How to back up a FAT32 Drive with Time Machine?

Question

Level 1

9 points

How to back up a FAT32 Drive with Time Machine?

I recently bought a 3TB backup drive which I formatted to Mac OS Extended. As expected, Time Machine is able to back up my internal hard drive to this external drive, but I would also like to back up my other 2TB external hard drive (about 300gb full), which is formatted as FAT32 (so I could occasionally use it with a Windows/Linux machine, although this isn't wholly necessary). As I understand, Time Machine is able to back up Mac OS formatted drives, but not FAT32 drives. I am considering a copy and paste of this FAT32 drive to the new backup drive, formatting the drive to Mac OS Extended and then copying it back, so that Time Machine works. Alternatively, is anybody aware of a reliable, free incremental backup application? I know there are a few paid ones, but they're not really worth it for my situation. Finally, is there any way to get Time Machine to work with the situation I have now? I am using Mavericks (10.9.4).

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jul 15, 2014 1:09 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Jul 15, 2014 4:32 PM in response to finmoorhouse

That makes me think you are correct in reformatting to HFS+.

213JB's suggestion about using a disk image to move the data is reasonable to me. You can use a compressed format to save space. Just mount the disk image & inspect the contents before you reformat the other disk. Only having one copy of data is a risk.

You will need to manually copy the files back either via the Finder or a better idea is to use something like CarbonCopyCloner or ChronoSync. Finder can be unreliable with large copy operations.

Reply

Answer 2

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Jul 15, 2014 1:25 PM in response to finmoorhouse

Time Machine doesn't backup external disks by default.

Open the Time Machine preferences (unlock the prefs panel if required).

Select the 'options'.

Remove the external disk from the list (it will only appear when connected).

I don't know if TM covers FAT formatted disk, but I suspect the following site may have that information…

http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

It's great for TM tips & information.

Reply

Answer 3

finmoorhouse Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 16, 2014 1:58 AM in response to Drew Reece

Thanks again- this is most likely my plan. I have copied all the contents of the FAT32 drive into the backup drive. When I create my disk image to have 2 safe copies, should I store that on my internal hard drive?

Reply

Answer 4

finmoorhouse Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 16, 2014 11:01 AM in response to Drew Reece

Hi Drew,

I did everything that has been suggested- I backed the FAT drive up to my internal with Carbon Copy, exluded it from TM, made another backup to my TM drive (I didn't have any backups beforehand), formatted the FAT drive, copied the contents back onto it, deleted the internal backup and excluded that drive from TM. Everything looks just fine now. Thanks very much!

Reply

Answer 5

213JB

Level 2

385 points

Jul 15, 2014 1:17 PM in response to finmoorhouse

Disk Utility 12.x: Create a disk image

Reply

Answer 6

finmoorhouse Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 15, 2014 1:34 PM in response to Drew Reece

Thanks for the response. This is my issue though- I can't remove the drive from the excluded list because it is FAT.

Reply

Answer 7

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Jul 16, 2014 5:44 AM in response to finmoorhouse

If you have enough free space you could do that, just bear in mind Time Machine will copy that too, so it could push out older backups depending on sizes.

Reply