and empty the trash holding the Opt key down
3) Go in to the TM setup, and specify which disks should NOT be backed up
4) Change the backup disk. But then quickly turn off time machine. You have just 20 seconds to do this
5) Change the disk back to the one you want to use.

The backup will now work. By the way, you can use an internal disk for backup, even though that is not mentioned by Apple. Its the cheapest way to go and faster too. But get a whole disk for this.

 

[skybolt]

I have not received my copy of Leopard yet, so want to be prepared. When you start it up, does TM automatically come up? Do you get to tell it where you want your backup to go? I have an external that is partitioned so that I can have a clone (SuperDuper) and on the other partition I have my photos and music. Can I specify which partition I want TM to use? Should I erase my clone before I fire up TM? Just trying to get a handle before I install.

Thanks for any help/advice you can give!

 

[aicul]

Hi,

I have my disks on a separate Mac. My plan was to use these (via airport) to do the backups. Unfortunately the "network" SHARED disks do not appear in TimeMachine.

Anyone know if this is a limitation of Leopard?

 

[fryke]

I've first attached the harddrive directly to my MacBook, then put it on the server and mounted it again on my MacBook. I'm not sure whether it would've worked correctly, but TimeMachine started to copy something. Worth a try...

 

[fryke]

I have not received my copy of Leopard yet, so want to be prepared. When you start it up, does TM automatically come up? Do you get to tell it where you want your backup to go? I have an external that is partitioned so that I can have a clone (SuperDuper) and on the other partition I have my photos and music. Can I specify which partition I want TM to use? Should I erase my clone before I fire up TM? Just trying to get a handle before I install.

Thanks for any help/advice you can give!

Unpartition it and let TimeMachine handle it. It'll be both a backup for restoring single files and a backup for restoring the whole shebang should your internal drive die or become unbootable. You can simply start from the Leopard DVD and tell it to restore from the TimeMachine backup - including system files etc.

 

[eric2006]

About shared drives - make sure the actual drive is shared, not just a folder inside. You may also have to mount the drive on the backup computer by opening the share.

 

[skybolt]

Unpartition it and let TimeMachine handle it. It'll be both a backup for restoring single files and a backup for restoring the whole shebang should your internal drive die or become unbootable. You can simply start from the Leopard DVD and tell it to restore from the TimeMachine backup - including system files etc.

Well, if I unpartition it, I'll lose my photos and music. I do have another backup of that, so maybe what I should do is re-partition to 3 partitions -- one for TM, one for SuperDuper and one for photos and music? Then I'd have to do the same scheme to my second external (I use that for off-site backup). Sounds like a weekend's worth of work. And, I'm not sure my drives are big enough for all of that -- 200 and 250 gigs respectively. Maybe I'll just turn TM off for a while until I sort it all out.

Thanks for your reply!

 

[eric2006]

Well, if I unpartition it, I'll lose my photos and music. I do have another backup of that, so maybe what I should do is re-partition to 3 partitions -- one for TM, one for SuperDuper and one for photos and music? Then I'd have to do the same scheme to my second external (I use that for off-site backup). Sounds like a weekend's worth of work. And, I'm not sure my drives are big enough for all of that -- 200 and 250 gigs respectively. Maybe I'll just turn TM off for a while until I sort it all out.

Thanks for your reply!

If your media files are originals, then you should give them their own partition. If they're on your machine, TM will back them up. You won't need your SuperDuper partition with Time Machine - Time Machine does the same thing, better.

 

[aicul]

About shared drives - make sure the actual drive is shared, not just a folder inside. You may also have to mount the drive on the backup computer by opening the share.

But if the drive appears in the finder window under "shared" is this not sufficient?

 

[fryke]

Yes, like I previously said: Forget about cloning the drive. TimeMachine's backup does that well enough. I've explained it. The more partitions you make, the more space you lose, because for every use, you'll want a little spare space. Don't repartition, then. Just use the one you previously used for cloning for TimeMachine and leave the other stuff alone, then.

 

[andyhargreaves]

I've first attached the harddrive directly to my MacBook, then put it on the server and mounted it again on my MacBook. I'm not sure whether it would've worked correctly, but TimeMachine started to copy something. Worth a try...

Does this work as it should, or does it try to create a whole new backup over the network?

 

[andyhargreaves]

OK, I've given this a go. It seems to create a whole new backup, sadly. I left mine running best part of 24 hours to make the initial backup, and now it appears to be doing the hourly backup just fine.

One thing though, does the backup run every hour from the time you logged in, or some other time algorithm?

Otherwise, loving TM and Leopard in general.

Andy