Actually, this is BS. Because I've done everything. Archive and Install. Reformat with GUID partition, Erase the Drive. etc etc etc. My time machine still craps out at anywhere from 10 to 26 gigs.
Ive tried a MyBook by WD via USB and a Lacie via firewire
No luck

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Really love that "intuitive" click-+-to-not-backup-this-drive interface.

And has anyone looked at the int'l Time config now? Wow - it needs its own manual.

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those ara good tips but this is the most hilarious post i have ever read here on tuaw, especially the Feudal Japan(heroes) part hehehe

btw, sorry for my english

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Is GUID format the same as HFS+ (Mac OS Journaled)? My external hard drive is partitioned into a bootable Tiger clone and a generic "storage" partition. Both are HFS+ formatted. Are you telling me I need to reformat them into something else?

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Tip #1 doesn't work for me.

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Oddly, I have non-alpha-numeric characters in my MacBook's name, and Time Machine has worked fine for me.

If I change my computer's name or hard drive name, does anyone know if it will confuse Time Machine? Or will I have to go back in time to change my name back? ;-)

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Time machine blows. What are you supposed to do if you don't have enough room to back everything up? For example my itunes is on an external 500gig drive. And I have another 500 gig drive for time machine. But with itunes and all the content on my macbook i simply dont have enough room. I wish there was a way to divide up the time machine back up. I mean does this mean I need to go get a 1TB drive to back everything up wiht time machine?

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I'll give it a go (didn't know about APM for PPCs), but the last few times I've tried, TM backs up at about 1 Gig every two hours.

Thankfully Super Duper (while not bootable) can still back up my files effectively

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another glitch --

when TM is doing one of its backups, it becomes quite evident because the music playing in iTunes stutters periodically.

and my iMac is a 2.4ghz intel core duo with 4mb of ram

waaaaaaah! (that was supposed to be a crying baby :-)

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Time Machine has yet to work correctly for me. It gets about halfway through, then the OS locks up and I have to force reboot my Mac Pro to do anything with it. Happens over and over. Clean install of Leopard, formatted hard drive. UGH.

Clearly Apple has their work cut out for them with 10.5.1.

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@7- I'm not sure what you want it to do, create a rift in the time-space continuum so a smaller external HD can be used to store more backup data?

In your particular case, I'd recommend excluding your iTunes library from your Time Machine backup, and backing up your music collection manually to another hard drive.

I bet there are more sophisticated 3rd party options. But for 98% of the Mac user base, the single backup drive model for Time Machine is adequate (and simpler to manage.)

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What, was this programmed by Windows programmers? Seriously, these are stupid, BS type things that I used to see only from Windows programmers back when I used to manage programming teams. Mac programmers never did this kind of stuff.

Cheers
FL

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Or the easiest way, buy a decent external (i got a mybook premium II firewire) format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and point time machine to it.... works fine since.

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#1 -- I have heard that the real problem might be with Disk Utility in leopard. When you change the filesystem from FAT32 to HFS+ on an external drive, the drive sometimes does not get formatted with the HFS+ format. Moreover, the partition table might NOT get updated to show that it is a HFS+ partition (even though Disk Utility may say it is a HFS+ partition). As a result, Time Machine treats it as a FAT32 partition. Since FAT32 has a 32 GB maximum size, Time Machine fails when it gets close to the 32 GB limit.

I have heard of one workaround. Create two partitions on the external drive. (WARNING This will destroy all data on the external drive). Then delete the second partition and create only one large HFS+ partition. This apparently will overwrite the partition table with the right info. Give it a try.

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I haven't had any problems with it's functionality except that I can always tell by my machine's performance when it's backing up. Every thing slows down a bit.

(G5 dual 2.0, 3.5 GB RAM, external firewire Seagate 750 GB backing up an internal 320 GB, all HFS extended & journaled)

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I've had no problems with time machine here (backing up to a firewire HFS+ hdd).

> Time machine blows. What are you supposed to do if you don't have
> enough room to back everything up? For example my itunes is on an
> external 500gig drive. And I have another 500 gig drive for time machine.

I have a similar setup: 120 GB hdd in my laptop, 250 GB external 2.5" hdd for extra media, and a 500 GB external hdd for backing stuff up. I backup the lappy to the 500 GB hdd with time machine nightly. Once/week I also copy everything from the 250 GB hdd to the 500 GB hdd. Would be nice if time machine could backup external volumes but I don't see this as a big deal with freeware programs like Carbon Copy Cloner out there (which work fine for things like media files while Time Machine's search interface comes in handy for documents).

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Forgot to mention that Carbon Copy Cloner is actually uncrippled donation ware. So if you try it and like it, be sure to kick some money their way.

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So, with regard to the mixed environment...
I have a ppc powerbook and my gf an intelbased macbook.
I also got a 1 tb external for backing up stuff with time machine (and without for stuff like music etc). I got both of them backing up on my Apple partition mapped drive without problems. I had the macbook first backup to a GUID formatted drive, then copied the backup folder over to the Apple Partition mapped drive, where I had backed up my powerbook on a separate partition. I suppose the partition scheme only plays a role in the initial backup where volumes of 10gb or more are created. on both machines I have several backups now. Works like a charm...
Also it works for the networked backup - (ie. with unsupported drives)
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/how-to-enable-time-machine-on-unsupported-volumes/

note that you need to open the drives under shared in finder to be able to direct time machine to them

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