Time Machine keeps failing

[hjalte]

Hi

This is driving me nuts.
My Time machine keeps failing.

I am backing up to an external Toshiba Drive with 1gb.
There is plenty of room left.

First I tried to delete the entire time machine folder on the drive (that was very difficult by the way).

Then it worked a little again. It stopped worked again.

Then i followed this guide:
http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html

That worked for a little while, but now it stopped working again.

I am new to mac and really have no idea what this could be. Any ideas?

 

[Taz Mangus]

Hi

This is driving me nuts.
My Time machine keeps failing.

I am backing up to an external Toshiba Drive with 1gb.
There is plenty of room left.

First I tried to delete the entire time machine folder on the drive (that was very difficult by the way).

Then it worked a little again. It stopped worked again.

Then i followed this guide:
http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html

That worked for a little while, but now it stopped working again.

I am new to mac and really have no idea what this could be. Any ideas?

Since you are starting a new Time Machine backup, I would suggest that you launch the Disk Utility application and reformat and repartition the Time Machine backup hard drive. Make sure that you have selected GUID partition type.

 

[hjalte]

Since you are starting a new Time Machine backup, I would suggest that you launch the Disk Utility application and reformat and repartition the Time Machine backup hard drive. Make sure that you have selected GUID partition type.

I do have other things on the drive, so not sure what would happen to them.
Is it better to have a dedicated drive?

 

[Weaselboy]

I do have other things on the drive, so not sure what would happen to them.
Is it better to have a dedicated drive?

It is ideal to have a drive just for backups, but that said, there is no problem using part of the drive for other storage as long as you understand that data is not being backed up anywhere.

Yes, if you format the drive, all data on it will be gone. How much data (non-Time Machine data) do you have on there? You could use Disk Utility to resize the existing partition with your data, then add on a new, second partition and format that fresh for the TM backup.

 

[kilcher]

I do have other things on the drive, so not sure what would happen to them.
Is it better to have a dedicated drive?

I don't know much about your problem and I'm a new Mac user myself (about 2 weeks) but external hard drives are fairly inexpensive. I bought this one (Seagate / 2TB / $99) to go with mine and I only use it for backups...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate...03.p?id=1219083979672&skuid=2944503&sellerId=

Time Machine is one of my favorite Mac features. I'm always super paranoid about losing my music and family pictures. Even though most are in the cloud and backed up elsewhere my computer is the only place that has everything in one place. I also have an older external hard drive I'm going to back up to every few months.

There was probably a similar feature on Windows but if there was I never knew about it and the Mac makes it so easy.

 

[hjalte]

I don't know much about your problem and I'm a new Mac user myself (about 2 weeks) but external hard drives are fairly inexpensive. I bought this one (Seagate / 2TB / $99) to go with mine and I only use it for backups...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate...03.p?id=1219083979672&skuid=2944503&sellerId=

Time Machine is one of my favorite Mac features. I'm always super paranoid about losing my music and family pictures. Even though most are in the cloud and backed up elsewhere my computer is the only place that has everything in one place. I also have an older external hard drive I'm going to back up to every few months.

There was probably a similar feature on Windows but if there was I never knew about it and the Mac makes it so easy.

Yes, EXT HDD are fairly in expensive, I agree.
But I would rather not have 2-3 drives lying around.

I am wondering if maybe a wireless time capsule would be better.
But if the problem persists, that would be a lot of money to throw out the window