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SB Lynn Author

Level 1

8 points

Time machine not allowing backup of all external hard drives

I have a mid-2014 MacBook Pro, running on Big Sur and I'm clearing files off my internal hard drives so that I free up space. I'm trying to work off external hard drives (ie all personal documents, design documents, photos, music, etc). I'm setting up another hard drive to backup everything up with Time machine on an external 5TB hard drive (all seagate products). I went into options to select the external drives I want to include in the "options" panel in system preferences, but TM only lets me select one of the two external hard drives. I added the one and it backed up successfully. Tried to add the other but the selection is grayed out and Time Machine will not let me take it off the "exclude" list. Anyone else have this problem and found a solution?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Mar 1, 2021 7:28 PM

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

133,291 points

Posted on Mar 1, 2021 7:31 PM

You can only back up drives in MacOS readable/writable formats.

If you have a drive that came from the factory in Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) format, and are using manufacturer's Utilities to simulate a Mac drive on it, Time machine can not back it up. It needs to be a native MacOS extended (journaled) drive.

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Time machine not allowing backup of all external hard drives

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