Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

How do I know if my external drive is being backed up.

I have a Samsung Portable SSD T5 where I store all my photographs. I want to make sure that it is backed up.

I have an automatic backup system for my computer that saves data onto an external hard drive. You helped me install the automatic backup system the last time we worked together. Will the automatic backup system on my computer also backup this Samsung Portable SSD T5 if it is plugged into my computer?

Or do I need to manually copy the information on the Samsung SSD T5 onto a backup drive myself?
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The external backup drive that Time Machine uses will backup other drives that are plugged into the same computer however Apple has made a very non intuitive choice in how this works. The drive would have to have been removed from the "do not include in backup" section of Time Machine preferences. Before going into detail on that, the easiest thing to do to check is to open the external backup drive then look in the backup.backupsdb folder. From there, choose a recent backup from the list of backups. Inside that folder you should see MacintoshHD as well as the names of any other drives that time machine drive is backing up. If you see the external photos drive listed there, that means it is being included. If you do not, let me know and I'll give you further ways to ensure it's included in the future.

Note: for a drive to be used by time machine to backup, it can not be formatted for windows. I doubt yours is either.

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