replacing external hard drive time machine

If both disks happen to be connected then Time Machine will alternate between each drive. In the future, Time Machine will backup to whichever disk is currently connected to the Mac. Time Machine will start to perform its backup shortly to the new hard drive, Time Machine Red.

Click the red dot to close the Time Machine Preferences window.

Enter your login credentials to connect to the Time Capsule or the Synology NAS.

Note: If your second backup hard drive is in a Time Capsule or a network attached storage device, like a Synology DiskStation, then you’ll be prompted to login to the device.

If you see this prompt let this disk be erased, assuming you don’t have any data on this disk that you care about.

Note: If this new disk is not formatted using the MacOS Extended format then you’ll be notified that this disk needs to be erased.

You’ll be asked if you want to use this new disk, Time Machine Red, will replace the previous disk, Time Machine Green, or if you want to use both.Select Time Machine Red from the list below Available Disks.Click on the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon.Wait about 10 seconds to make sure that this drive’s icon appears on your Mac’s Desktop.Connect the new hard drive, named Time Machine Red, to your Mac.

Let’s further imagine that your Mac has been backing up to Time Machine Green for many months already. Let’s imagine that the names of these two backup hard drives are Time Machine Red and Time Machine Green. Here are instructions for configuring Time Machine to backup to two different hard drives. I simply replace the failing drive with another healthy drive. When one of the drives starts to die on me, I don’t fret because I know I have another full backup on my second backup drive. Storing backup data on two different hard drives provides me with some peace of mind since I know that these drives don’t last forever. Consequently, I backup my Mac to two different hard drives as well as backing up my data to the cloud using Backblaze. Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? There’s an adage that goes if it’s worth backing up once, it’s worth backing up twice.

Replacing external hard drive time machine