Breaking news , I’ve just connected my external drive to the port that definitely won’t work and it connected straight away.
So it does looks like not enough power to the USBs.
Does a time machine back up store photos and music or do I have to do that separately?

My preferred method of backing up is to clone the drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. I bought the app, but it gives you 30 days of unlimited use, and has very detailed how-to guides. Using CCC will basically create a mirror of your current drive which you could use to boot from and restore to a wiped drive, or to just plug in and pull off any folders you need.

https://bombich.com/

Had a trip to the genius bar today. The lady did the geek equivalent of turning it off and on again by wiping it then reinstalling. That didn’t work. Spoke to lots of people on the apple help line and got escalated through increasingly cleverer people and they can’t fix it.
It’s been passed over to the cleverest people in the universe and they should have an answer on friday.
Even though they can’t fix it, the chief clever person has given me his direct phone number to contact him and he is phoning me at 4 on Friday wth the answer. (Hopefully)
You’d have to say that’s good service. I’m chief apple basher but fair play to them.

I’m chief apple basher but fair play to them.

Its a grand sting to get you to buy another computer – a sympathy buy, after all they’ve done absolutely everything possible to help you 😉

As an aside Carbon Copy and Super Duper are very slow/inefficient way of doing a back up and I’ve had them fail numerous times. Time Machine is great and if you ever need files back or a complete restore (eg when putting in a new drive) it works really well. What I should do is get N offsite backup in the event of a house fire

OP Time machine copies your music/photos. In fact if your whole disc or computer dies it will recreate everything inc the operating system

As an aside Carbon Copy and Super Duper are very slow/inefficient way of doing a back up and I’ve had them fail numerous times.

I…but…wha…huh?

Erm. Ok.

I used to use them when replacing hard drives but it was quite common for clone to fail – frustrating after 4 or 5 hours

So an update. ..still not fixed. I must have spent 12 hours on the phone to them.
Files have been uploaded to them and basically we’ve made sure it’s updated taken itunes off and put it back on.
I speak to someone who in turn emails someone and we have to wait for a reply.
Why can’t they just put me through to the person who is really clever and cut out the middle man?
I appreciate they are doing this for free but I kind of get the idea that they don’t have a clue.

well, the oracle at Delphi wouldn’t have seemed so grand if people didn’t have to work for an answer