Time Machine on M4 w/Sequoia question.

[Turnpike]

I have a 500GB Macbook Pro M4 with a 4TB external hard drive where I save iTunes downloads. I also plan to move other folders there.

If I use a 5TB external drive for Time Machine, does it back up what is on my Mac including the external drive holding my larger folders, or only what is on my immediate Mac?

 

[Bigwaff]

If I use a 5TB external drive for Time Machine, does it back up what is on my Mac including the external drive holding my larger folders, or only what is on my immediate Mac?

If you configure TM options to back up the external drive, it will. By default, I don’t believe TM backs up external drives.

 

[kitKAC]

If you configure TM options to back up the external drive, it will. By default, I don’t believe TM backs up external drives.

Looking at the TM options, I can't see where that's possible? You can add locations for TM to back up to, and folders to exclude from the backup but not much else.

 

[Bigwaff]

Should be able to backup external drives by removing them from the exclude list as described here.

How to make sure Time Machine backs up external drives

A reader wants to shift his Photos and iTunes libraries to an external drive and ensure they're backed up by Time Machine.

www.macworld.com

 

[FreakinEurekan]

5TB is an awfully small Time Machine drive for (potentially) 4.5TB of data. Keep in mind that Time Machine not only backs up what’s there, but also what was there (I.e. versioning & deleted files). My personal “rule of thumb” is minimum 2x the data being protected for a Time Machine drive.

That said, I do exclude certain folders, e.g. my “scratch” folder for video edits. That would absolutely BALLOON the backup, for no real benefit. Also ~/Downloads as anything I want to “keep” gets moved quickly out of there.