How to use Time Machine with a laptop?

As mentioned in other posts, you can use TM over a lan as long as your disks are connected to a Mac and shared - although in my experience it does sometimes behave a little oddly and it might be worth direct-connecting the drive to each machine for the first backup.

After the initial backup, I think TM only records changes.

+you can use TM over a lan as long as your disks are connected to a Mac and shared+

I have a Lacie Network drive connected to the airport on the LAN, so that will not work? Kinda stupid I think. What is the use off a networkdrive beside sharing files... yes backup!

Apple, U need to get this working. I am not gonna buy a separte external disk for each Mac in my network.

Just installed, Leopard, hooked up external hard drive, and time machine wants to wipe it clean. I have another external hard drive at the office. I have a lot of old video already backed up on this drive. It seems that I might have to buy another dedicated hard drive, or archive from one hard drive to the other HD wipe the original as Time Machine suggests. Then I most likely can retransfer the video files back?? Any one face this issue. Or is Apple trying to sell new HD for this time machine upgrade?

Razz

I have a LaCie 500gb d2SAFE HD. My Macbook Pro recognises it when I connect normally. When I come to setup TM it cannot find the external HD. I have a seperate AMACOM external HD which it does recognise! What is worse I bought the LaCie in an apple store. Apple must do better! Could I be missing something? Wrong format? Any ideas anyone?

Michael Oman-Reagan wrote:
This is an EXCELLENT point. - Why not give users the ability to clone their drive or create a disk image from it every week or so, but in the meantime, just give us the UI for recovering trashed documents or reverting to changes made.

One simple way to do this would be to put a flash drive in every Mac that is separate from the HD. That would give you the safety of using something in addition to the drive and the convenience of mobility.

A second internal drive of some sort would definitely be necessary to do both incremental backups of documents and full backups of the hard drive. My issue with local storage, aside from total loss due to drive failure, is that I only have a 100Gb hard drive. I try to keep 15Gb or so free for use by Photoshop and so on.

Now I'm considering a 160Gb iPod (that I'd decided I didn't really need) as a portable TM backup. I'd still have plenty of room for as much of my music library as I'd ever need to carry around. An ExpressCard-based drive would be perfect, but I can't find one larger than a 16Gb Lexar.

Overall, though, I think Time Machine is a great idea and appreciate the execution of its existing capabilities, even on a laptop. The first backup is going much faster than my previous backup utility and it hasn't taken over my computer as the older one does.

+So - what if it's the middle of the afternoon, you're at a coffee shop and you want to use Time Machine to get that iPhoto event that you accidently deleted last week.+

You've got to be kidding me, but I'll bite. So what have you been doing in such situations the past few years?

good point.

Use this to backup to an airport-extreme disk:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4387985&postcount=50

From most other reposts on forums such as Apple Rumors, Time Machine will ask to wipe/format your drive if it is Fat32 formatted, most likely from PC use. The drive will need to be Mac formatted before TM will allow you to use this drive.

Get off what you want to keep to another drive, format, and you'll be sorted.

*TM doesn't appear to make a local hourly image when your TM drive isn't attached.
There goes all the love from laptop owners!*

I have two laptops, a MBP and a PB G4. The MBP was TM'ed to a 500Gb USB2 drive on friday night and has been connected since. This was done with existing data on the drive and without reformatting or any other messing around.

I decided to get TM going on the PB, so disconnected the 500Gb from the MBP and connected to the PB. Time machine opened straight away, asked to backup to the 500Gb and proceeded to create a backup of everything on the PB.
Meanwhile I kept the MBP on and running, mainly just web browsing.

TM finished with the PB and on looking at TM, there was a (very short) history of the drive since it was backed up. *It had also added a second subfolder within 'Backups.backupdb"* which was called "<username> Powerbook G4", alongside the already created "<username> MacBook Pro".

When I connected the 500Gb back to the MBP, gave TM a few minutes to think, and checked TM's history there was nothing new between "Now" and when the TM drive was last connected.

I hope this answers some questions.

*Please Apple, address this for laptop users and provide some option to save images to a local temp location until the TM drive is reconnected.*

Choose Username wrote:
*TM doesn't appear to make a local hourly image when your TM drive isn't attached.
There goes all the love from laptop owners!*

I have two laptops, a MBP and a PB G4. The MBP was TM'ed to a 500Gb USB2 drive on friday night and has been connected since. This was done with existing data on the drive and without reformatting or any other messing around.

I decided to get TM going on the PB, so disconnected the 500Gb from the MBP and connected to the PB. Time machine opened straight away, asked to backup to the 500Gb and proceeded to create a backup of everything on the PB.
Meanwhile I kept the MBP on and running, mainly just web browsing.

TM finished with the PB and on looking at TM, there was a (very short) history of the drive since it was backed up. *It had also added a second subfolder within 'Backups.backupdb"* which was called "<username> Powerbook G4", alongside the already created "<username> MacBook Pro".

When I connected the 500Gb back to the MBP, gave TM a few minutes to think, and checked TM's history there was nothing new between "Now" and when the TM drive was last connected.

I hope this answers some questions.

*Please Apple, address this for laptop users and provide some option to save images to a local temp location until the TM drive is reconnected.*

You are wrong. Time machine takes notes of what changes have been made to files on your notebook while not connected to an external HD and upon reconnection it will make the appropriate back-ups.

"Ready when you are.
When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that’s duly noted in its preferences" Apple said it them selves. Here is the link. http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

I'm having an issue where Time Machine simply won't do anything. Hooked up my external, I was told it needed to be reformatted, so I did just that. TM asked me if I wanted to use the external, I said yes, and it has yet to do anything. If I go into System Preferences, there is no oldest, latest, or next backup. Why isn't it even scheduling a backup? And why isn't it backing up right now?

Leave the system preferences for TM open so you can see what it's doing.

Make sure you have the TM icon in your dock (copy it there if necessary).

Right click the TM icon in the dock and select 'Backup Now'

See if this gives it a kick start!

Fantastic advice, thank you!

One more question. I'm thinking of getting rid of my Macbook and getting a Macbook Pro. If I were to hook up my external HD to the new Macbook Pro, would I be able to recover files that were originally on my Macbook? Or would it tell me that the files came from a different computer and I'd have no luck?

Message was edited by: Vernexto

What an odd post this is: "Time Machine was poorly thought out in that it requires a second hard drive."

Of course a backup has to be on an external drive - one that can be kept in a separate, safe, place, and MOST importantly a drive that makes it recoverable when your main drive fails.

And you do not need to carry it with you. Time Machine backs up anytime you connect the drive. Once a day once every two days - as you like. It's as incremental as you want it to be.

Time Machine is the best thought out and implemented backup system in the history of computing.