Can I backup an external hard drive with time machine

I have my IPhoto library on an external hard drive and want to include this in my time machine backups.

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Of course, but only if your external drive is formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". You can check this by opening Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) and choosing the partition of your external drive you want to choose. Then, look at "Format" at the bottom of the window.
If you can make backups of the external drive, open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and remove your external drive from Excluded Items. The next backup will include the external drive

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Is there a way to backup my external hard drive with Time Machine?

Most of the memory used on my MBP is mainly used for applications and miscellaneous things for Logic and Final Cut. I have two external HD's. To save space on the internal HD, all of my music, pictures, and videos are one my external hard drive, while Time Machine set as the other. Is there a way I can back up my external HD using Time Machine? What would even be better is if I could only select specific files (My Music, Videos, Pictures) and not everything on my one external HD to be backed up in Time Machine.

TM can back up external HDs. If you have both of your external drives attached, go to the options in TM preferences. Be sure the data drive is not listed (this lists drives/folders to exclude from a backup). Then initiate a TM backup or wait for the hourly backup. That should back up the data drive.
You can only tell TM what to exclude from a backup, not what to include.

How can I backup an external hard drive using Time Machine?

How can I backup an external hard drive connected to my MacBook Pro using Time Machine?

Attach drive, open Time Machine preferences, be sure external drive is not in the Exclude list.

Can I backup an External Hard Drive using Time Machine and Time Capsule?

I have a Powerbook G4 with Mac OS X 10.5.2 and use an external hard drive *all the time*. I'd like to use Time Machine and my new 500GB Time Capsule to back it up along with the internal hard drive. Can I do this? Thanks for your help.

I believe so; this thread indicates how. Hope this helps.

Can I use any external hard drive with Time Machine?

I have a 1TB external hard drive and also a 16GB flash drive. Is it possible to use either of these with Time Machine?

IMO Time Machine should be on its own Dedicated External Drive... one that is twice the size of the drive that it is backing up... the 16 GB Flash Drive is not appropiate for the task.
See Here
TM 101
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
You may also find this Link of Interest...
Time Machine vs. Clones and Archives

Can I backup an external hard drive using time machine?

I've got a 2008 Mackbook that's getting very full of photos and music - 75% of the HDD. I want to move it all onto an external Toshiba HDD that's formatted to MS-DOS (FAT 32). Before I moved it all, I checked to see if time machine would back up the HDD to the Seagate HDD that I use for backups. In Time Machine preferences, options, the Tosh HDD is shown as excluded from the backup along with the Seagate HDD. I have tried to select it to remove it from the excluded list but it wont allow me to. So what I want to know is:
Is it possible to back up an external HDD via Time Machine? If so, why might mine not be doing so? If it's the file format, which format ought I to format it to?
All help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks
Buzz...

Okay, I've sussed it. I saw a link to another discussion that hadn't turned up in any of my searches before I posted the question above.
My Tosh HDD was formatted to FAT 32 and therefore would not be backed up by Time Machine. I removed all data from it - nightmare as I hadn't enough space to put it on the macbook HDD, but, after trawling through numerous photos and deleting rubbish for hours, I finally made enough space and copied all data across. Then, after clearing the data from the Tosh HDD, I used disk utilitity to reformat it to Mackintosh OS Extended. Chose the option without kournalling because I'm not baking up onto this disk and so don't need it - according to some other discussions I found.
When it was done I check on time machine in system prefs and once I selected options, I was able to remove it from the excluded from backups list. Hey presto. Now I'm moving my photo library and my music library onto the Tosh HDD and my macbook should start to breath again. Hurray.

Hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

When you boot the new machine for the first time, you'll be prompted to import your data from a Time Machine backup.

Restoring an external hard drive with time machine

I'm having a problem restoring an external hard drive using time machine. I'm on a macbook Air Running 10.7.5.
The external hard drive where I store all my photos crashed a few days ago. Not a total disaster, because it's backed up, but I can't figure out how to restore the drive onto a new hard drive. When I go into time machine without the corrupted drive attached, it does not show up in the time machine browser as an option for restore. (The files are definitely there, though, because I can see them when I look at the time machine files in Finder. I'm afraid if I just transfer the files by dragging, though, I'll mess something up.) I tried using the migration assistant, but I'm having the same problem there.
Anyone know how to do this? I'm a little frantic to get my photos back.
Thanks!

I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them.

Why does my Mac ask for my password when I try to make a change on my external hard drive with Time Machine?

I recently formatted the hard drive to do a fresh install of Mavericks on my Macbook Pro Retina. I then formatted my Western Digital 2 TB External Hard Drive for Time Machine. I then began storing others files and folders on the external hard drive along side the TIme Machine Backup folder. Everytime I added a folder or changed a foler name it asked for my password.
This has never happened to me before using any other OSX.
I apologize if this has been resolved before, I'm new to the communities and have yet to find a solution.

It is not a good idea to be storing other Stuff on your Time Machine drive. You may need an additional separate hard drive for those things.
Once you tell Time Machine to use a Drive, Time Machine owns the Drive. You (as a User) do not have permission to put things there. If you insist, it will do it, but wants your Admin password to do it.

Accessing back-ups on external hard-drive with Time Machine.

Hi guys,
I hope someone can help me with this problem. I am a novice at this so please be patient and forgive my ignorance.
I backed up the internal hard-drive of my '06 iMac onto an external Iomega 500GB hard-drive using Time Machine.
A couple of weeks later the internal hard-drive of my iMac fried and I got the " grey screen of death ".
Now I have the external hard-drive connected to my '06 MacBook.
There is 300GB of data on the external hard-drive. There is only 50GB of space available on my MacBook.
I would like to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive but when I click on the iPhoto icon in Time Machine, I get "error code 10657 ".
I am NOT trying to do a full restore of the back-up onto the MacBook because :
1. There is not enough space available on the MacBook and
2. I will do a full restore when I have bought and installed a new bigger hard-drive into the iMac.
So, I guess my question is this : Is it possible for me to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive using my MacBook without doing a complete transfer and if so, how ?
Thanking you in advance,
Sean.

If this is a network device, you can't back it up with Time Machine. If it's directly attached, and in Mac OS format, delete it from the exclusion list in the Time Machine preference pane.

Backup External Hard Drive with Time Machine

I have several external hard drives and am wondering if I can use Time Machine to backup External Hard Drive #1 on Hard Drive #2? Or is it only possible to backup your Main Machine on an External Hard Drive?
Thanks

These issues with non-apple format drives that you mention, would they concern the dedicated Time Machine external hard drive, the external hard drive one is looking to backup, or both?
What are the issues raised? My current 500GB external hard drive is FAT-32 and I want to use an additional 500GB external hard drive [fresh out the box so I can determine whatever format it is fairly easily] as the dedicated Time Machine backup. Would you suggest reformatting my 500GB FAT-32 drive before initiating the new drive as the dedicated Time Machine backup? It's possible to do so, but would take quite some time. Also, this may move into a different subject, but I enjoy being able to share files with a PC with Windows XP using my external hard drive; would any of the formats you mentioned as being Time Machine-safe allow me to continue to do so?

HT201250 Can I share an external hard drive for Time Machine with my PC?

I am using a PC with an external hard drive. I have a new MacBook and would like to back up the files on the external hard drive as well. Time Machine set-up notified me that if I continued my external hard drive would be wiped clean. Is there a way to save the files from my PC and add Time Machine?

Use the DIsk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to repartition the drive. The new partition needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
If you want to back up the contents of that drive and not use that drive for holding backups, you need to use another backup method, such as drag-copying files or cloning.
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How can I split a backup on two hard drives with Time Machine ?

Back-up of my Imac with time machine is 1,3 TB. I have two 1 TB external hard drives but even if I had both as available in Time machine, it seems it doesn't allow to split the backup between the two hard drives. Any way to resolve this without buying another hard drive with more space?
Thanks in advance

You cannot directly split a backup. Your only option would be to open the TimeMachine preferences from System Prefs. and add things to the exclusion list for one of the backups. Then, when you go to do the other backup you would reverse the process and add everything else to the exclusion list and remove the things you had on there in the first place.
Seems fairly intensive though when you could just go and buy a 2 or 3TB external drive and do it all in one...Black Friday is coming up
Regards,

My disk utility option to turn off encryption does not highlight so I can't turn off the encryption of my external hard drive with time machine back up

I have an iMac and Retina MBP. I use Time Capsule for backup of iMac and I wanted to use an external hard drive attached to time capsule as time machine backup. The problem is that I encrypted previously that external hard drive and now Time Capsule does not recognize it.
When I try to turn off encryption with Disk Utility, that option is not highlighted so I cannot use it.
I tried with terminal but it answers The given UUID is a not a CoreStorage Logical Volume UUID

Can you plug in the hard drive directly to your MBP and then decrypt the hard drive? You should be able to do this by opening up Finder and then either right clicking the hard drive (holding down two fingers and clicking) or holding down ctrl and then clicking on the hard drive.

External Hard Drive with Time Machine, Will it Delete Files that aren't Backups?

Hello reader,
My concern right now that I need help with is backing up with Time Machine. I went down to an Apple Store and they formated my External Drive 1TB to work with Time Machine then I backed up my MacBook Pro and all is well. However, now I want to do this again, BUT now I have added files onto the external drive that are newer but I didn't want to do a complete backup for. Like new pictures or iMovie events. So instead of redoing a complete backup after adding like 3 big files and nothing else, I just tossed them on the Extrernal Drive no problem. Now I feel like it's been a while and I should do a full backup for all the littler files I have now. But there is now 1 "Backup" File on the external drive that "Can't be modified" or I would have just dragged the 3 quick large files into the backup that I made and been happy. But I couldn't do that so I put it in some blank space on the external drive.
But my question for you, reader, is if I backup again, will the files that ARE NOT in the backup folder that was created from an ACTUAL backup from Time Machine be deleted?
Backup Files from First Backup These 2 are things I added that I didn't feel I had to waste another 100GB on unchanged things with another complete backup.

TimeMachine is designed to perform one full backup when it is first connected to your computer and from then on back up only the files you add or edit. Opening the TimeMachine drive's backup folder from the Finder is basically a no-no. Access TimeMachine via the TimeMachine application.
Assuming you frequently plug the TimeMachine drive in and let it backup and assuming the newer files are on the computer - they are being backed up and TimeMachine will be able to restore the entire drive if/when it is needed.
Just keep these things in mind. TimeMachine runs every hour (when it is connected to your computer - so be sure to connect it at least once a day and let it do a backup) and backs up new and edited files. It is guaranteed to keep any file that is currently on your computer. If you delete a file from your computer TimeMachine may delete it if extra space is needed. The drive you use for TimeMachine really shouldn't be used for any other purpose.

Can I backup an external hard drive with time machine

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