Backing up files on WD My Passport External Hard drive

I just bought the WD My Passport External Hard Drive 500GB yesterday. I was able to initially do a back up of all my files on my Macbook Pro 13" with no problem using Time Machine, but now I'm a little confused. I'm new to all of this...

I bought this external hard drive because I needed to replace the internal hard drive (250 GB for 500 GB) on my Macbook Pro. I was advised that it would be a good idea to back everything up first before changing the hard drives. I did that, no problem. I was able to take all the files originally on my hard drive and transfer them onto the external hard drive and then to the new internal hard drive. Everything is back to normal, but my question is... Do I keep the external hard drive plugged in so that it always backs up any changes I make or new files saved? Another problem I'm having is that when I plugged in the external hard drive for the second time after I made some changes to files, it began to back everything up completely for a second time, instead of replacing edited versions of things. I want to make it so that anytime I add new photos or music it just adds those files to the external hard drive on top of my previous back ups. Does anyone know how to make it so that it just backs up new and edited files, while keeping my original backup?

Hopefully this makes some sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

You dont need to keep it plugged in all the time. Just occasionally (dependent on your use, once a week is good enough for me) plug it in and it should back up.

It should only back up the changes on your system. Maybe it was because you just had restored and it was the first backup from that system? Do it a few more times and see if it keeps doing it.

By spec, Time machine is incremental in nature (that is, once you've backed something up it only tracks/backs up changes). It'll check hourly, but you can leave it unplugged without issue. Until I got around to plunking my backup volumes on the network at home I'd wait until I got the "Time Machine has not backed up in 10 days" warning to bother plugging in and mounting the disk. Never had an issue, it just made for larger individual backups.

thurstmw said:

You dont need to keep it plugged in all the time. Just occasionally (dependent on your use, once a week is good enough for me) plug it in and it should back up.

It should only back up the changes on your system. Maybe it was because you just had restored and it was the first backup from that system? Do it a few more times and see if it keeps doing it.

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That's what I thought, so I deleted everything off the external hard drive (after it was on the new system of course) and did another "initial" back up with the "new" system. Hopefully when I plug it in again it will only do the changes. It should go rather quickly the next few times, right? (Verses the hour plus it took for the initial back up).

Dysfunction said:

By spec, Time machine is incremental in nature (that is, once you've backed something up it only tracks/backs up changes). It'll check hourly, but you can leave it unplugged without issue. Until I got around to plunking my backup volumes on the network at home I'd wait until I got the "Time Machine has not backed up in 10 days" warning to bother plugging in and mounting the disk. Never had an issue, it just made for larger individual backups.

Click to expand...

Thank you. This is really helpful. I think I'll do what you said and just wait until I get that pop up from Time Machine or unless I add something important that I want immediately backed up.