Isues backing up external drive - El Capitan

Ran into issues trying to back up an external drive to another external drive on macbook, running El Capitan. Apple Sr. Tech couldnt solve the problem. I was able to select the external drive that would be receiving the back, but was not able to select the source external drive to "exclude" it as th receiving drive. The negative icon wouldn't light up. All I could do was add drives to the exclusion list using the plus icon.

How about using something like SuperDuper! ? It seems work.

What are you using to do the backup? I use ChronoSync to do this in El Capitan and have had no issues. FYI, I don't think SuperDuper will let you do external to external, but I could be wrong about that.

Are you talking about Time Machine? I may be misreading your post but I don't understand why you would try to exclude a drive as the backup (receiving) drive if you already have a target backup drive selected. Time Machine won't span different volumes on its own. You can add drives to the exclusion list to exclude them from being backed up. This is typically something people do for external drives.

nqjudo wrote in post #17884617
Are you talking about Time Machine? I may be misreading your post but I don't understand why you would try to exclude a drive as the backup (receiving) drive if you already have a target backup drive selected. Time Machine won't span different volumes on its own. You can add drives to the exclusion list to exclude them from being backed up. This is typically something people do for external drives.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I'm using Time Machine and attempted to backup one external drive to another as shown in this video https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=0l4vJvtzvbU . The problem I'm having is removing the drive that I want to backup from the Exclusion list. My computer won't let me select it or the minus sign. Several Apple Sr. Techs have shared my screen and couldn't help. The last one collected data from my computer to give to their Engineers. That was 24 hrs ago. Will report back when I hear back from them.

RMyers wrote in post #17883243
How about using something like SuperDuper! ? It seems work.

bacchanal wrote in post #17884582
What are you using to do the backup? I use ChronoSync to do this in El Capitan and have had no issues. FYI, I don't think SuperDuper will let you do external to external, but I could be wrong about that.

nqjudo wrote in post #17884617
Are you talking about Time Machine? I may be misreading your post but I don't understand why you would try to exclude a drive as the backup (receiving) drive if you already have a target backup drive selected. Time Machine won't span different volumes on its own. You can add drives to the exclusion list to exclude them from being backed up. This is typically something people do for external drives.

It took an Apple Engineer to determine my problem. Turns out that Time Machine isn't recognizing the external drives because of formatting. Per Apple, "This is because the [external] drive is formatted as NTFS using MBR, which is not compatible with Time Machine for the purposes of backing up.

I'll be buying a third external drive, but would still like to use of my two Toshibas (model v73600-c). If I format my existing externals (after transfering data), will Time Machine recognize them?

Larry Johnson wrote in post #17887607
If I format my existing externals (after transfering data), will Time Machine recognize them?

yes use disk utility and format HFS+ Journelled

do this with all new drives

Maybe this will help other's computer technically-challenged people like me.

This is how my problem was solved. Purchased Paragon's NTFS for Mac 14 software for $20 (suggested by Apple Tech). This utility allowed my macbook to communicate with the raw files that were on the improperly formatted NTFS external drive (NTFS is for PC/Windows). I'm moving those files, via Lightroom 5, to a properly formatted OS X external drive.