Backing up my external drives
Can you please help me with setting up a backup using Time Machine? I had an old MacBook Pro with which I used a Lacie external hard drive to back up using Time Machine. Now I have a new MacBook Pro, with a 256GB drive as opposed to my old Mac’s 500GB hard drive.
I store my Lightroom catalog on a separate 500GB hard drive with my iTunes library. My local Mac shop told me that the Time Machine can now back up the hard drive on my Mac as well as the external drive containing my iTunes library and Lightroom catalog. I couldn’t get my head around what he was saying about Time Machine preferences and excluding things from the list, which I have never tried. Can you can give me an idea in plain terms? Nigel James Hughes
It’s actually really simple. By default, Time Machine will only back up your Mac’s internal drive. External USB or FireWire drives, including memory sticks, are excluded by default. To change this, just open Time Machine’s preferences, click Options and select the drive with your Lightroom and iTunes data (it has to be plugged in to show up in the list). Now click the ‘minus’ button at the bottom of the list and the drive will be removed from the list of those that will not be backed up, which means it will be backed up.
Time Machine can only back up drives formatted with one of the ‘Mac OS Extended’ formats. So if a new drive appears greyed out, you’ll need to reformat it using Disk Utility.