Can't backup flash drive to Time Machine

Question

Level 1

9 points

Can't backup flash drive to Time Machine

I have a flash drive (Patriot Rage XT 64GB) I want to back up with Time Machine. It is plugged into a MacBook Pro running 10.7. I have a Mac mini server (10.7 as well) that is acting as the Time Machine remote backup disk. The MBP backs up through Time Machine just fine.

When I go into the Time Machine preferences and click on the Options button, my flash drive is listed in the "Exclude these items from backups" list. When I try to remove the flash drive from the list it goes away, but when I click the Save button and then go back to the list (clicking Options again) my flash drive is listed again.

So my flash drive isn't being backed up because it is on the exclude list. But I can't remove it from the list. Every time I remove it it goes right back when I look at the list again.

How do I get it to stay off the excluded list? Is there something about the drive that makes it unable to back up? When I was running 10.6 I was able to back the flash drive up to a remote backup disk just fine.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1), 2 GHz Intel Core i7

Posted on Sep 13, 2011 9:20 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Sep 13, 2011 9:41 PM in response to shepster

Is the drive formatted as HFS ("Mac OS X Extended")? If not, TM can't back it up.

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Answer 2

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 14, 2011 12:12 PM in response to Linc Davis

Here is the info from Disk Utility:

Mount Point : /Volumes/myFlash

Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Owners Enabled : No

Number of Folders : 7,916

Capacity : 65 GB (64,999,194,624 Bytes)

Available : 17.8 GB (17,797,066,752 Bytes)

Used : 47.2 GB (47,202,127,872 Bytes)

Number of Files : 60,837

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Sep 14, 2011 12:21 PM in response to shepster

If you make other changes to your TM exclusions list, do they stick? If you haven't tried, please do so.

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Answer 4

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 14, 2011 7:33 PM in response to Linc Davis

Other backup exclusions stick.

Interestingly, when I remove my flash drive from the list, the other exclusions move up to fill the missing slot. But then when I go back the flash drive is right back at the top of the list.

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Answer 5

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 14, 2011 7:39 PM in response to shepster

Would deleting the

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist

preferences file do any good? Would it do any harm?

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Answer 6

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Sep 14, 2011 7:39 PM in response to shepster

Please launch Disk Utility again and run "Repair Disk" on the flash drive. Any errors?

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Answer 7

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Sep 14, 2011 7:44 PM in response to shepster

As long as you have a backup of the file, there's no harm in deleting it. You'd have to reboot to see the effect of the change.

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Answer 8

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 15, 2011 8:17 AM in response to shepster

I have discovered the tmutil command. Perhaps a tmutil removeexclusion /Volumes/myFlash will get rid of the exclusion.

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Answer 9

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 15, 2011 5:57 PM in response to shepster

Sadly, tmutil didn't work

[mpb:~] me% sudo tmutil removeexclusion /Volumes/myFlash

[mpb:~] me% tmutil isexcluded /Volumes/myFlash/

- /Volumes/myFlash

[mpb:~] me% sudo tmutil removeexclusion -p /Volumes/myFlash

[mpb:~] me% tmutil isexcluded /Volumes/myFlash/

- /Volumes/myFlash

[mpb:~] me%

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Answer 10

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 15, 2011 9:54 PM in response to Linc Davis

Well, getting rid of the

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist

file didn't help. Now my Time Machine is unconfigured, but my flash drive still shows up on the exclude list. And I ran a Repair from Disk Utility on the flash drive, which found no errors and didn't help any.

So there must be something about my flash drive that Time Machine doesn't like.

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Answer 11

shepster Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 16, 2011 8:47 AM in response to shepster

I have just tried with multiple flash drives on multiple Lion machines and this issue affects them all. Even with a newly-formated flash drive.

I can't back up any flash drive on any Lion system.

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Answer 12

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Sep 16, 2011 8:52 AM in response to shepster

Then you're dealing with a bug in Lion.

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Answer 13

mr10012

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2011 12:09 PM in response to Linc Davis

I am having the same problem: I cannot backup any flash drive on any of my 3 Lion machines because I cannot remove it from the excluded drives list. This is a major problem as I am using a 120GB flash drive to carry all my documents and data, and had no problem creating TM backups on with Snow Leopard. After upgrading to Lion, TM will not backup my flash drive on any machine. Flash drive is Mac OS formatted, healthy, etc.

This appears to be a Lion bug and persisting in 10.7.2. Anybody has a resolution or workaround?

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Answer 14

Dec 5, 2011 4:57 PM in response to mr10012

I don't believe it's a bug in OS X Lion simply because I am on OS X Leopard and it also puts my flash drives on the exclusion list. Although on Leopard, the option to remove the drive from the list is grayed out so I can't even attempt to do so. I really wish I could back up my Flash drive because it's where I keep ALL my work documents.

I can't understand why Time Machine would exclude flash drives other than the possibility that you can mess with them (although you can also mess with your HDD too).

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Answer 15

mr10012

Level 1

0 points

Dec 5, 2011 5:21 PM in response to tanner1294

Are your drives Mac OS formatted? Snow Leopart would grey out FAT drives as TM does not backup FAT drives.

Also, Snow Leopard sometimes would grey out drives it thought had errors. You could reformat those and they would work.

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