#Can time machine backup external drives for free#
#Can time machine backup external drives how to#
#Can time machine backup external drives update#

Thanks Ed that appears to address the second question. Update: Ed Mechem's comment points out Apple's Back up thew Photos library page, which recommends simply dragging your Photos library to another drive to back it up.

#Can time machine backup external drives how to#

Seriously, Apple, tell me how to back up the 8TB external drive I'm using to hold my photosвЂ¦there must be an Apple-accepted solution, right? So if I have to go to the cloud for primary photo storage, I don't think I'll be using Apple's solution (even though it's obviously the best-integrated).

#Can time machine backup external drives for free#

At that level, I'd need the 2TB iCloud plan at $10 a monthвЂ¦versus Google and Amazon, both of which offer unlimited photo storage space for free (though Google has caps on image and video resolution). My library is over 40,000 photos and 1,400+ videos, requiring in excess of 500GB of storage. I know Apple's answer to the second question is 'You shouldn't be storing photos locally, they should all be in the cloud.' But if you have a huge collection of photos and videos, and/or if you've got slow or limited internet, this is not a realistic option.

#Can time machine backup external drives update#

How, exactly, am I supposed to back up my photos, if I can't use Time Machine? (See update at end for Apple's recommended solution.) Will SuperDuper or CarbonCopењњloner also run into permissions problems? I'm using a 1TB Flickr account and their upload tool as a backup method, but I have lots of upstream bandwidth, so it's not badвЂ¦but not everyone is lucky enough to have fiber to the door.

What if I exclude the iPhoto Library folder from Time Machine-is that sufficient to prevent the permissions issues, such that I can use Time Machine for the rest of the drive?.Yikes again!ДЄpple's writeup leaves me with a couple of critical questionsвЂ¦ So there are potentially a lot of Mac users with small internal drives who may be affected by this. And in today's Mac world, that could be a lot of people-while you can configre some machines with up to 2TB of solid state storage (and iMacs with bigger Fusion drive), doing so is wildly expensive. Think about that for a bitвЂ¦this affects anyone with limited internal storage space who has their photos stored on an external drive. Not just 'don't back up the Photos Library folder with Time Machine,' but 'don't back up the entire drive with Time Machine.' Yikes! In a nutshell, Apple recommends that if you've moved the System Photo Library to an external drive-as nearly anyone who takes lots of pictures will have done, given space-limited solid-state internal drives-you do not use Time Machine on that drive. That's taken from the System Photo Library overview, part of Photos' help. This makes much more sense continue reading only if you care about my feelings on the original incorrect wording. That just means you shouldn't use the same external drive for both your Photos library and as a destination drive in Time Machine. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup. If a Photos library is located on an external drive, donвЂ™t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. Update: Thanks to reader Brian for commenting below that Apple has updated this page with much clearer wording.