You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Time Machine

Time Machine not backing up my external Hard Drive. I've tried to take it off the excluded list but the minus button will not operate at all. Please let me know if you have any solutions. I'm on a Mac Studio running Ventura 13.1

Posted on Jan 3, 2023 9:59 AM

Top-ranking reply

Bob Timmons

Community+ 2024

Level 10

168,722 points

Posted on Jan 3, 2023 12:16 PM

If you cannot remove the hard drive from the list of Excluded items, then it is not formatted correctly to work with Time Machine. The drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or possibly APFS.

Temporarily, connect the hard drive directly to your Mac so that the drive mounts on the Mac's desktop

Right-Click on the drive icon and then select Get Info from the drop down list

Look for Format in the information that is displayed about the drive

What is the current Format?

View in context

Time Machine

Similar questions