Time Machine has taken over my entire external hard drive

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Level 1

48 points

Time Machine has taken over my entire external hard drive

I'm running 11.5.2, latest software on all devices. But ever since the latest update to Big Sur, time machine has taken over my entire external hard drive that I back things up to. Before the latest update to 11.5.2 I used to be able to backup my Quickbooks business data to the same external hard drive, now I can't. I can't even drag and drop a JPG into it. I called Apple tech support and tried everything they knew of to no avail. So I guess now I have to backup my business data to a flash drive. All this happened after the latest update. My external drive is a Lacie D2 Quadra V3 2TB storage. I always backed up my Quickbooks data to it before this last update. First I went to Quickbooks tech support, not their issue, then I went to Lacie, works fine, not their issue, went to Apple, no answer, use a flash drive to back up your data. Wow.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Sep 7, 2021 3:10 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

91,018 points

Sep 7, 2021 3:23 PM in response to Housedoctor

That is the #1 reason for not storing other data on the same drive that is being used for Time Machine.

Remove everything else from the Time Machine drive and use another external drive or flash drive for the other data.

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Answer 2

Sep 12, 2021 11:37 AM in response to Housedoctor

You should have created 2 partitions on that HD: one for TM and one for your manual backup. Regading safety: one backup, either fot TM or for you other data, is not a 100% reliable solution. You should at least have the mos timportant data backed up on another place (i.e.: 2nd HD or Cloud or whatelse). Neither a 2nd HD, BTW, is a 100% reliable solution but still better than one. That's why a different storage type is a better solution (external HD + cloud service).

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,470 points

Sep 7, 2021 3:34 PM in response to Housedoctor

den.thed is 100% correct. You should NEVER use a Time Machine EHD for anything other than Time Machine!!!!!!!!!

The reason you should not is all HD's crash, it is not a matter of if it is a matter of when. So when yours dies that means all the data and backup are completely gone.

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Time Machine has taken over my entire external hard drive

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