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Timemachine and external storage?

K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
A quick question on time machine backups.


If were to go for the 1TB fusion drive and move my Music & Photos folder to an external drive, can time machine be set up to include the contents of the external drive in when backing up ?


thanks
 
F

flatfoot

macrumors 65816
Aug 11, 2009
1,010
3
kaelell said:
A quick question on time machine backups.


If were to go for the 1TB fusion drive and move my Music & Photos folder to an external drive, can time machine be set up to include the contents of the external drive in when backing up ?


thanks
Click to expand...

It will do so by default. You can also configure what's supposed to be backed up in the Time Machine system preference pane.
 
K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
i found some information on this on apples support pages, apparently by default its set to exclude external drives you need to change this and the second condition is that is must be Mac OS extended formatted.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,133
15,596
California
kaelell said:
i found some information on this on apples support pages, apparently by default its set to exclude external drives you need to change this and the second condition is that is must be Mac OS extended formatted.
Click to expand...

Correct. Just to be clear though, you will need to have the music on one external drive and the TM backup on a second external. I think that is your plan, but I was not clear from the wording of your post.
 
B

bflowers

macrumors 6502a
Jul 19, 2006
636
136
it shouldnt be a problem, as in the time machine preferences, you select what to exclude. I think external drives are added by default, but can be removed. I'll go plug in my TM drive and another drive to check and report back.
 
K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
Weaselboy said:
Correct. Just to be clear though, you will need to have the music on one external drive and the TM backup on a second external. I think that is your plan, but I was not clear from the wording of your post.
Click to expand...

thanks, thats correct , that is my intention
 
B

bflowers

macrumors 6502a
Jul 19, 2006
636
136
Yes, they do automatically end up in the Exclude list, but can be removed. Even the separate partition from the drive that Time Machine backs up to can be removed from the list, although that is pointless.

The next question is, would you really want your iTunes library, which is already on an external, backing up to another external? Does it change often enough to include it in Time Machine? I manually back up mine to another drive, and don't slow down Time Machine by making it index all those files.
 
K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
bflowers said:
Yes, they do automatically end up in the Exclude list, but can be removed. Even the separate partition from the drive that Time Machine backs up to can be removed from the list, although that is pointless.

The next question is, would you really want your iTunes library, which is already on an external, backing up to another external? Does it change often enough to include it in Time Machine? I manually back up mine to another drive, and don't slow down Time Machine by making it index all those files.
Click to expand...

you are possibly right about the music, I have it backed up via Itunes Match anyhow. Just dont fancy manually downloading it all in case of an "incident"
But after reading a few more threads on here, I am thinking of forgetting time machine and trying Carbon Copy Cloner.
 
B

bflowers

macrumors 6502a
Jul 19, 2006
636
136
I can't comment on Carbon Copy, but I have used Time Machine for full recoveries. I guess I could also try out Seagate's included software, as I have two of their 3Tb drives. Music and Movies I manage myself, transferring the new stuff to a separate drive, and excluding them from TM. That is partially because I have a MacBook with only a 250Gb drive. When my new iMac shows up in a couple weeks, with a 1.1Tb Fusion drive, things might change a bit or a lot...

Anyway, good luck!
 
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