Backup external hard drive to Time Machine external drive

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Backup external hard drive to Time Machine external drive

I'm trying to back up my external hard drive (formatted as Mac OS Extended [Journaled]) to my Time Machine external drive (also formatted as Mac OS Extended [Journaled]).

The only thing that Time Machine recognizes is my MacBook Pro. When I go into the options menu in Time Machine, I can see the external drive that I want to back up, but it's greyed out, so I can't select it. I also can't add it, it shows up as greyed out.

I've read that you can't back up external drives to Time Machine if it's in a different format, but both external drives are formatted the same.

Has anyone got a solution to this? I ended up copying the external hard drive's contents to my desktop and it got backed up by Time Machine, but obviously I'd like to store things on my external hard drive which has a greater capacity (1 Tb). Otherwise it's an expensive paperweight.

Posted on Sep 5, 2022 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

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blork28 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 5, 2022 11:30 AM in response to Barney-15E

Yes, it has a backups.backupd folder. I can't move or delete that.

I'm not sure how I formatted the drive as I was new to OS at the time.

I was thinking I would erase everything and reformat it while I have the files on my desktop, and then move them back. But when I realized that it was the same format as the other drive, I didn't do that extra step.

Thanks for your help. I will post how this goes.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

113,512 points

Sep 5, 2022 9:16 AM in response to blork28

Is there anything on the external drive that would make it special, such as an OS or Backups.Backupd folder?

There are certain things it won't back up.

I'm not sure the format has to be the same, but they do have to be Mac formats.

Did you format the volume to Mac OS Extended and not the drive? If so, the drive may still be in Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. I don't know for sure, but that might be a cause that it can't be removed from the exclusion list.

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

149,477 points

Sep 5, 2022 10:00 AM in response to blork28

By design, Time Machine, not only backs up your Macs internal drive, but will also backup any other mounted external drive connected to your Mac ... unless, you explicitly exclude them.

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Answer 4

blork28 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 5, 2022 11:47 AM in response to blork28

Well, I'm delighted to report that it worked. I'm now able to remove the external drive from the list so that it will be added to my backups.

Thank you for your help!

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Backup external hard drive to Time Machine external drive

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