Question :

My old G4 iBook running MacOSX 10.5.8 Leopard has a hard drive of just 40GB inside ; upgrading that will cost far more than plugging in a 32GB (nano) USB-stick, but…

If I do so… will TimeMachine also backup the files from my 32GB USB-stick ?

Answer :

Yes !

TimeMachine will backup the data from any USB-stick without have to make any adjustments to TimeMachine, but you need to make sure that :

1- the USB-stick is properly plugged into your Mac (seems only too obvious, but since it is so easy to detach it without thinking about it… just double check !)

2- the USB-stick is formatted as a genuine Mac-drive, so in HFS+ format (PC/FAT-formatted USB-sticks need to be re-formatted to HFS+, else TimeMachine will not recognize them… but beware : reformatting a USB-stick will erase all it’s content… so start out by moving all data to your hard drive, then reformat the USB-stick and only after that, put the data back onto the USB-stick)