Time Machine Back ups to external drive

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Time Machine Back ups to external drive

Hi, I am using Time Machine to do daily back ups to an external disk. Included in these daily back ups, is another external drive. The problem I have, is the external drive being backed up shows up as a folder but it is empty. I can look back through the history of daily back ups on the external drive that Time Machine has always used, and it seems this blank folder appeared around the time I updated to Catalina, as previous to that, the external drive backed up showed the proper contents, not just the folder. What can i do? Thanks.

Posted on Nov 7, 2019 9:10 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

MoonJ.

Community Specialist

Nov 13, 2019 12:25 PM in response to aljamrog

Hi Allan,

Thank you for letting us know your issue is resolved. You can also use Finder to copy your music, photos and movie libraries to an external drive as another backup, or to free up space on your Mac. Here is some additional information for you:

Move your iTunes library to another computer

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac

Move your iMovie for Mac library

Enjoy your day!

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Answer 2

i_rina

Community Specialist

Nov 12, 2019 12:05 PM in response to aljamrog

Good afternoon aljamrog,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

If I understand your issue, you were using Time Machine to back up an external drive. When you updated to macOS Catalina, the result was a blank folder for the external drive in Time Machine. I have two suggestions for this.

First, I would use Finder to copy the entire contents of the external drive to a new external drive so that you have a complete backup of it.
Next, remove the external drive from the Time Machine backup options.
Disconnect the external drive from your iMac and restart the computer.
Check how much available space you have on the external drive you use for Time Machine.
If you have enough available space to work with, add the external drive to the Time Machine backup options again.
After 24 hours, check to see if the external drive is backing up properly in Time Machine.

Here are some resources to help you with this:

Other ways to back up and restore files

"Use the Finder to drag files

You can also back up files like documents, pictures, and movies by simply dragging them to a different disk, such as an external USB drive, Thunderbolt drive, or FireWire drive. To restore them, just drag them back."

Use external storage devices with Mac

Back up your Mac with Time Machine

Take care.

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Answer 3

aljamrog Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 13, 2019 6:49 AM in response to i_rina

Hi i_rina, thanks for the reply. I found out what the problem was.

I had dowloaded Catalina the day before the back up of the external drive, through Time Machine, started to show up as a blank folder, previous to that, the external drive folder was showing up with its full contents for a year or more of daily back ups.

What happened was; the original external drive had failed the day after I downloaded Catalina, I bought a new drive and plugged it in, but had not set it up, then I found this blank folder in Time Machines' daily back ups two days after that.

Even though I had removed the old failed external drive, I had not excluded it in Time Machine settings. The blank folder was Time Machine still trying to save a non-existent drive. I set up the new drive to be backed up and removed the old non-existent drive in Time Machine settings and problem solved.

I had already done what you advised in your answer, but I did not know I could use Finder to back up one drive to another, so thank you.

Cheers, Allan

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Answer 4

aljamrog Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 13, 2019 2:03 PM in response to MoonJ.

Thank you

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Time Machine Back ups to external drive

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