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Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

Hi. I've been working with a lot of family video lately and my internal hard drive has filled up significantly. iMovie doesn't seem to have a good archiving facility like Adobe InDesign which I use at work were all the relevant files are gathered together into one folder. Apple advised me to relocate my movie files to an external hard drive and herein lies my query.


Is there a way for me to set Time Machine to backup both my iMac's internal drive and the external hard drive that would contain my movie files? I've been using Time Machine for my backups for a few years now, but backing up the external as well has me stumped. If Time Machine could be used then all the necessary file accociations etc would be safely backed up as well - that's why I don't want to have to manually backup the external.


Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Time Machine-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Feb 11, 2012 4:04 AM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

Yes, you can backup you internal partitions and external partitions using TM. You can only Select one drive to backup to, but in the Options button you can remove any exclusions from the Exclude list and TM will back them up.


In the screenshot below, I can't backup the partition I'm backing up to (Mac Mini TM) or the NTFS partition (WIN BACKUP), but I can backup the other external partition (Mac Mini Backup) by removing it from the Exclude list.


User uploaded file

Posted on Feb 11, 2012 5:28 AM

35 replies

Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

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