Backing up an external hard drive with Time Machine

[Bill!123]

Can anyone tell me how to tell Time Machine how to find an external hard drive (that is attached to myiMac) that I'd like to back up? If recoginizes it in a window for selecting a drive to back up to, but I can't seem to find any window to tell it what drives I want backed up. It backs up the internal hard drive on the iMac. Thanks Bill!123

 

[MaskedPhantom]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you want to add an external hard drive to Time Machine's list of drives to back up?

System Preferences --> Time Machine --> Options will do that for you.

Hope this helps.

 

[spinnerlys]

Time Machine (TM) backs up every HDD connected to your Mac, but no USB drives or CD/DVDs as far as I know.

TM uses an exclude list to exclude set (by yourself) folders and drives, but it has no include list. So everything that is not excluded and is connected to your Mac will be backed up.

Have a look at System Preferences > Time Machine > Options and see if your external HDD might be on the exclude list.

 

[Bill!123]

thanks

thank you both. Perhaps it did back it up, and I didn't know it. Bill!123

 

[Bill!123]

thanks, again

Actually, I looked again and it backed up only the internal drive. One of you said it won't back up USB drives, and that appears to be my problem. It's a USB drive. Thanks again for solving answering the question. Bill!123

 

[harry*333]

an easy fix to this dilema would be to get a usb to firewire adapter the computer will think its just a really slow firewire drive

 

[Bill!123]

I'll try that

Super--thanks.

 

[spinnerlys]

an easy fix to this dilema would be to get a usb to firewire adapter the computer will think its just a really slow firewire drive

What?
I have ever seen such thing, and I can't fathom they exist, as USB and Firewire are two different buses, one even has a dedicated chip on the logic board.
Can you provide a link?

Actually, I looked again and it backed up only the internal drive. One of you said it won't back up USB drives, and that appears to be my problem. It's a USB drive. Thanks again for solving answering the question. Bill!123

I meant USB flash drive, not HDDs connected via USB.

The problem might be in the file system of the external USB HDD.
Can you right click on the HDD icon in Finder and select Get Info and see what it says under Format?

If the drive is formatted with something else than HFS+ (Mac OS Extended), TM will not back it up.

 

[harry*333]

well my bad I saw an ad for one a year or so ago and never inspected it

 

[Bill!123]

format

indeed it is formatted MS-DOS (fat 32) as in your example. so, looks like it's a no go. I may need to just go back to Retrospect, which is what used for years as my backup software. Bill!123