Please help setting up TM for iMac with 2 external drives

[gelie]

@ssls6 I finally was able to set up my old iMac following the below instruction successfully.

What you do is this

1) buy 2 external USB3 drives (a 2TB and a 4TB)
2) make the 4TB a time machine backup drive, call it backup
3) make the 2TB a media drive, call it media
4) make sure your iTunes preferences/advanced tick boxes are selected that say "keep media organized", quit iTunes
5) copy the entire folder "iTunes Media" from your home iTunes folder to the external "media" drive
6) start iTunes and go into iTunes preferences/advanced and tell it your new media folder location
7) quit and restart iTunes, test your songs, movies, ...that they play
8) now you can delete your old "iTunes Media" folder in your home iTunes folder. It is no longer used.
9) turn on time machine and have it backup both macintosh HD and media

IF you add music, it will go automatically to your external media drive. The artwork cache is still on the SSD so seeing your stuff will still be fast.

Now I'm not sure how to set up TM.

i'm assuming the "Backup" should have no music on it? (once its removed from my previous backups)
i'm confused about the "Media" drive. How do I set up TM so it only backs up Media and not my whole computer? Thanks again

 

[hfg]

If you look under "SystemPreferences/TimeMachine/Options" you will see that by default your external drives, including the "Media" drive are excluded from the TM Backup process. Simply select the "Media" drive and click on the " - " button to remove it from the excluded list. On your next Time Machine backup, the contents of the external "Media" drive will be included, and subsequent incremental backups as well. This is in addition to your internal system drive.

 

[gelie]

thanks when I do that the "media folder is somewhat greyed out. And will only allow me to "+" not "-".


OK i see the plus is really to not include. but what should i select so i only have media/ new media added? Or is the way i have it set up, when i add/buy new music it will automatically go onto the external disc and save?

 

[ucfgrad93]

Check to make sure that your time machine preferences are unlocked.

 

[hfg]

thanks when I do that the "media folder is somewhat greyed out. And will only allow me to "+" not "-".


OK i see the plus is really to not include. but what should i select so i only have media/ new media added? Or is the way i have it set up, when i add/buy new music it will automatically go onto the external disc and save?

Make sure your external "Media" drive is formatted for OS X, and not a default Windows format as purchased which will produce the greyed-out listing which can not be changed. Your TM Backup disk should also be formatted OS X (I believe it has to be for TM to even begin).


If you followed the instructions regarding moving your iTunes library to the external Media disk, your newly purchased music will go to the external library on the Media disk (check the box for "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library). Now, your Time Machine backup should contain the contents of both your internal system drive and the external "Media" drive once you have removed it from the "exclude" list.

If you are continuing to use an existing Time Machine backup on your external TM drive, it will include the iTunes files which used to be on your internal drive for historical retrieval (the whole purpose of Time Machine backups), however they will eventually be removed as the disk gets full since they are no longer on the original source. If you want to totally remove them and start fresh, simply erase your TM backup disk and start it over with a fresh total backup (probably overnight), and then normal hourly short incremental backups.

 

[gelie]

Make sure your external "Media" drive is formatted for OS X, and not a default Windows format as purchased which will produce the greyed-out listing which can not be changed. Your TM Backup disk should also be formatted OS X (I believe it has to be for TM to even begin).


If you followed the instructions regarding moving your iTunes library to the external Media disk, your newly purchased music will go to the external library on the Media disk (check the box for "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library). Now, your Time Machine backup should contain the contents of both your internal system drive and the external "Media" drive once you have removed it from the "exclude" list.

If you are continuing to use an existing Time Machine backup on your external TM drive, it will include the iTunes files which used to be on your internal drive for historical retrieval (the whole purpose of Time Machine backups), however they will eventually be removed as the disk gets full since they are no longer on the original source. If you want to totally remove them and start fresh, simply erase your TM backup disk and start it over with a fresh total backup (probably overnight), and then normal hourly short incremental backups.

Thanks. Yes it is formatted to OS X and i tried purchasing a song from iTunes and it downloaded to the "media " drive. Im just not sure why am i using TM to back up the "media" drive? I plan on using the "backup " drive and TM for the rest of my my iMac sans music.

As soon as I try to back up "media" on TM the internal hard drive try to copy. If i try to exclude the internal HD from the back top i get a error message.

 

[hfg]

Thanks. Yes it is formatted to OS X and i tried purchasing a song from iTunes and it downloaded to the "media " drive. Im just not sure why am i using TM to back up the "media" drive? I plan on using the "backup " drive and TM for the rest of my my iMac sans music.

As soon as I try to back up "media" on TM the internal hard drive try to copy. If i try to exclude the internal HD from the back top i get a error message.

If I am understanding you correctly ... your external "Media" drive is your only copy of the iTunes purchases, and thus should be also backed-up to your Time Machine Backup drive so that you can recover it should the Media drive fail in some way.

Your Time Machine Backup drive should have a historical backup of ALL your files on both the internal computer drive and the external Media drive such that you will have 2 copies of every current file on separate drives in the event of a drive failure or corruption. This way, if either of your Source drives (internal and external Media) fail ... or your TimeMachine Backup drive failed ... you will not have lost anything and you can replace the failed drive and recover your files.

 

[gelie]

Yes my initial goal was to remove the ~500gb of music from my internal drive to my external drive so I can purchase a new iMac with a 512gb SSD. What I'm confused at is step nine from my OP "9) turn on time machine and have it backup both macintosh HD and media" . To what device do i back up the "media " drive to? the 4GB HD?

 

[hfg]

Yes my initial goal was to remove the ~500gb of music from my internal drive to my external drive so I can purchase a new iMac with a 512gb SSD. What I'm confused at is step nine from my OP "9) turn on time machine and have it backup both macintosh HD and media" . To what device do i back up the "media " drive to? the 4GB HD?

Yes, all TM backups go to the 4TB drive. Your TM backup will automatically include all files on the internal computer drive (unless they are added to the Options/Exclude list). By default, all external drives are automatically added to the Exclude list, so you must go to TM/Options and remove the entry for the external 2TB "Media" disk ... and it too will be included in your TM backup.

Apple recommends that your TM backup disk have a capacity of 1.5-to-2 times the size of your files to be backed up on all drives included in the backup ... so you should be fine with the 4TB TM backup disk you have. I would additionally add a 512GB partition to the TM backup disk and use CCC to create a periodic (I do it once a day at 3AM) "bootable clone" of your 512GB SSD. This way you have a easily bootable recovery system if there are any problems with your boot disk ... and you then have a 3rd backup copy of your system/data files (but not your large media libraries which probably don't change much with daily usage).

 

[gelie]

Thanks. Now i'm have a problem with having TM backing up my "media" drive to my "back up " drive. The are both mounted to my iMac , but when I select under preferences on the "back up" to select "media" it won't let me add it.

 

[gelie]

This is what my TM looks like:

 

[hfg]

Thanks. Now i'm have a problem with having TM backing up my "media" drive to my "back up " drive. The are both mounted to my iMac , but when I select under preferences on the "back up" to select "media" it won't let me add it.

That looks pretty normal so far ... so if you select "MEDIA" (as you have in the capture) and then click on the "-" button, it should remove that entry from the list and thus it will be included in the next backup after you "Save" your new settings.

 

[gelie]

That looks pretty normal so far ... so if you select "MEDIA" (as you have in the capture) and then click on the "-" button, it should remove that entry from the list and thus it will be included in the next backup after you "Save" your new settings.

Yes but it won't allow my to "-" it. its greyed out.

 

[hfg]

Yes but it won't allow my to "-" it. its greyed out.

OK ... that picture is different than the one previously posted (disk.pdf in post #11) where it appeared the MEDIA disk was selected, appears as a standard orange external-drive, and the "-" looks to be active. On this picture, the MEDIA disk icon has the blue TimeMachine logo on it indicating that it thinks that it is one of the disks selected to be used as a TimeMachine backup target disk. Do you have it present in the TimeMachine Target disks? Only the "IMAC BACKUP" disk should be listed there as you show in the above "tm.pdf" file in post #11 above.

 

[gelie]

Yea I think that might be it. Now on my desk top both drives are orange and I'm starting backup. Thx