The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
My time machine is not backing up an external hard drive connected to my imac - how do I fix this?
Open time machine preferences
Select options
Ensure the disk is not excluded
Open time machine preferences
Select options
Ensure the disk is not excluded
SOLUTION:
I copied the contents of the external SSD drive that wouldn't let me delete it from the Time Machine "Options/exclude from backup" dialog" to a new location, re-initialized the external SSD disk in a different format (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) copied the original contents back to that external SSD drive and was then able to select/delete from the time machine/options dialog which included it in the backup.
Yes is was - I had to get a larger external back up drive..
I have 3 Sandisk 1TB external Hard Drives. One is showing up in the Exclude These Disks window and is greyed out so I can't select it to delete it from the list and have it backed up. The other two aren't on the list so I assume they're being backed up but I don't see anything in the TM backup disk that suggests they're in fact being backed up.
How do I:
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities.
Was Time Machine ever backing up to an external disk? Do you have an external disk connected to your Mac?
Jack
I checked that, and it is not - on some of the external hard drives I have backed up arrow icon on it but not the drive I really need backed up?
I have 4 external hard drives attached to my main computer - I need to back up all - I only use one that is my main hard drive for current clients
Yes I mistakenly excluded the disc - how do I in-exclude it. When I try to back up now it asks me to erase & I can't see the previous back ups on there
yes
The external disk may not be correctly formatted.
The time machine is not backing up a external hard drive connected to my imac - how do I fix this?
