TIME MACHINE!

[David]

just had my external Seagate 1tb drive die, had to get a new one for Time Machine, got a Toshiba 2tb, works great (same price as the 1tb 2 years ago).

I think I have had to use Time Machine a total of 4 times in my life.



My middle name is Lucky

[MacTwidget]

Time Machine has saved my butt more than once.
It is so much more elegant than many other solutions I've used.

[Joe]

I had to figure out how to get a file, but it worked.

Fun fact...you don't have to go through Time Machine to restore files where it says "Browse Time Machine Backups".

You can go to it with the Finder like you do any other drive. Just double click on the drive and go to the most resent one and double click it. Then drill down to where your file is at. Copy it to where you need it.

[madbugger]

Fun fact...you don't have to go through Time Machine to restore files where it says "Browse Time Machine Backups".

You can go to it with the Finder like you do any other drive. Just double click on the drive and go to the most recent one and double click it. Then drill down to where your file is at. Copy it to where you need it.

Thanks how I have always retrieved stuff from it.

[DigiCorn]

just had my external Seagate 1tb drive die, had to get a new one for Time Machine, got a Toshiba 2tb, works great (same price as the 1tb 2 years ago).

I think I have had to use Time Machine a total of 4 times in my life.



My middle name is Lucky

Boy I've nothing but trouble with Seagate drives. I've had Western Digital drives go bad too. The ones I've had that didn't fail were Hitachi and Toshiba. I got little Toshiba 3.0 USB 4TB drives for my various PlayStations and XBoxes and they've been great. Right around $125 too, IIRC.

[Tracy]

I don't think there is a setting for amount of space. The only settings are that you can exclude certain disks or folders and how often to backup, ie...every hour, every day, every week, or manually. Manually of course would mean it would only do backups when you manually start one.

I think the space setting was from my NAS? that's where my Time Machine currently is, It's a share on my NAS
I bought a Toshiba external USB to change, but of course I'm putting it off, just like my OS update.

Good Info here about finding the files!!!

[MacTwidget]

Boy I've nothing but trouble with Seagate drives. I've had Western Digital drives go bad too...

In my experience over the years and many, many external HD purchases I've learned that with WD, their bare drives are rock solid. The controllers in their cases are AWFUL. When they first started failing I thought it was the drive itself. After about 6 failures I pulled the bare drives out and connected them to my computer via an adapter...Viola.
I have probably experienced this 20 times or more.

[Joe]

I think the space setting was from my NAS? that's where my Time Machine currently is, It's a share on my NAS
I bought a Toshiba external USB to change, but of course I'm putting it off, just like my OS update.

Good Info here about finding the files!!!

Oh yeah...forgot you were using a NAS so that would be a NAS setting.

[Tracy]

I'm going to switch my Time Machine from my NAS to a Toshiba External

I bought 2 identical drives, I used one to backup some personal stuff
I started to change my Time Machine to the drive and it is locked or something
will reformatting it fix it? I guess I should say will I have any problems reformatting it/erasing it.
reformat to NTFS?

I think I have to erase to NTFS

[Joe]

Time Machine will reformat an external drive if it needs to. It will give you the option.

APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk. If you select a new backup disk that's not already formatted as an APFS disk, you get the option to erase and reformat it. If the disk is a Mac OS Extended format disk that contains an existing Time Machine backup, you aren't asked to erase and reformat the disk.

Note: The entire APFS volume is reserved for Time Machine backups. If you want to store files other than the Time Machine backup on the same physical device, use Disk Utility to create an additional APFS volume on the disk. The two volumes then share the available space.


Time Machine still supports backups on Mac OS Extended format (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), and Xsan formatted disks.

[Joe]

I started to change my Time Machine to the drive and it is locked or something
will reformatting it fix it?

Sounds like it is already NTFS which won't work. Reformat it to APFS. It should have given you the option to do that when you try to set it as the TM backup disk.

If I remember correctly Macs can't write to an NTFS drive but can read it.

[Tracy]

Thanks Joe!

Here are my options, it's under erase

[DigiCorn]

I just bought another one of those Toshiba externals for home use... $75 (after tax) for 2 TB. My kid used up all the HD space on my computer for games.

[Joe]

Thanks Joe!

Here are my options, it's under erase

Is that from the Disk Utility or Time Machine backup? Either way if those are your only options use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If Time Machine doesn't like it will ask you to let it re-format to what it wants. Just beware if there is anything on that drive it won't be when it is reformatted.

[Tracy]

It's brand new, so nothing I put on there
weird I bought 2 of these the other one didn't need me to do anything.

it was from disk utility