Questions tagged [time-machine]
Time Machine is Apple's built-in backup software. Time Machine was first introduced on OS 10.5 Leopard.
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How can I manually delete old backups to free space for Time Machine?
I use a Time Capsule for backup and now I want the drive to back up data from an extra Mac. But the drive is filled up with old backups from Mac 1. There simply is not enough space available for the ...
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On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?
In addition to whatever files I may choose to exclude, what files does the system exclude by rule or classification?
It might make sense not to backup Trash or Caches, but I'm looking for a way to ...
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How big should my Time Machine backup drive be?
My 13" MacBook Pro has 500GB internal hard drive space, and I bought a 1TB external HDD to use as my Time Machine backup. I only read from many articles that the backup should be about 2 to 3 times ...
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Time Machine ridiculously slow after El Capitan upgrade
I recently updated to El Capitan, and told Time Machine to backup. It got stuck on Preparing Backup for hours, so I stopped it, deleted the InProgress file, rebooted and tried again. After ~30 mins, ...
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Time Machine - List of Files that were backed up
I'd like to know to see which files are getting backed up by my time machine? I often see a large amount of data being transfered and I'm not sure sure what it is.
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What is the purpose of /Users/Shared/adi?
While backing up my macOS using Time Machine I came across the following folder: /Users/Shared/adi.
What is the purpose of that folder? Can this entry be safely removed?
Btw. There is already some ...
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How to wipe huge .MobileBackups folder?
I found my .MobileBackups folder quite large, it weighs 160 GiB. Shouldn't the .MobileBackups folder be wiped after the Time Machine 'backup session'?
Since I have backup done on my external drive ...
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How to thin your local Time Machine Snapshots on macOS High Sierra
I have noticed that my extra space just suddenly disappears since upgrading to macOS High Sierra. For example, I have 170 GBs free in the morning and then by the afternoon I'm down to 56 GBs.
Then ...
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Time Machine progress from the command line
The Time Machine control panel gives information on in-progress backups. For example
Is there a way to get the information from the command line?
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Can I select only a few specific folders to back up with Time Machine?
Can I backup only specific folders with Time Machine?
If there is not an "official" way to do this, does somebody know a trick to do so?
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The backup on Server is already in use
I have OS X Mavericks with the Server software installed. The server machine is an iMac with a Drobo attached via USB. I use the Server Time Machine service to create a backup server on the network, ...
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Recover certain files from Time machine from previous Mac
I just got my new Macbook Pro Retina and update it to Yosemite. I now want to recover/get some files from my Time Machine backup of my previous Macbook but don't want to migrate my whole Time machine ...
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Repair Time Machine sparsebundle that will no longer mount
I messed up my Time Machine backup in some way. I'm no longer able to mount the sparsebundle file as I get an error stating that there are no mountable filesystems.
I used the hdiutil command to ...
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How can I use an existing Time Machine backup with my new computer?
I've just replaced my existing MacBook Pro with a new MacBook Air. I've got 18 months of Time Machine backups from the old computer. I'd like to configure my new computer to use the old computer's ...
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What does Time Machine back up?
Does Time Machine backup system files, kernel files and other OS-related files?
I have corrupted system drivers and files and I want to do a fresh install of OS X but I also want to back up my ...
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How can I avoid repeated "Time Machine must create a new backup" errors when backing up to a third party NAS?
My backups seem to go well backing up to my NAS however randomly after a few weeks I get the following error. Several users get this error intermittently however I have yet to find a solution. Any ...
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How do I eject the Time Machine backup drive automatically after each backup?
How do I set Time Machine to eject my external Time Machine backup drive automatically after each backup?
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How can I disable the "no backup in x days" from TimeMachine?
(Updated answer choice for High Sierra. See the old answer if you are still on Yosemite)
I'm running OS X Yosemite, and I want to disable the notifications from Time Machine. I rarely do a hard-drive ...
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How to delete all local TimeMachine snapshots
I have automatic backup enabled and local TimeMachine snapshots take a large amount of disk space. This space is listed as purgeable in disk info, but cannot be actually used until the system decides ...
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Time Machine keeps asking to create new backup?
Every time a backup completes I get this message -
'Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.'
I am backing up to ...
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How to restore a hidden file in Time Machine?
I accidentally deleted my ~/.zshrc file and I'd like to get it back from a Time Machine backup. When I enter Time Machine I can see my home directory, but all the dot-files in the directory are hidden ...
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What are the downsides to using Time Machine?
I hear a lot about the good aspects of using Time Machine, particularly the fact that it's so easy to use that people actually do backups!
What are the downsides to using Time Machine compared to ...
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Why can't Time Machine see shared drive?
I am having trouble setting up a Time Machine backup to a shared network drive. I have an external drive plugged into a MacBook Pro (MBP), and I want to use Time Machine to remotely back up a MacBook ...
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Time Machine backup to an SMB share Mavericks
I'm following the instructions and scripts detailed in this article, but it's failing on mavericks - the mounted windows drive isn't showing up in the time machine disk selection pane.
Any ideas how ...
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How to make Time Machine backups over network without OS X server?
At our institute, we have several Macs (from 10.6 to 10.8) but not one is running a server version. In the one running 10.8 there are 4.5 TB of hard-drives from which 2 x 2 TB are raided together (...
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Does Time Machine support APFS?
I just updated to macOS High Sierra. What's the best way to use Time Machine under Apple's new APFS file system. Should I use Disk Utility to convert my external Time Machine volume to APFS?
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Mac OS Sierra - Disk Utility will not let me partition an external hard drive
Within disk utility, the partition icon is grayed out. If I mouse over it, it reads: "Disks with Master Boot Record Partition Maps cannot be partitioned". The history on this drive: It is a 2 TB ...
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How can I disable the "No Backups for x Days" from Time Machine?
Since I updated to High Sierra, I frequently get the "No Backups for x Days" notification. I used to be able to make this go away by turning off Time Machine in the System Preferences until I needed ...
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How to disable or delay "Time Machine hasn't backed up your computer in x days" message?
Mountain Lion and later OS X releases have a very useful feature where Time Machine can alternate between multiple backup destinations. I use this to back up to both a network share at home and an ...
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Can there be two separate Time Machine Backups on the same external drive?
I'm interested in buying an external hard drive. I'd like to know whether if it's possible (and simple if so) to have two separate Time Machine Backups from two different MacBooks at the same time?
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Time Machine drive encryption going for 22 hours. Is it stalled?
I set up Time Machine in Mountain Lion by plugging in a newly formatted 500GB USB drive, selecting that from the Time Machine dialog, and checking the box to encrypt my backups. A window appeared that ...
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Does Time Machine restore whole system?
I've never used Time Machine before and I pretty much know how backups work but I'm wondering if my system will work out of the box once restored from Time Machine backup?
I mean I have tons of stuff ...
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MTMFS consuming an entire CPU core and fans running full bore with Lion
You may be aware that Lion introduced MTMFS, the Mobile Time Machine File System.
I've had a couple of instances now where MTMFS has been chewing up an entire core of my dual-core (mid 2009) MacBook ...
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With File Vault ON are time machine backups encrypted?
I have been using time machine to back up to a wireless external drive since I got my mac. Today I used filevault to encrypt my hard drive.
Will this affect how Time Machine backs up my files?
Will ...
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How to fix slow Spotlight and Time Machine after upgrading to 10.7.5?
Since updating to 10.7.5 both Spotlight and Time Machine are very slow.
To index a normal system drive Spotlight calculates to need several days.
As a result Time Machine takes up to an hour or more ...
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Why is "Verify Backups" in the Time Machine icon menu disabled?
I learned in Upgraded to Lion: Time Machine spends a LOT of time indexing backup that if I hold down the option key and click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, the "Back Up Now" menu item changes ...
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Time Machine: "Enter Time Machine" menu command does not do anything
I have Time Machine running on an external hard drive and it reports happily that it is doing backups and I have no reason to doubt it.
But when I try to look at the backups by clicking "Enter Time ...
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Remove unnecessary backups from TimeMachine to get space
I know that oldest backups are removed automatically when there is no space for new ones on TimeMachine. I use TimeCapsule also for sharing files on WiFi, so I’d like to free some space by removing of ...
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How can I "clean out" my Time Machine backups if Time Machine won't backup because the disk is full?
When Time Machine tries to make a backup, it informs me that it can't because the backup disk is full.
What it's mostly full of (about 700GB of 1TB) is prior backups of the same machine. Time ...
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What folders can be safely excluded from Time Machine backup?
I want to know list of folders that can be safely excluded from Time Machine backups while ensuring that full restore can get me a same machine running immediately.
The reason why I want to do this ...
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Can Time Machine back up to an external HD connected to another Mac?
Is it possible to use Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive connected to a Mac on same wifi network?
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How do I make Spotlight stop indexing my Backup drive?
I have a 2TB external drive I use for Time Machine. At random intervals, it will decide to spin up and my entire UI freezes until it's finished. This is incredibly annoying.
It appears that this is ...
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Fastest way to delete all Timemachine Backups for a machine
What is the recommended way to get rid of a whole TimeMachine archive (aka Backups.backupdb)?
Using Disk Utility to erase the whole disk is not an option.
I moved everything to the Trash, but "...
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Is there a bash command to check to see if Time Machine has finished backing up?
I'm writing a script that will rsycnc my Time Machine directory to a remote server using ssh. I've switched from a shell script to an AppleScript and then back to an Apple script and I don't really ...
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Restoring selected files from time machine backup of a different mac
Here's the situation so far:
20" Alum iMac 2007 HDD has died (3 days after I got a new Macbook Pro - coincidence, or suicide?)
It had a time machine backup on a regular external drive
I have ...
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Find Differences between Time Machine backups
I would like to list all the changes between 2 backups in Time Machines for a specific drive. Is there anyway to do it?
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Delete all backups of specific file/folder with tmutil
I'm trying to delete all backups of specific items through the command line. I can accomplish this using the GUI through the following steps:
Enter Time Machine
Navigate to the file to be deleted ...
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How to delete another machine's time machine backup?
I've used my Time Machine drive to back up my main machine, and also a friend's mac. Her machine is now being backed up on another Time Machine drive, and she'd like me to delete her backup.
I'm ...
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Is there a faster way to copy time machine files from one disk to another?
I'm trying to move my time machine backup files all under Backups.backupdb to another drive. I initiated a file copy overnight (b/c I saw that it took OSX forever to prepare for the copy...it ...
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Difference between enabling Time Machine's "Encrypt Backups" option, and encrypting from Disk Utility?
I'm setting up Time Machine backups on a new external hard disk.
I chose to first encrypt the disk via Disk Utility:
But I also see these options:
Is there any difference between an "Encrypted" ...
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