This is what I have done so far. I erased the LaCie drive (after backing up up my iMac to a drive connected to my Airport Extreme which took FOREVER!) using Disk Utility. Then I turned off Filevault as suggested by Denver Dan and it took over 24 hours! He did caution patience. Now I am doing a Time Machine backup of my iMac hard drive, using after having added the LaCie drive and my drive connected to Airport Extreme to the ¡°Excluded list. That first TM backup to LaCie has just started and it claims that it will take an hour. I¡¯m not holding my breath.
I read the BackBlaze article on How to Use Multiple Backup Drives with Time Machine. But I am wondering what OS they are talking about because when I open TM Preferences,there is no ¡°Select Disk¡± instruction, but rather a list of disks that I can click on (I am using Sierra 10.12.6 on a Late 2014 27-inch iMac). There does not seem to be a Use Both option. II did select the LaCie backup which was listed. I am wondering if there isn¡¯t the option to select a second backup disk, in my case the one connected to AirPort Extreme, while TM is still in the process of backing the hard drive to the LaCie. I will check if there is a ¡°Use Both" option when this first TM backup is over.
I have another question, namely when this is over, should I turn File Vault back on? When this problem first started Time Machine said it couldn¡¯t back up the hard drive because the LaCie disk was unencrypted. If such is the case and I turn File Vault back on, will this whole TM issue reoccur?
I used to understand how computers worked way back in the 80s using DOS with floppy disks and no hard drive. I took a course as part of my MBA requirements and even learned a little BASIC. Things were pretty simple" back then. Now there are so many layers underneath the user interface and both Apple and Windoze are basically saying, "there there dears don¡¯t worry your little heads about how this works, we¡¯ll take care of it.¡± Same with cars I suppose. I don¡¯t like the resulting lack of direct control. to say nothing of what the computer is actually doing!
Joan
