Now Time Machine will back up both my internal drive as well as the external one to the NAS drive I have connected to the network. If your external hard drive is there and you want to back it up, remove it from the list by clicking on the minus button and then Save. Here, you’ll find a list of hard drives that have been excluded from your Time Machine backups.At this point the Backup Disk is selected. Select a drive and click on the Use Disk button. Next, you’ll need to click on Options… button at the bottom A window opens showing External Storage Drives connected to your Mac.It provides the best disk performance required for backing up data. Once you’re in, click on Select Disk to pick the hard drive you want to save your backups to The best external hard drive for Time Machine backups on Macs is Samsung T7 SSD Touch.Find the Time Machine icon (near the bottom) and click on it The Seagate Backup Plus for Mac comes with variants ranging from 1TB to 5TB, and like WD My Passport, it is ready formatted for Mac and Time Machine.Head over to your Mac’s System Preferences menu, the cog icon found on your Mac’s dock.Of course, as with any important files, I like to make sure they’re safely backed up! That’s why I’ve started using Mac OS X’s Time Machine feature to back up not only the internal drive, but my external drive too. It frees my Mac’s internal storage and allows me to grab the drive if I ever want to work away from my desk.

Thereafter, future backups will complete faster as Time Machine only backs up the files that have changed since the previous backup.Even though my Mac Mini has 250GB of very fast SSD storage, I rely on my external Brinell SSD to store my large video files. However, you can still use your computer while the backup is in progress. Note that your first backup may take several hours, depending on how many files you have. If Time Machine has been previously set up: open Time Machine and choose Select Disk then select the external drive. Your external backup drive is now ready, and a Time Machine backup will start within 2 minutes. But if your Mac uses a 1TB drive, consider purchasing a 3TB or 4TB external disk. Select Seagate Backup Plus Drive (or the external drive as shown) connected to your Mac, and choose Use for Backup. If your Mac uses a 256GB SSD, a 1TB external drive should work well collecting Time Machine backups. Open Time Machine from your Menu Bar (or from System Preferences).Ĥ. Plug in your Backup Plus to your system.Ģ. Time Machine can automatically back up everything on your computer in just a few steps.įollow these steps to use your Backup Plus with Time Machine:ġ. Use Time Machine with an external drive, such as Seagate® Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive, to easily back up your data, photos, and documents.

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