Time machine with USB external drive

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Time machine with USB external drive

Hi there,

I have a question of Time machine backups. My set up is I have an external USB drive (storing my Photos database) along with my MBA. Two weeks ago, TM successfully backed up both the USB and MBA contents. I was able to see the USB drive when I entered TM. However, I do not always plug in my USB drive and as I had turned on auto back-ups, TM still made the back ups automatically. Last night, when I entered into TM, I found that the latest copy did not have the USB drive but I also was unable to find the original copy with both the MBA and USB drive. Is this supposed to happen?

Thanks.

Time Capsule-OTHER, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Jul 30, 2015 4:02 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 30, 2015 6:04 AM in response to musicjack

Open up Time Machine and give it 5 minutes or more to fully load if you are using wireless.

Use the timeline on the right of Time Machine to go back and pick a date about the same time that you last backed up the Mac and hard drive together

Look over on the left panel of the window and locate the Devices heading

Click on the name of your Mac under the Devices heading and look over to the right to see a folder named Macintosh HD which represents the drive on your Mac

Move back and forth a day or two using the timeline to a date when you see both Macintosh HD and the name of the hard drive appear as folders in the main window

That date is the one where you had the drive connected to the Mac and both the Mac and hard drive were backed up. If you choose other backup dates when the drive was not connected to the Mac, you will only see Macintosh HD as a folder on those backup dates

Now let's say that at some point in the future, the hard drive fails and you want to restore the data from the backup of the external hard drive. Simply perform the same steps as above and when you see the window appear with both Macintosh HD and the external hard drive.........Right-Click on the external hard drive, then click Restore To.......and choose a location where you want the data from the backup of the hard drive to be restored.

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