Backing Up Files on an External Hard Drive
Summary:
You can back up files on a compatible external hard drive with Carbonite.
Carbonite doesn’t support backing up flash drives, SD cards, shared drives, and remotely located devices.
This article applies to:
Carbonite Plans | Products | Platforms |
Plus, Prime, Core, Power, and Ultimate (Not sure?) | Safe and Safe Pro (Not sure?) | Windows– View the Mac article |
Solution:
- Make sure that you have a Carbonite Safe Plus plan or higher.
- To check, see Which Carbonite Plan Do I Have?
- Connect the external hard drive directly to the computer by USB (IE not through a HUB or Device that acts like a HUB).
- Open File Explorer and navigate to This PC.
- Right-click the external hard drive and select Properties. From here, confirm that the external hard drive File System is listed as “NTFS” or “FAT32”.
If the drive is listed as any other format, Carbonite cannot select it for backup. To resolve this, you can move the files from the drive to a folder on your computer, format the drive to NTFS (this will erase the drive), and move the files back to the drive.
- Right-click the external hard drive and select Carbonite; Back this up.
- On Windows 11, click Show more options to reveal the Carbonite menu item:
- On Windows 11, click Show more options to reveal the Carbonite menu item:
- Click OK on the pop-up message.
- If needed, select excluded file types for backup.
Carbonite will back up the files on the drive as long as it remains plugged into the computer once every 30 days. If the drive is removed, Carbonite will remove the external hard drive from the backup after 30 days.