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trouble backing up external drive with time machine

I have a small USB stick that I use to store important documents but documents that I don't access very often. I have an additional 500 GB hard drive that I use for backing up with Time Machine. I want Time Machine to backup both my internal hard drive (Macbook Air 2011 Lion) as well as the small USB stick. I've searched the forum and discovered that I needed to reformat the USB stick, which I did (it is now Mac OS Extended). The USB now appears in the list of excluded drives in Time Machine preferences, which I removed. Thinking that Time Machine would be backing up my USB stick now, I backed up and then turned the computer off. The next day, I looked at the external drive, and it didn't seem to have a backup of the USB. I entered Time Machine and the USB is "greyed out" which means it wasn't backed up. I've retried backing up several times by including the USB in Time Machien preferences, but it seems that when I click "save" it doesn't actually save because when I open Preferences up again, the USB stick is in the list of excluded items again. Have I done something wrong? Any imput would be greatly appreciated.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Oct 18, 2012 5:43 AM

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2 replies

Oct 18, 2012 7:13 AM in response to fan4bronco

I don't use Time Machine but my view is that it is too dangerous for sticks which may be removed - I understand that it may delete previous backups if it discovers that the stick no longer exists.


You could:


  1. manually copy the stick to your main drive from time to time
  2. use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the stick
  3. use a utility to mirror the stick to your main drive

Oct 18, 2012 10:46 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Thanks Neville, I'll think about those other options, except I really don't want to do #1 because I have very little space on my hard drive and there is a very good reason I moved these documents to the USB stick in the first place. But just out of curiousity, I don't really understand how TM "knows" it is a USB stick rather than another USB external hard drive. I mean, another external drive could just as easily be disconnected.

trouble backing up external drive with time machine

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