Can I back up an external hard drive as well as my internal hard drive?

Hi,
I have an Intel Core Duo iMac with a 320GB internal hard drive. I have a 500GB Digital Western external hard drive attached via firewire where I store my iTunes library and iPhoto library. I also use this drive for Time Machine to back everything up, this drive is unpartitioned.
Being stupid, I have only just realised that my Time Machine is not backing up the iTunes and iPhoto libraries as they are on the same drive as my Time Machine back ups. I do however keep a copy of the iTunes and iPhoto Libraries on another external hard drive (WD My Passport 320GB) just in case.
To back everything up, (Both internal and external hard drives) I intend to buy another external hard drive as my sole hard drive for Time Machine backups.
My question is, am I going about this in the right way? What size drive should I get? I was thinking 1TB but at the moment money is tight so 500GB might be all I can afford, will this be enough to back everything up? considering not all the drives are full.
Thanks.

Given you have 640gb total space, and the default TM backup mode is "Full" probably would not take too long to completely fill a 500.
I just bought an (internal) 1tb on Amazon gold box for under 80$.
Not sure what deals OWC is currently offering.
Given many of the 500gb externals on amazon are running around 100$, for as little as 17$ more, you can go to 1tb.
add another 20 to that, and get 1-1/2tb external.
1tb external for 117:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Essential-External-WDH1U10000N/dp/B000VZCE UI/ref=pdbbs6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1239974063&sr=8-6
1tb external for 125.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-External-ST310005FDA2E1-RK-Silver/dp/B00 1FWEETK/ref=pdbbs_sr2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1239974063&sr=8-2
or a 1-1/2 tb for 140:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-External-Drive-Silver-ST315005FDA2E1-RK/ dp/B001FWCB7C/ref=pdbbs10?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1239974063&sr=8-10

Similar Messages

  • Can I back-up an external hard drive to Time Capsule

    Hi,
    I'm looking at getting a new Macbook pro - mainly for photo editing. Am concerned that I may run out of storage and don't really want to pay over the odds to increase storage so was thinking of purcahsing the LaCie 1TB Rugged Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 Hard Drive to store my photos on. I was then looking at the time capsule for back-up. Can I back-up photos from theLaCie 1TB Rugged Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 Hard Drive to the Time capsule?
    Many thanks

    Of course, always that the external drive is formatted in “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. Apart from that, you shouldn't have any issue,
    Then, open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and remove the external drive from excluded items. The next backup will include your external drive.
    Note that you may not be able to back up the external drive if it's connected to your Time Capsule. If it doesn't work, connect the external drive to your computer

  • Can I back up my external hard drives to time machine?

    Hi,
    I've backed up my laptop and two external hard drives to my time machine - but because the data on the hard drives were backed up through my computer over a month ago I can't now seem to access the back ups of the hard drives.
    Is there a way of accessing the back up of the hard drives from the specific day I did this, or is there a more efficient way of backing them up so I can permanently access the back up files for these drives?
    On other answers to similar questions:
    'Any drives not specifically on the Exclude list will be backed up' - my external drives are not permanently plugged into my computer so the back up seems to be overridden on the next back up.
    'Just be sure your backup drive is large enough - at least twice the capacity of the total capacity of the drives being backed up.' - time capsule is 2TB, I have external drives with 1.5TB of info at the moment, will this be sufficient?
    Thanks,
    P

    I plugged the hard drives into my laptop and the time machine backed them up as if they were part of my computer on the routine hourly back up.
    But because I only had the back up drive plugged in for the duration of the actual back up, the external drives only show up in the time machine on that particular day, and subsequent hourly / daily backups on time machine didn't show the external hard drives again.
    I only seem to be able to access a month's worth of backing up so because the back up of the external drives was done over a month ago I can't seem to retrieve the back up of the external drive I did on that particular day.
    Does that make sense? Is there a better way of doing this?

  • Can't Back up to External Hard drive

    i'm trying to use a lacie 500GB to back up my imac 10.4 prior to upgrading. Shop said i should use the Firewire 800, but my computer doesn't have a port which fits.  I am using the firewire 400 but every time i try and use the lacie set up assistant the error message i get says the application installer quit unexpectedly.
    I have a imac 0s x version 10.4.11 with intel core 2 duo.

    Hello, I'd forget any LaCie software installs, not needed.
    In Disk Utility, what Format is the Disk?
    How to format your disks...
    http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
    (To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
    Thanks to Pondini, Formatting,  Partitioning, Verifying,  and  Repairing  Disks...
    http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

  • Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

    Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

    In addition to Kappy's comments, the external drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in order for Time Machine to be able to back it up.

  • How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

    How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

    Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
    Click Time Machine
    Click Options
    Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
    The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
    Everything above assumes that the hard drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Time Machine will only backup drives in that format.

  • Trying to back up to external hard drive (iomega).  Instructions say to erase hard drive.  Won't entirely erase.  Can't enter iomega in Time Machine. Computer is minimac, operating system is OSx 10.6.8.

    Trying to back up to external hard drive (iomega).  Instructions say to erase hard drive.  Won't entirely erase.  Can't enter iomega in Time Machine. Computer is minimac, operating system is OSx 10.6.8.

    All you need to upgrade the iBook for Tiger is another 128 MBs of RAM. It has both Firewire and USB ports. You do want to upgrade it for what you plan to do. The problem you may continue to have, however, may be due to the fact that the age of the computer is such the disk controller does not support hard drive volumes larger than 128 GBs, which is probably the reason the drive won't mount.
    The reason you get DU errors is likely because the drive was formatted using the Intel Tiger version of DU, while you were using the Jaguar version. That's a definite no-no.

  • Can Time Machine back up an external hard drive plugged into a Time Capsule

    I have iTunes and iPhoto libraries that have outgrown the hard drive on my laptop so I've moved them on to an external hard drive. Since I'd like to move around the house with the laptop, I've plugged the external hard drive in to the Time Capsule so that the files on the external hard drive will be accessible on the network. Now that my really important files live on an external hard drive, I want to back it up.
    Time Machine is backing up my laptop's internal hard drive to the Time Capsule drive, but I can't seem to figure out how to make Time Machine also back up the external hard drive that's plugged in to the Time Capsule.
    Is this possible?

    I understand that [Chronosync|http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html] ($40 U.S.) can do that, but I've never used it.
    If you do that, you'll want to back it up to a disk image on the TC's internal HD, or a separate HD. See #Q3 in [Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/TimeCapsule.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for details.

  • Can Time Machine back on one external hard drive (work files) to another external hard drive (back up)?

    Can Time Machine on a Mac Book Pro 10.5.8 back up an external hard drive (working files) to another external hard drive (WD dual backup)?

    I have Mountain Lion here ready to upgrade, but I'm scared of what will happen - there's always something when you upgrade, but I guess that's for a different post!
    Yes, it's a different post, but let's make a comment any way.
    Your power pc apps will not work when you upgrade to Mountain Lion. You will have to replace all the apps you use.

  • How can I use my TimeMachine to back up the external hard drive

    How can I use my TimeMachine to back up the external hard drive that is attached to my TimeMachine? I have the external drive attached to my TimeMachine via the USB port and want my TimeMachine to back up the files on the external drive, as it does for the files on my computer. How do I do that?

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

  • Can 'Time Machine' back-up other external hard drives

    Can 'Time Machine' back-up other external hard drives connected to your mac as well as the mac memory itself?

    As Neil says, yes, it can.  But external HDs are excluded by default;  you have to tell Time Machine when you do want to back one up.
    See the exclusions box in Time Machine Prefs > Options.
    If the drive is shown in black, just select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.
    If it's shown in gray, though, it's not formatted for a Mac, and Time Machine can't back it up (and you can't remove it).

  • I have two separate iTunes libraries on two separate Computers. I need to consolidate them so I can play them on a brand new computer. How do I do this so I can play them off an External Hard Drive on my brand new computer?

    I have two separate iTunes libraries on two separate Computers. I need to consolidate them so I can play them on my brand new computer. How do I do this so I can play them off an External Hard Drive on my brand new computer?

    Why, if it told you you have insufficient space on your computer, would it suggest making more space available on your phone?
    At a guess, you have insufficient space on your phone. Installing software will typically require more space than the final size of the software, perhaps even twice or three times as much, for the installation process. You can easily dump some videos or music temporarily, and then synch them back in afterwards.

  • Backing up an external hard drive with time Machine

    I backed up my internal disk with Time Machine, but I can not back up an external drive that I use for my media. I see the drive in the options part of Time Machine system preferences, but the minus sign to take it off of the "do not back up these drives" is blanked out. Any suggestions?

    I successfully backed up the contents of an external hard drive, but the next time Time Machine did a backup, I didn't happen to have that drive connected, so Time Machine said it couldn't find it and deleted the existing backup. Is there any way to get it to keep the backup? The drive I want to back up is only used occasionally (naturally, anything I use more frequently is on my Mac) and I don't want to have to plug in both hard drives every time I want to run a backup, only to risk losing all of that history if I ever accidentally plug in only the backup drive. But I do want to keep Time Machine backups of that drive because it contains my iPhoto Library.

  • Will Time Capsule back-up an external hard drive that is connected to it directly via USB?

    I'm considering a macbook air, but I have ~200GB of music and photos that currently lives on another laptop (and is manually backed up to a 500GB ext. hard drive).  Ideal set-up would be as follows:
    1. MBA (128GB) with just the OS, applications and ~ 5GB of .doc, .xls, .pdf, etc.
    2. The 500GB hard drive (loaded w/ music and jpegs' and permanently connected to Time Capsule so that I don't have to plug it into the MBA everytime I want to use music/jpegs)
    3. Time capsule (constantly backing up the MBA and hard drive via time machine).
    Does anybody know if this is possible (i.e. will the TC back up an external hard drive that is permanently attached to it, rather than attached to a Mac?)
    Does anybody have other suggestions (without having to buy any more gear) for storage/back-up that don't require that I plug that external HD to a computer every time I want to access the data?

    sixschlitzes wrote:
    Does anybody know if this is possible (i.e. will the TC back up an external hard drive that is permanently attached to it,
    No, sorry, Time Machine cannot back up from a network location.
    Does anybody have other suggestions (without having to buy any more gear) for storage/back-up that don't require that I plug that external HD to a computer every time I want to access the data?
    The 3rd-party apps CarbonCopyCloner and ChronoSync (and probably others) can back up from a network location.

  • Why can't I see my external hard drive, Intel iMac / 500 GB, G-Drive

    Why can't I see my external hard drive?  I have a new iMac, Intel based i5, running Lion (2-3 months old).  I have a 500 GB G-Drive external hard drive that has showed up when connected to my iMac for the past 2-3 months.  Now it's gone.  It's NOT visible when using Disk Utilities.  I have all of the radio buttons chosen in the Finder Preferences.  I've unplugged and replugged in the drive, have switched the cable ports and have switched firewire cable.  The G-Drive powers up and whirls, so I don't believe the problem is with the drive. Yes, I set my Preferences to make sure ALL disk types are visible.  I've restarted my iMac on a number of occations.  I rest my SMC by totally unplugging my iMac for a minute, then plugging it back in. Any suggestions?

    Unplug the HD, Zap the PRAM, reconnect the HD, power it up, and see if that fixes the problem. If not, then maybe the HDs bitten the dust. Try on another computer to verify.

Maybe you are looking for