Help! Added external 60GB SSD boot drive. How do I use internal HD as storage?

It sounds like what you're asking is this: Can I back up two different drives via Time Machine? And the answer is yes.

When booted up on the SSD, go to Time Machine preferences and click the "Options" button. Make sure your original drive isn't excluded from backing up.

However, that being said, what you're doing seems a little strange to me. The folder hierarchy of OS X is fairly specific (your data goes in /Users/your_user_name/), so I'm wondering where you're storing your data when booted from the SSD. I hope you don't run into permission errors down the road if you end up booting from the original drive.

If it were me and if I really wanted to keep my original OS installed on the drive, I think I would partition the original drive into two parts: one containing the OS and another for data storage when booted off the SSD. Just a thought, but let's see what other people say.

flavr said:

(For some crazy unknown reason a moderator moved this thread to "mac applications and mac app store" :/ So Im creating another thread where it belongs, in the iMac forum because this issue relates to my iMac. Please read below.)

Help! Added external 60GB SSD boot drive. How do I use internal hard drive as storage?

Im able to navigate to it in the finder and save files, but when I try and backup using time machine (to another external HD) its not recognizing the internal HD as part of the backup.

I kept OSX on the internal iMac HD just in case the external SSD gets removed I can still boot up my mac from internal drive.

Seems like i have drives all over the place and I want them to work as a whole, and all backup as one under my user. Am i doing this correctly?

Click to expand...

Under Time Machine options (in the TM control panel), do you have the internal HD added as an item to be skipped? If you do, you should remove it.

Do note however that in my experience, keeping two drives with bootable OSX connected has lead to some problems, including apps being launched out of the wrong Applications directory and such. I'm sure others have had no problems, but it's just my experience.

flavr said:

I kept OSX on the internal iMac HD just in case the external SSD gets removed I can still boot up my mac from internal drive.

Click to expand...

And you don't mind that the external SSD and the internal Mac HD will be entirely out of sync? Any apps you install/uninstall, any changes done on one will not be reflected in the other.

The first thing I did after cloning my internal Mac HD over to my SSD was a clean reformat of the internal Fusion Drive. I am still doing full backups of the SSD, including a daily clone, but that's a different matter.

The answer to your question is that Time Machine backs up the OS X installation on the startup disc. You're apparently trying to get it to back up two separate installations of OS X on two separate discs. That's not how it works.

My solution would work for you as well. I boot to the SSD but have a daily clone of it done to a partition I created on an external HD. Depending on the chipset of your external HD, you could always boot to the clone.

flavr said:

could i do this?:

reformat internal drive to only have OSX in case of emergency on a small partition. Then use remaining internal drive partition as storage when booting from the external SSD. then adjust time machine to backup the SSD and internal drive partition that does not contain OSX.

Click to expand...

My guess, having never tried it, is that if you create a separate partition on the internal HD, you would then be able to select and use it for backups in TM with no issues.

The first thing you want to do is put the internal Mac HD on the excluded list in Time Machine.

When I got my current Mac Mini, it came with a 1tb HDD inside.

Rather than open it up, I just added an SSD in a USB3/SATA dock, which became my "boot drive". So -- what to do with the internal drive?

Here's how I set it up:
- I cloned the contents of the internal to the external SSD (hence, my boot drive)
- I partitioned the internal HDD. I made the first partition the size of my external SSD
- I used CarbonCopyCloner to create a bootable clone of the SSD onto the first partition of the internal
- I used the rest of the internal HDD for other things.

Why I did this:
I now have a second, IMMEDIATELY BOOTABLE COPY of everything on my boot SSD.
If for any reason I get into an "I can't boot!" moment with the SSD, all I have to do is restart and hold down the option key until the startup manager appears.
I then will boot into an exact copy (as "exact" as the last incremental update) of my boot SSD.

SSD's are still an evolving storage technology. From what I've read about them, unlike HDD's (which often give off warning signs as they age and progress towards failure), an SSD can fail "instantaneously". That is to say, one minute it may be working, then.... POOF!
Having a cloned backup provides some insulation if this ever happens.