Time Machine backups to two external drives?

Hi,
I'm wondering if there is a way to use Time Machine to back up the same data to two or more external drives?
For that matter... I only have certain folders I need backed up. Can it be set up to do this?
I don't have it yet and couldn't find a definitive answer.
thanks,
Andrew

I'm wondering if there is a way to use Time Machine to back up the same data to two or more external drives?
You can use Time Machine to backup to multiple drives, but you'll have to manually switch target drives in Time Machine Options when you want backups to go to a different device.
For that matter... I only have certain folders I need backed up. Can it be set up to do this?
Not easily. Time Machine backs up everything unless you exclude each item that you +do not+ want to be backed up. SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner may do what you need to do a lot more easily.

Similar Messages

  • Can Time Machine Backup to Two Different Drives?

    I have many Apple Computers, and I was wondering if it were possible to have time machine backup to two different drives.
    I want it to back up My documents, Mail, and other files/folders that I access often to a partition of my internal drive every minute.
    And
    I want it to back up Everything on my Mac to my external each night upon connecting it to my mac.
    I take my MacBook everywhere with me and I need to make sure that the files I work on the most stay Perfectly Accessible no matter what, and I don't want to sacrifice too much space for that procedure. I would rather just be able to do constant backups of my most used files and folders, and then do a system backup each night to make sure I always have what is needed.

    Let me add some more observations. I use two disks, one at home (its a mounted volume on another Mac at home) and the other is a portable disk that I attach to my MBP at work. This works fine.
    About your details - TM backs up every hour. If you look around you'll find some posts that give instructions on changing the frequency (I haven't paid attention to these, so I can't help you). However, backing up to another partition on the same drive is not what I'd recommend. If the drive dies, you may lose both partitions.
    As for doing constant backups of the most used files and at night doing a system backup - it seems to me you aren't "getting" TM. This sounds like the type of backup strategy one uses with "regular" backup software. I don't think I'd recommend backups every minute, but for short intervals, why not just do a default backup of everything. It doesn't really back up everything, just things that have changed. The only time it does a complete backup is the first time you use it with a specific drive. After that it no longer does complete backups, unless you reformat the drive and start from scratch.

  • Transfer Time Machine backup from one external drive to another

    Surely this has been covered, but I can't find it.
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    I haven't tried this yet but a few other methods are described at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071128055047339

  • Errors when transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive.

    Hello,
    I need some help transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive. Let me explain what happened.
    I have a Mac OSX Mountain Lion that was upgraded to Mavericks when the upgrade came out. Prior to upgrading, I've been backing up  WD Passport Mac with the proprietary software "WD Unlocker on it". It worked flawlessly but after upgrading to Mavericks, I decided to backup and noticed that once i inserted the WD Passport, my screen will flicker, windows will close and reappear.
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    Thank you.

    Since you don't really have a question, I will give you a very broad information source for the next time you have a Time Machine question.
    Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Oh, you cannot use a computer whose only disk drive is the target of a an OS X cloning operation regardless of what software is used for the clone. You can, however, use the source drive except if you try to clone using Disk Utility.

  • Cannot transfer Time Machine backups from one external drive to another

    Since I bought my 13 inch MacBook Pro in September 2014 I've been keeping Time Machine backups on an external 1TB Lacie Rugged.  This is partitioned into three and one of the partitions contains my iPhoto library. 
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    and followed the instructions precisely.  About 2 hours into the transfer I came back to my MacBook Pro and saw a message saying that it was not possible to complete the transfer because I did not have the correct permissions.  The only option was to click the OK button which stopped the transfer.
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    Cheers
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    Hi Eric,
    Thank you for your response.  I came across another thread yesterday which suggested the Restore via Disk Utility method.  It worked for me, too.  This was after I had tried following the method suggested in the Apple article above three times but each time the message was the same ....
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    I dare say that Apple would like to have us believe that it's a simple matter of 'drag and drop' but it certainly wasn't for me.  From what I've read the permission problem crops up fairly frequently. Before the second and third attempts  I had already amended Permissions on the Time Machine backups so that everyone could read and write, so that mustn't have been the problem.  I'm the only person who uses my computer so that's not a problem.
    The next problem I have is that I decided I would use the Restore route to transfer my SuperDuper clone rather than start from scratch.  Unfortunately, the partition size on my original backup disk where SuperDuper clone is is 350GB and the size of the SuperDuper clone partition on my new backup is 300GB.
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    Cheers
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  • Multiple Time Machine backups to one external drive

    I have a MacPro with an external hard drive that I use exclusively for Time Machine (the external drive is mirrored RAID).
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    Thank you

    yes you can do that. this is a supported configuration. although it's better to keep TM backups for different drives on separate partitions. probably not an option here though. the remote backups will be stored in a sparse bundle. while remote ones are stored directly in a folder on the drive.

  • Time Machine Backup across multiple external drives

    Hello all-
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    Thanks

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  • My experiences copying Time Machine backups from one external drive to another

    I am reposting this.  The first one was rejected because it contained 'product feedback' and I was directed to the 'Terms of Use'.  The 'Terms of Use' say feedback is welcome...***?!?
    My 3TB external drive started to die a few weeks ago.  It was still under warranty and I just got the new one yesterday.  I wanted to preserve all my backups (I had every backup for my late 2012 iMac) on it.
    The short of it is that there were like 20-25 million files there or something crazy like that. Finder was going to take forever to count the files.  cp and rsync would take like a week. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle, so I just securely erased the old disk and did a new initial backup on the new disk.
    The old disk would only mount in read-only mode, so I couldn't prune the backups down to a manageable size. Unless you only have a handful of backups, or you can internally mount the drives to make it go faster, it's going to take forever to do this.
    Regards, Patrick

    Hi Eric,
    Thank you for your response.  I came across another thread yesterday which suggested the Restore via Disk Utility method.  It worked for me, too.  This was after I had tried following the method suggested in the Apple article above three times but each time the message was the same ....
    The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items.
    I dare say that Apple would like to have us believe that it's a simple matter of 'drag and drop' but it certainly wasn't for me.  From what I've read the permission problem crops up fairly frequently. Before the second and third attempts  I had already amended Permissions on the Time Machine backups so that everyone could read and write, so that mustn't have been the problem.  I'm the only person who uses my computer so that's not a problem.
    The next problem I have is that I decided I would use the Restore route to transfer my SuperDuper clone rather than start from scratch.  Unfortunately, the partition size on my original backup disk where SuperDuper clone is is 350GB and the size of the SuperDuper clone partition on my new backup is 300GB.
    Of course, Apple says you can resize partitions using Disk Utility.  What they don't say is you can downsize partitions but (in my experience and that of many other frustrated users on various forums) you CANNOT upsize using Disk Utility.  I have 100GB spare on my external hard drive (from downsizing two partitions by 50GB each) BUT there is no way Disk Utility will let me increase the size of SuperDuper partition to 350GB :-(((
    Cheers
    Tricia

  • Time machine backup with 2 external drives?

    i got myself an external hard drive to use with my MBP. I do a lot of filmwork in imovie for my artwork, and have found my internal hard drive filling up fast.
    So i bought a second hard drive yesterday. I'm hoping to backup my files on the external drives so i can erase the files on my MBP and keep it fairly free to record more film.
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    thanks!

    dman8950 wrote:
    Hello
    Does anyone know if it's possible to use two separate external drives in Time Machine to backup different parts of my mbp hard drive? That is, I want to use ex.drive1 to back up work files at work and ex.drive2 to back up personal files at home. In time machine options, I can set the folders for exclusion, but currently have to set those each time I back up at home/work.
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  • Can I move all data from time machine backup to another external drive & work from it?

    Hi all, the harddrive on my macbook died (2nd time in a year) & I had a new one put in that's much smaller than the old one.  Can I move everything from my time machine backup onto a seperate external drive and work directly from that on my laptop/imac?  At the mo. I don't think time machine will recognise my computer as it's a new drive etc.  Thanks Jenny.

    What exactly do you want to do?
    Is it that you wish to extract an older version of some documents to edit, but leave the original intact?
    You can Restore an older version from TM and choose not to replace the current one.
    Or, do you wish to install the OS on your new drive, and migrate all the information from the TM backup to the new isntallation?
    EDIT: Ok, re-reading your question, I think macjack probably has the right idea.
    However, see Pondini's Time Machine FAQ # 16

  • Can I use a Time Machine Backup (on an external drive) as a "start up" drive?  I need to do a disk repair.

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