I was using samsung T5 portable SSD 500GB which seems to have crashed. I have 2TB Airport Time Capsule as a backup drive connected to Macbook pro (early 2015). Would Airport Capsule be holding data from external SSD? If so, then how to restore it?
Thanks very much for any help in this matter.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.1
Would Airport Capsule be holding data from external SSD?
Yes, if you set up Time Machine to back up both your Mac and the attached SSD.
Chances are, you would remember if you did this.........you would have set things up as follows:
Open System Preferences (the gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click on Options
By default, the SSD would appear here as an item that was Excluded from Time Machine backups
IF.....you selected the SSD to highlight it and then clicked the - (minus) button at the bottom of the Exclusions list to remove the SSD from the list.....then....the SSD would be included in backups and Time Machine would have backed up both your Mac....and...the SSD.
Do you remember setting things up this way? If yes, you should be able to restore the backup of the SSD to another source like your Mac desktop or another drive. Post back for more instructions.
If you did not do this, Time Machine would not have backed up the SSD.
Is it possible that you might have manually backed up the SSD to another drive or the Time Capsule using the Finder to simply Copy / Paste the data?
Would Airport Capsule be holding data from external SSD?
Yes, if you set up Time Machine to back up both your Mac and the attached SSD.
Chances are, you would remember if you did this.........you would have set things up as follows:
Open System Preferences (the gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click on Options
By default, the SSD would appear here as an item that was Excluded from Time Machine backups
IF.....you selected the SSD to highlight it and then clicked the - (minus) button at the bottom of the Exclusions list to remove the SSD from the list.....then....the SSD would be included in backups and Time Machine would have backed up both your Mac....and...the SSD.
Do you remember setting things up this way? If yes, you should be able to restore the backup of the SSD to another source like your Mac desktop or another drive. Post back for more instructions.
If you did not do this, Time Machine would not have backed up the SSD.
Is it possible that you might have manually backed up the SSD to another drive or the Time Capsule using the Finder to simply Copy / Paste the data?
Mac was getting cluttered and to upgrade to Mac Sur I cleared Mac off all the files. And in a month I find external storage crashing. Looks like my best bet would be to search for professional data recovery services
You did try Disk Utility / First Aid on the SSD?
Worth a try if you have not already done this.
If the drive is not spinning or recognizable, then you would need to get with a data recovery / restoration service. Unfortunately, that is always extremely expensive, and you pay up front, no matter what the results might be.
Thanks. I restarted Mac 2nd time and it seems to recognise the external SSD. on time machine preferences, in the options I can see Samsung T5 greyed out. Does it mean time machine will not back it up at all? It doesn’t get highlighted so that I could remove.
The SSD is not formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if it is grayed out. It must be if you want Time Machine to back up the drive along with your Mac.
Not sure if it is worth the hassle to copy all the data on the SSD over to another drive, then format the SSD in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then copy the data back onto the SSD......just so Time Machine can back up the SSD.
It's your call though.
Good plan.
If your Mac is running Big Sur, Apple switched the drive format over to APFS for that operating system, so it would make sense to format the new hard drive the same way.....APFS....before you copy the data over to the drive.
If your Mac is not running Big Sur, then use the format of Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the new hard drive before you move the data over to the new drive.
That’s very helpful. Thank you. It was in default settings and I believe external SSD was excluded. I should have removed it from that list
I did and it didn’t show me external SSD. I was using portable solid state drive 500gb
Got you. Better to have a new storage device which I can format and copy the data on it
Thanks for this helpful information. It is Big Sur now. icloud is also a good option in the meantime.
How to restore external portable SSD data if possible using time machine from Airport Time Capsule
