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I have been backing up with time machine onto an external harddrive. To get my macbook pro to do this I had to remove Macintosh HD from the list of things not to backup. Does this mean in future things will not longer save directly to my laptop?
MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13
Whenever you add or change anything on your Mac, Time Machine will back it up automatically, assuming of course you selected Back Up Automatically in its Preferences. It does that every hour.
In other words, no. Just turn Time Machine on and forget about it. That's how it's designed to work. If you do anything at all, you might want to click the Time Machine icon in the Mac's menu bar once in a while to make sure its last backup was recently created. If TM's most last backup was sometime today or yesterday, I'm happy. If a long time transpires (ten days) and TM was unable to back up for whatever reason, it will let you know.
Whenever you add or change anything on your Mac, Time Machine will back it up automatically, assuming of course you selected Back Up Automatically in its Preferences. It does that every hour.
In other words, no. Just turn Time Machine on and forget about it. That's how it's designed to work. If you do anything at all, you might want to click the Time Machine icon in the Mac's menu bar once in a while to make sure its last backup was recently created. If TM's most last backup was sometime today or yesterday, I'm happy. If a long time transpires (ten days) and TM was unable to back up for whatever reason, it will let you know.
Read Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support.
To get my macbook pro to do this I had to remove Macintosh HD from the list of things not to backup.
There should be no need to alter any of its settings. Undo whatever you did. If "Macintosh HD" is the name of the source volume you intend to back up, then removing it will result in nothing being backed up. On the other hand if "Macintosh HD" is the name of an external hard disk drive that you do not intend to back up, then removing it is ok.
You can choose to exclude specific files, folders, or entire volumes if you have justification for doing so. To learn how to do that read Exclude files from a Time Machine backup on Mac. Be sure to read the Note.
Hi John, thank you so much for your reply. I removed Macintosh HD from the list of things not to backup in order to include it in the things backed up by time machine as it was on the list of things not to back up.
Now the back up is complete, do I need to alter anything back e.g if I load more photos onto my laptop will they still be saved in the Macintosh HD area for me to then back up on time machine at a later date?
Many thanks for your help with this!
Thank you so much - this is super helpful, really appreciate it! :)
Time Machine Backup Beginner!
