You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Wolf Wallis Author

Level 1

8 points

Uh oh, external drive used for time machine backups died. What to do?

Running OS Mojave 10.14.6, all systems go...well, sort of. This is a late 2013 iMac. With multiple external drives doing different things, one of these is keeping a bootable CC Clone bootable backup. Another external drive is keeping my TM backups, until 3 hours ago. It did a backup at 7:30 this evening and by 9:30 wasn't being recognized. All measures, i.e., cables/connection, power, etc., have been taken and it appears the external drive is simply dead. Swapping cables, connecting to my wife's iMac, nothing.

The backups began in 2014. Will there be a way to recover any of those backups? Obviously and thankfully, the CC Clone backups are security, but what should I do about Time Machine?

Moving to a new iMac has been in preparation for some time (removing final 32-bit software, file maintenance, etc.) and I'm almost ready...but now I need to resolve this Time Machine issue.

Thanks in advance, Wolf

iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 7, 2020 7:44 PM

Top-ranking reply

rkaufmann87

Level 10

144,084 points

Posted on Dec 7, 2020 10:01 PM

Exactly get another External Hard Disk, most experienced users recommend the OWC Mecury Elite Pro, the 3TB model is on sale right now and is a great drive.

View in context

Uh oh, external drive used for time machine backups died. What to do?

Similar questions