Can Time Machine back up an external hard disk?

I store some data files in the internal hard disk together with the boot volume, and some other data in an external hard disk. I intend to buy a second external hard disk solely for Time Machine. How can I set the Time Machine to back up BOTH the internal and the first external hard disk (that contains data)? Many thanks for answering this.

Robert Greenwade wrote:
I have a LaCie 500GB LittleDisk external mobile drive which is grayed-out in the "Do Not Backup" Option and is therefore not removable from the list. DiskUtility indicates that it's partition map scheme is MBR. How can I get Time Machine to backup this disk?
You can't. You must copy the data off, reformat it, and copy it back.

Similar Messages

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).

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.

Can Time Machine back up a external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme

I recently purchased a new macbook pro, and airport extreme.
I attached a 750 GB external hard drive to the macbook pro, and reformatted it so time machine made the initial back up and hourly back ups from there.
Is it possible to now to unattach the external hard drive and attach it to the airport extreme, where the mac book time machine will back up to the external hard drive through airport extreme?
i have seen conflicting posts is if this is possible.

That would probably be safest.
Note that Apple's position on this got even more negative with Snow Leopard: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
It does work well for some folks, not so well for some, and not at all for others.
I got a refurb dual-band model in September. It worked well for about 3 months, but lately I get the error 109 and corrupted backups every few days, that Disk Utility can't fix. Once, Disk Warrior could, but since then, if they're corrupted, nothing helps. That's on a year-old Seagate drive that seems fine otherwise, especially when connected directly.
And I have an excellent wireless connection; it's only about 10 feet from my Mac, speeds are great, S/N ratio is good, etc.
It makes no sense to me that a TC would work better, but they seem to.

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 do I encrypt my Time Machine Backup on the External Hard disk

I have taken a backup of my data onto an external Hard Disk. I have used the Time Machine application to take the back up.
I want to encrypt this time machine backup on the External Hard disk. Any suggestions???

jcorroon wrote:
The Encrypt Backup Disk is greyed out for me. Any suggestions?
Many thanks!
Have you selected the disk?
You can only encrypt disks that are directly-connected (ie, not on a network), with the GUID partition map scheme.
Put your mouse pointer on the dimmed checkbox, and after a moment an explanation should appear.

Problems Copying Time Machine Back-Up to New Hard Disk

I tried copying my old time machine back-ups from a 500 GB WD HDD to a new Seagate 1TB. Followed the instructions from "Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive". Although terribly slow it seemed to work all well initially. Had it run over night, then discovered the next morning the process was apparently hanging.
Thinking that maybe the energy saver options were the cause of the problem, I unchecked "put hard disk to sleep when possible". So went through the same painful process. Cannot believe that after about 7 h of transfering the whole thing is stuck again:
More than 2 million items were apparently copied, now nothing is happening at all... (neither GB nor minutes changing anymore)
1) Is this a common problem? More importantly: how can it be solved?
2) Is there another way to transfer time machine back-ups to another hard disk?
Thanks!

This is getting (more) annoying: turned out that something went wrong with the 500 GB HDD with the original time machine back-up. Managed to repair it in the 3rd attempt with disk utility. Heard of SuperDuper and thought I'd give it a try.
Cloning the back-up disk to the new 1 TB HDD seemed to work well, but I am a bit surprised with the result:
It seems time machine recognizes now the 1 TB Seagate HDD as a 500 GB (the size of the original WD) only?

Will Time Machine Back up an External Hard Drive Attached to my Mac Pro?

Apple TV is GREAT, but it quickly filled up my hard drive. My thought is to take my folder that contains all of my personal files and put it on an 1TB external hard drive. I'd then "point" iTunes to where this new folder is. First, is that the right approach? Will that mess anything else up? Second, can I have Time Machine then back this external hard drive up? So, I'd like to have Time Machine back up my Mac HD and the external HD. If Time Machine won't do this, is there a good back up program for Macs that is very turnkey?
Thanks in advance!!!

GregT wrote:
Apple TV is GREAT, but it quickly filled up my hard drive. My thought is to take my folder that contains all of my personal files and put it on an 1TB external hard drive. I'd then "point" iTunes to where this new folder is. First, is that the right approach? Will that mess anything else up? Second, can I have Time Machine then back this external hard drive up?
If the drive is formatted +Mac OS Extended,+ yes. While it's connected, go to TM Preferences > Options. If it's listed in the exclusion box, just select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.
If it's listed in gray, however, it's either formatted wrong or corrupted, and you can't remove the exclusion.

Can Time machine back up to two hard drives?

I want to make a Time machine back up to two different external hard drives. I can't use RAID-0 because the size of my external drives is different.

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html

Encryption of Time Machine backup on an external hard disk

I use an external hard disk (not Time Capsule) for my Time Machine backup. How can I encrypt this external hard disk. I didn't find such a function in the Mac OS. Thanks a lot for any hint.

Click here and follow the instructions. The image's contents can't be accessed without the password, but the image file can still be deleted.
(56647)

Can Time Machine back up a failed hard drive, and how long will it take to prepare?

1. The hard drive in my 2009 MBP has failed. My Time Machine external drive failed about three weeks ago, and I don't know if I'll be able to restore from it. Is it ever possible to backup a failed hard drive with Time Machine? The machine boots, it just comes up beach balls if I use any applications for very long.
2. I'm trying to back it up right now. I have Time Machine running to a new external drive. It has been stuck on "preparing backup" for about 20 minutes. Everyone says that preparing a first backup takes some time, but no one says if "some time" is 15 minutes or one hour or more. What is a typical length of time for preparing first backup? At what point should I walk away?
If it's not worth trying to back this drive up myself anymore, I'd love to just drop the thing off and get the hard drive replaced -- but if it's worth doing, I'll take the extra day to back up what I can.

You might have better luck using a clone.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
Commonly Used Backup Methods

Converting Time Machine back into an External Hard Drive?

before i got my macbook, i used my 320GB external hard drive on a windows XP-run computer. i transferred all my files to my new mac, before using it as my time machine drive.
it's now incompatible with windows though.
is there any way to either
-allow my drive to be used with a windows XP computer?
or
-unassociate the drive with time machine, and revert it back to a plain old external hard drive?

In order to use that old drive with Windows XP, I'd repartition it with the MBR option and format it as a Fat32 drive. Once you connect it to the WinXP machine you can also reformat the drive to NTFS for better performance and compatibility with XP.

Time Machine Back-up from External Hard Drive

Time Machine only back-up what is on my MBP Drive,
Can I back-up files from an external usb drive that is connected to MBP to TM???
if no what is a good back-up software to use????
Thanks.

This is in regards to the function of an iMac (new 3.06 GHz intel dual core processor), Time Machine, Lacie 500 GB hard drive and an APC 750 standard battery back up system. This is the closest thread regarding my particular issue and hope other users find this useful and there is some response.
The time machine backup using the Lacie external hard drive is working fine when everything is on. I did not install the software that came with the APC 750 battery backup since a) when connected to the iMac, the iMac recognizes it and appears to be working and b) the forums recommended the software isn't needed and not overly compatible. I have the iMac plugged into the Master Outlet that controls a few slave periperals to save power, etc. The instructions indicate external hard drives are good to be plugged into slave outlets.
The issue I am having is that I have the Lacie hard drive plugged into the slave outlet and everytime I put the computer to sleep, I have to remember to eject the Lacie hard drive, since the battery backup (APC) shuts down the slave peripherals down rather abrubtly.
I'm wondering if this is something I will have to routinely remember to do or is there a way around this. It is a hassle since I am basically force to do manual backups using time machine since the computer is on (not sleeping) from about 5pm to 11pm and on weekends. I don't want to leave the Lacie external hard drive running perpetually in the surge outlets either because it seems to become active for no apparent reason...I believe I have all the settings set correctly, but this once an hour time machine backup may have something to do with it?
It should be noted that the Lacie hard drive seems to be active (ie beeping, spinning) during non-scheduled Time Machine backup. It did this when I kept it on all the time before my APC UPS, and as mentioned above, it still does. It seems to kick on more than once an hour. I always look in the time machine preferences and it will say for example, next time machine backup at 11:15 am, and the current time will be say 10:10 am. You would expect not to hear a peep from the Lacie external hard drive until 11:15 am, but I do.
In summary: 1) do I need to always eject the external hard drive disc when plugged into slave outley, and perform manual time machine backups and 2) while the computer is on, is it normal for the drive to activate during non-scheduled time machine backups?
Thanks,
Robbie

Will Time Machine back up and external hard drive connected to my TC?

Here is my desired set-up: older Powerbook G4 whose iTunes Music is saved on an external HD (WD MyBook offering USB, FW, and ethernet connections); backup wirelessly to a Time Capsule using Time Machine; connect the external drive to the Time Capsule either using USB or ethernet (whichever is faster); have Time Machine backup everything, ie, the laptop and the external drive connected directly to the Time Capsule.
Right now, the external drive is connected directly to the Powerbook using Firewire and everything is working as desired. I would like to have the external drive networked, however, so that I can enjoy music on the laptop without having it connected to the external drive. Seems like I could connect the external drive to the TC to provide a networked iTunes library, but I also want Time Capsule to back it all up together with my Powerbook.
Is this possible?
If so, which connection method is best between the external drive and the Time Capsule, USB or ethernet?

f.bomb wrote:
Seems like I could connect the external drive to the TC to provide a networked iTunes library, but I also want Time Capsule to back it all up together with my Powerbook.
Is this possible?
No. Time Machine will not backup a network share such as you describe. Sorry.

Can Time Machine back up an external hard disk?

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