How do i exclude internal hard drive from time machine?

I use OSX 10.7.4. My internal drive was maxed out so I copied it to an external and now I run my mac from this external drive. I want to use time machine to back up (to an additional external hard drive) but Time Machine fails because I don't have enough room. Whats happening is Time Machine wants to back up both my external drive (about 280 Gigs) and my internal (245 Gigs). I do not want or need my internal to be backed up however I cannot find a way to 'exclude it'.
In Time Machine/Options, my internal drive does not appear under devices. I have 3 external drives, (plus their partitions) but the proverbial Macintosh HD is not one of them. Even when I click the + to try and add to the devices which brings up the finder (and I check 'show hidden') still no dice.
Macintosh HD does appear in my finder.
I know one option would be to delete the contents of my internal drive, but I'm not ready to do that. I view it as my backup to my backup. It isn't updated, and it's missing things from the last few months, but in a critical failure, it might still be there.
Presumably all this is temp as I intend to replace my aging white imac with a new imac sometime this summer.
In the mean while though, I'd like time machine to do what its intended to do.
Thanks,
Bear

Open the TM preference pane, unlock it if necessary, and click Options. Click the "+" icon to add an exclusion. In the selection dialog, click the icon of your internal drive under DEVICES, then press return.

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MG1234 wrote:
I have a second internal hard drive for media files that I have backed up with time machine, in addition to my main first drive. I switched out this drive for a larger one and want to restore the files on the second drive only, without effecting those on my main drive. I tried going into time machine and pulling in the past copy of the smaller drive into the larger drive but this said it would take 54 hours last night, and 50 when I woke up this morning. Is there a way to do this faster or automatically I am unaware of?
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Message was edited by: Buda71

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William Beede wrote:
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How do i exclude internal hard drive from time machine?

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