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sirgroiney Author

Level 1

8 points

Time Machine question

Can I use an external harddrive that has data stored on it already for Time Machine backups?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jul 20, 2021 5:37 PM

Top-ranking reply

D.I. Johnson

Level 7

24,623 points

Posted on Jul 20, 2021 5:45 PM

Hello, sirgroiney.

You can do that but it isn't recommended. Time Machine backups are very sensitive to tampering and it's very easy to accidentally mess something up with a wayward insertion or deletion.

It's just best practice to dedicate a drive to the TM backup and use it for nothing else.

If you must use a single drive for TM and something else, it's best to partition the drive and give TM its own volume to backup to.

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