Time machine internal drive confusion

Question

Level 2

150 points

Time machine internal drive confusion

Hi there,
I can't seem to get time machine to work. I had been cloning my primary drive using carbon copy cloner before i upgraded to leopard, but now i'd like to use time machine for back-ups.

I have 2 Serial ATA drives installed, a 149GB factory installed disk on the upper socket (my primary drive) and a 185GB drive on the lower socket, split into 2 partitions - a 150GB partition and a 35 GB partition.

Time machine says it can't back-up the primary drive to the other drive because it's the "same drive". They, are, however, definitely different drives. How do I un-confuse time machine, and do i need a larger capacity drive?

Powermac G5 Dual 2Ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Feb 24, 2008 7:33 AM

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Answer 1

xnav

Level 5

7,113 points

Feb 24, 2008 8:19 AM in response to Joe Faber

Is their currently a 'carbon copy' on the 2nd HD? Maybe if you erased the backup partition with DiskUtility, TM would be happy.

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Answer 2

Joe Faber Author

Level 2

150 points

Feb 24, 2008 8:53 AM in response to xnav

Nope, good thought though. I neglected to mentioned that I had erased the partition using DiskUtility (even did 7 passes of writing zeroes to the disk) before trying to launch TM.

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Answer 3

xnav

Level 5

7,113 points

Feb 24, 2008 12:05 PM in response to Joe Faber

This must be a G5 SATA bus hardware issue. I'm doing exactly what you want to do without a problem on my Intel Pro.

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Answer 4

Joe Faber Author

Level 2

150 points

Mar 22, 2008 7:49 AM in response to Joe Faber

So, talked to Apple support. Re-partitioned the backup drive and turned it into a single partition. Time machine is happy as a clam now. Odd, but now it works.

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Answer 5

SharonZ

Level 2

490 points

Mar 24, 2008 9:18 AM in response to Joe Faber

So, talked to Apple support. Re-partitioned the backup drive and turned it into a single partition. Time machine is happy as a clam now. Odd, but now it works.

Yes, odd, because I use partitioned disk volumes as Time Machine backup disks, and there's no problem at all. I think Support might've taken the easy way out (for them) here...

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Answer 6

Mar 24, 2008 5:15 PM in response to SharonZ

Sharon, I have the same problem as Joe did. I have 3 internal drives. The original 250 gig drive has OS X 10.4.11 on it. The second 320 gig drive is my boot drive with OS X 10.5.2. My original was used as a back up drive when I did a new install of Leopard. I just installed a 1 TB Seagate 720.11 drive as my third drive. I partitioned it in equal halves, one for TM and one for storage and scratch disk for PhotoShop. When I try to select either one of the partitions I get the same message ( are you sure you want to back up to the same disk as your data ). If I select the original drive TM is happy with that. For some reason TM does not like the new drive. When I partitioned the new drive I made sure the GUID partitioned table radio button was selected and MAC OS extended journaled was the format. Thanks for any help.
John

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Answer 7

SharonZ

Level 2

490 points

Mar 31, 2008 3:29 PM in response to JM Breitigan

Well, I suppose I'd try trashing the TM plist just for, well, because...

Also, if you haven't used the 3rd drive yet, or you can put its stuff someplace temporarily, the next test would be to repartition it to a single partition and see if that's acceptable to TM as its backup. That would check that the drive itself is useable and we'd be more sure that it's the partitioning that's screwing things up.

Note that you can share an unpartitioned drive between TM and anything else, so you could still use the single-partition 3rd drive for your scratch disk, extra storage, and TM, if that's what you're stuck with...

s.

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