Apple Intelligence is now available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac!

📢 Newsroom Update

Apple’s new MacBook Pro features the incredibly powerful M4 family of chips and ushers in a new era with Apple Intelligence. Learn more >

📢 Newsroom Update

Apple introduces M4 Pro and M4 Max. Learn more >

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

Problem time machine with external drive

Error message "Two of the disks to back up have the same name. Rename one of the disks named “Macintosh HD - Data”." External hard drive has different name, so I don't understand. Any help much appreciated.

Posted on Mar 26, 2021 4:19 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 26, 2021 8:38 AM

If you go to "About This Mac" in the menu under the Apple in the left-hand corner of the screen and then go to storage, if you see there that you have a couple of drives that show with the same name, then that's what causing this issue. I had this issue with a Macbook Pro that I had and found that when I updated the OS, I had done something that caused it to create another "Data" section that was from the previous install before the update. I was able to delete that partition because it wasn't being used and was causing the issue, as soon as I removed it, then the Time Machine just started to work

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 26, 2021 8:38 AM in response to User3384

If you go to "About This Mac" in the menu under the Apple in the left-hand corner of the screen and then go to storage, if you see there that you have a couple of drives that show with the same name, then that's what causing this issue. I had this issue with a Macbook Pro that I had and found that when I updated the OS, I had done something that caused it to create another "Data" section that was from the previous install before the update. I was able to delete that partition because it wasn't being used and was causing the issue, as soon as I removed it, then the Time Machine just started to work

Problem time machine with external drive

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.