Time Machine for 2 drives?

My current 2TB Time Machine HD is starting to get a little cramped as a backup for my 1TB Mac. I would like to turn it into an “extra storage” drive, buy a much larger HD and use Time Machine to back up both the Mac and the external HD onto the new drive (or alternatively, use Time Machine to continue to back up the Mac Mini and use a 3rd party backup utility to back up the external drive onto a separate partition of the new drive).

Obviously, I want to tell my Mac that the old Time Machine drive is no longer a Time Machine drive and that honor goes to the new drive. How would I go about doing that? Thanks.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Oct 15, 2018 7:12 AM

Top-ranking reply

Eric Root

Level 10

685,251 points

Posted on Oct 15, 2018 9:26 AM

Go to System Preferences/Time Machine, click Add or Remove Backup Disk, delete the current drive, and then add the new one. Then check Options to make sure old drive isn't excluded from backing up.

To use the old drive for something else, open Disk Utility, and erase/reformat the drive. Do not try to drag the old backup to the Trash. That can lead to problems.

View in context

Time Machine for 2 drives?

Similar questions