Exclude 2nd external hard drive from Time Machine backups?

[mujana]

I have 2 external drives connected to my Mac mini M4 Pro;

1x LaCie d2 10TB (formatted in macOS Extended (Journaled) for Time Machine and separate files.

1x OWC Express 1M2 (with 4TB Samsung 990Pro SSD inside). This one is new and I want to use it specifically for (photo) files. Nothing more. APFS formatted.

Installation went fine and the photos that I wanted, are on the OWC/Samsung.

BUT:

in system settings I excluded the OWC drive from Time Machine (using the "-" ). I do not want this drive to be backed up by Time Machine. Time Machine should ONLY back up the internal.

After hours of Time Machine doing its job (yes, much longer than usual), I now see, that this external OWC still is backed up by Time Machine (!). Taking extra space ofcourse, and I do not want that. At the same time it's not easy to remove the OWC/Samsung from the Time Machine backup, because some folders inside are protected.

Any advice? What have I done wrong? What should I do?

Thank you!

 

[Brian OReilly]

On Sequoia, you need to go to the 'options' section of Time Machine Settings to get the dialogue to exclude a disk.

Hope this helps and that I have not misunderstood

Brian

 

[mujana]

On Sequoia, you need to go to the 'options' section of Time Machine Settings to get the dialogue to exclude a disk.

Hope this helps and that I have not misunderstood

Brian

Thank you. And that's exactly what I did. And then I excluded (using the "-" sign), the second external drive...so, the OWC SSD.

Now I see, that it is used again by Time Machine (!). I manually stopped this Time Machine backup.

Edit: it seems that Time Machine backups now take hours and hours….every time.

 

[Greybeard2023]

On Sequoia, you need to go to the 'options' section of Time Machine Settings to get the dialogue to exclude a disk.

Hope this helps and that I have not misunderstood

Brian

Thank you. And that's exactly what I did. And then I excluded (using the "-" sign), the second external drive...so, the OWC SSD.

Now I see, that it is used again by Time Machine (!). I manually stopped this Time Machine backup.

Edit: it seems that Time Machine backups now take hours and hours….every time.

If you open the Time Machine dialogue and click on options what do you see in the Exclude from Backups list?

You exclude using the "+" not the "-"

 

[mujana]

On Sequoia, you need to go to the 'options' section of Time Machine Settings to get the dialogue to exclude a disk.

Hope this helps and that I have not misunderstood

Brian

Thank you. And that's exactly what I did. And then I excluded (using the "-" sign), the second external drive...so, the OWC SSD.

Now I see, that it is used again by Time Machine (!). I manually stopped this Time Machine backup.

Edit: it seems that Time Machine backups now take hours and hours….every time.

If you open the Time Machine dialogue and click on options what do you see in the Exclude from Backups list?

You exclude using the "+" not the "-"

I saw both drives; OWC and LaCie. I used the “-“ on the OWC drive (because I though that then that drive would be excluded and not being incorporated in a Time Machine backup on the LaCie). Now, I only see the Lacie drive (which I cannot do “-“.

So now I’ll add (use “+”) the OWC.

 

[mujana]

On Sequoia, you need to go to the 'options' section of Time Machine Settings to get the dialogue to exclude a disk.

Hope this helps and that I have not misunderstood

Brian

Thank you. And that's exactly what I did. And then I excluded (using the "-" sign), the second external drive...so, the OWC SSD.

Now I see, that it is used again by Time Machine (!). I manually stopped this Time Machine backup.

Edit: it seems that Time Machine backups now take hours and hours….every time.

If you open the Time Machine dialogue and click on options what do you see in the Exclude from Backups list?

You exclude using the "+" not the "-"

I saw both drives; OWC and LaCie. I used the “-“ on the OWC drive (because I though that then that drive would be excluded and not being incorporated in a Time Machine backup on the LaCie). Now, I only see the Lacie drive (which I cannot do “-“.

So now I’ll add (use “+”) the OWC.

YES! you're right. I feel very stupid now!

Thank you for this advice!

 

[mujana]

Follow up;

I now obviously want to delete that OWC backup map from Time Machine.

Inside my "MacMini M4Pro" map I can go to several backups, already made by Time machine earlier today. When I open one of the few earlier backups Time Machine made today, there are 2 maps inside; "Data" (perfect), and "photos Samsung 990 pro" (which is the OWC). In the very last Time Machine backups, the "photos Samsung 990 pro" map is gone (which is exactly what I want and ). Only a map "Data".

Still I have those "photo Samsung 990 pro" maps inside a few Time Machine backups made earlier today. I would love to get rid of them! These take 1.6TB of space.

BUT, removing this map/these maps, seems to be impossible (?). System keeps saying that this process cannot be finished because some parts have to be skipped. It suggests to check this: show info / check secured is not active /check permissions on each file (not "only read") / try again.

I did do all this....no maps are secured and everything has proper permissions (read and write)

Then I try again....and same message again.

Do you maybe have any advice on how to do all this??

Maybe a Terminal command?? Something else?

Thank you very much!

 

[Greybeard2023]

Follow up;

I now obviously want to delete that OWC backup map from Time Machine.

Inside my "MacMini M4Pro" map I can go to several backups, already made by Time machine earlier today. When I open one of the few earlier backups Time Machine made today, there are 2 maps inside; "Data" (perfect), and "photos Samsung 990 pro" (which is the OWC). In the very last Time Machine backups, the "photos Samsung 990 pro" map is gone (which is exactly what I want and ). Only a map "Data".

Still I have those "photo Samsung 990 pro" maps inside a few Time Machine backups made earlier today. I would love to get rid of them! These take 1.6TB of space.

BUT, removing this map/these maps, seems to be impossible (?). System keeps saying that this process cannot be finished because some parts have to be skipped. It suggests to check this: show info / check secured is not active /check permissions on each file (not "only read") / try again.

I did do all this....no maps are secured and everything has proper permissions (read and write)

Then I try again....and same message again.

Do you maybe have any advice on how to do all this??

Maybe a Terminal command?? Something else?

Thank you very much!

How about just reformatting the TM drive and starting over?

Do you have old backups that you might ever need?

 

[mujana]

Follow up;

I now obviously want to delete that OWC backup map from Time Machine.

Inside my "MacMini M4Pro" map I can go to several backups, already made by Time machine earlier today. When I open one of the few earlier backups Time Machine made today, there are 2 maps inside; "Data" (perfect), and "photos Samsung 990 pro" (which is the OWC). In the very last Time Machine backups, the "photos Samsung 990 pro" map is gone (which is exactly what I want and ). Only a map "Data".

Still I have those "photo Samsung 990 pro" maps inside a few Time Machine backups made earlier today. I would love to get rid of them! These take 1.6TB of space.

BUT, removing this map/these maps, seems to be impossible (?). System keeps saying that this process cannot be finished because some parts have to be skipped. It suggests to check this: show info / check secured is not active /check permissions on each file (not "only read") / try again.

I did do all this....no maps are secured and everything has proper permissions (read and write)

Then I try again....and same message again.

Do you maybe have any advice on how to do all this??

Maybe a Terminal command?? Something else?

Thank you very much!

How about just reformatting the TM drive and starting over?

Do you have old backups that you might ever need?

That’s always a possibility ofcourse. But this 10TB drive is more than 4 years old now and now (after “wrong” Time Machine backups), almost 9TB is used. I plan to buy a new LaCie HDD.

Before the “wrong” Time Machine backups, I still had around 3TB of free space (so 7TB filled). I would like to keep this 3 TB of free space for extra backup of photo files (every now and then saving files).

At the moment I still have another disk (6TB) filled with Time Machine backups and separate files. This is an older disk, that is now completely “full”.

I would like to use the current 10TB disk, as I did the 6TB disk before (just use it every now and then and only for separate files. 3 TB of free space could therefore help me a lot.