Time Machine to a Raid 5 Array

I bought a brand new tower a few weeks ago. This is our file server and is in production.
The problem is that the machine was purchased with a raid 5 array however the OS was installed on the main drive our database software is also on this drive.
I would like to know if its possible to use time machine to do a restore of the systems data to the raid array and then set it as the boot drive.
1. Will this work and are there any potential issues with this method.
2. Is there a better way to do this.

Yes, there are issues with having your operating system on a storage array. Were there a drive failure you would lose everything on the array including the ability to boot the system. Keep the OS where it is, and use the array for its intended purpose - storage.
You should also consider another array that you can use as backup for the existing one. Perhaps a mirrored array so your backup has a backup.

Similar Messages

Centralized Time Machine Backup on RAID 6 enable NAS

Hello. I have over 100 Mac computers on my network. I want to have Time Machine backups on each of these machine to a Centralized RAID 6 enabled NAS. All Machines are running Snow Leopard. Can anyone please guide me how to setup this. Thank you in Advance.

Sorry, but you're going to need another solution. Time Machine doesn't back-up to NAS devices: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1733

Restore Time Machine backup to Raid 0 (Striped set)?

I've been struggling with setting up my Mac mini (late 2012) server with a Striped RAID set and then restoring a Time Machine backup to the new RAID 0 volume. Here are the steps I have undertaken:
Bought a 3TB Airport Time Capsule and created a full restore of my existing Time Machine backups to it.
My Mac mini has dual 1TB hard drives. Pressed Command + R on bootup and entered recovery mode.
Using Disk Utility, I created a Striped RAID set by adding both my 1TB drives as slices to a new RAID set and clicked on Create.
After the RAID set was created, I exited Disk Utility.
Clicked on Restore from Time Machine Backup.
The process fails as it cannot create a Recovery Partition on a RAID set.
After much exploration, I think the problem can be resolved by attempting to Reinstall OS X on Step 5 and then attempting a Time Machine restore after the core OS is in place. Thoughts?

Additional Information
A Recovery partition cannot be created on RAID volumes. If your startup device is a RAID volume, you back up and reconfigure your computer to use a non-RAID boot volume. If needed, create a separate RAID volume for data which is not the target of the OS X installation. You can also create an external, bootable drive with a Recovery partition, as described above.
See this article if the following message appears during the install process:
"Install Failed: OS X could not be installed on your computer. OS X can't be installed on the disk because a recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple.com/support/no-recovery to learn more"
From:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649

Time Machine Setup using Raid Enclosure

I want to use Time Machine to backup my entire system (approx 6TB) including a very large Itunes Library, movies and photo's/video's. I purchased a sans 8TB raid enclosure and intend to run it in SPAN mode. At this juncture I am using a fire wire 800 connection pending installing a RAID controller card. The configuration is running on a MacPro (2007 Model)and 10.6.4 OS.
Which format should I use: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended?
Will the RAID Controller Card perform better than the Fire Wire 800?
Thanks, Koyangie

Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Yes, it will run faster from a RAID card than Firewire.

Time Machine on USB Raid

Hi all,
I'm new to Macs and I'm setting up a Time Machine Backup. I have three USB disks. I want plug them into a hub and use them as a raid set for time machine.
When I disconnect and reconnect the USB, will it all re-establish itself? ie, will the raid set reappear, and will time machine continue to backup to it?
Thanks,
David.

USB? not with its paltry bandwidth, and it will be so much slower than a single drive.
If you must use USB, and USB3 isn't even around the corner, just get one decent case. FireWire would be preferable.
If you have an ExpressCard slot, then you can add FW400 or even eSATA.
JBOD on USB... horrid.

Time machine, network, disk addition, JBOD array question.

So here's my setup (future) MBP with 256gb ssd, Macbook with 140gb HDD, MB used as networked storage, preferrably on ubuntu. I have a 500gb HD i use for backups on my MB, and a 750gb hdd i would like to be able to use independantly. I need a solution! I would like to be able to back up to a combo of the 500 and 750 gb hdds, and be able to take the big one out of the setup like on a trip. I have looked into JBOD and RAID 0, both sound iffy. What about RAID 1? is there some software (CCC?) that would allow me to back up the 750gb hd to the 500 one? Thanks ahead for any help!
P.S. I have backups on the 500gb one, so i would have to be able to move them over somehow.

Thanks for your reply.
Jolly Giant wrote:
ChangeAgent wrote:
just copy across? Or?
How can I copy my TM backups to a different location?.
Thanks for the link.
ChangeAgent wrote:
I did not find a forum for Time Machine
Thanks for the tip. I just typed Time Machine and got no results that looked like they would help. Strange logic to me, but I follow.

Will Time Machine recognize a new RAID 1 boot volume?

I would like to convert the boot volume of my Mac Pro to a RAID 1 mirror (using a second internal hard disk) with Disk Utility. But will Time Machine recognize the RAID mirror as the boot volume it's been happily backing up and continue to back up incrementally? Or will Time Machine regard the RAID mirror as a new volume and therefore do a full backup, consuming quite a lot of disk space on the Time Machine disk? Does anyone here know?
In the past, I've discovered that even if I make a very high quality clone of my boot volume (using Super Duper), Time Machine will fail to recognize the clone and will insist on starting all over again with a full backup. I have not heard a reasonable explanation of why Time Machine does that, considering that the clone should be nearly identical to the original; it's not clear to me how Time Machine "recognizes" a volume. This makes me suspicious about how Time Machine will treat a new RAID 1 volume.
Thanks for any thoughts on this.

No you are right after my TM going slow someone said to download a widget which checks the log and it all ways checks UUID first thing.
P.S. Camelot can you please take a look at my http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1909838 Loop post again; you seemed to forget -thanks

Time Machine Stuck in Preparing: Can You backup a 1TB Raid

Hello,
I have been trying to use time machine on my server to back-up my 1TB Mirrored Raid to an external 1TB firewire drive. Time Machine is stuck in preparing for days and does not back up.
Does time machine work with RAIDs?
I have recently reformatted the backup drive with the GUID partition. I also ran disk utility on the RAID set and everything passed.
I've read on Apple's site not to stop the preparing mode, so I have left it, but it has been 2 days which seems like an extraordinary amount of time.
Any thoughts? Or is this normal?
Thanks!

just let it work. it sometimes can take a very long time if TM goes into deep traversal and scans all the files for changes.
see this link
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1516

Backing up a RAID-0 (stripped) to Time Machine

I am trying to backup my bootable RAID-0 with Time Machine.
The RAID consists of 2 disk with 250GB each, building a 500GB volume, filles with about 300GB of data.
When I try to backup, Time Machine complains with an error that the backup-disk (500GB) is too small and the backup would take more than 650GB?!
Has anybody had any luck with backup up such a configuration?

the only reason to use two more 4tb hdd's would be to run raid 10, which is used to make a copy of the raid that can take over if one of the other drives fails, with no down time. you would have to verify your computer or raid card can do that. you could just backup the raid 0 to another hdd, such as an external hdd for backup. either manually copy files over to the external hdd, use a backup program, or file sync program that will only copy over any new files. you can make a backup anytime you get new media and then unplug the external hdd so it doesn't accidentally get deleted etc. then make copies of the project files from the raid0 hdd onto another internal hdd and/or thumb drive for backup as you work. that's just one way of doing things. depending how full your raid 0 is, you might get away with a 4 or 5 tb hdd for backup, and also depending on how long you want to store old projects, you could have several hdds to hold onto old projects for a while...

Server Monitor Notifications - Drive Status Changed - Time Machine

I'm using an Xserve as a file server for a small workgroup . It has a Raid 1 set which is being backed up via Time Machine to an attached disk array.
Whenever Time Machine runs (every hour), I get two notifications from Server Monitor that the drive status has changed:
*Reason(s) for notification:*
*Drive status changed*
The timestamps on the notifications coincide with these messages in system.log
Feb 2 11:28:05 ciesaxserve2 Server Monitor[854]: * _NSSocket.m:243 read() failed; socket=0x197060 error=(NSPOSIXErrorDomain,61)
Feb 2 11:28:05 ciesaxserve2 Server Monitor[854]: * _NSSocket.m:243 write() failed; socket=0x197060 error=(NSPOSIXErrorDomain,61)
Feb 2 11:28:05 ciesaxserve2 Server Monitor[854]: * _NSSocket.m:243 read() failed; socket=0x2090e90 error=(NSPOSIXErrorDomain,61)
Feb 2 11:28:05 ciesaxserve2 Server Monitor[854]: * _NSSocket.m:243 write() failed; socket=0x2090e90 error=(NSPOSIXErrorDomain,61)
and:
Feb 2 11:28:55 ciesaxserve2 servermgrd[78]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePostBackupHook called.
Feb 2 11:28:55 ciesaxserve2 servermgrd[78]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePostBackupHook done.
The notifications simply report that all is normal, and the number of available drives goes from 6, to 7, back to 6. Something to do with making the backup volume available, I presume.
I would like to disable these specific messages. I realize I can disable all messages from server monitor regarding disk statuses, but then I would be turning off messages about failures and actual problems.
Is there a config I can edit which will only alert me to actual problems? I'd like to stop getting 48 emails each day; reduce the noise and increase the signal.

I know this post is old but this has recently cropped up for me. I have been backing up with Time Machine for months without a single alert. It started happening after I replaced the failed battery on my RAID card. A coincidence...however the prolonged down time surely caused an SMC (and perhaps PRAM) reset which I assume triggered the change in behavior.
I've pinned it down to Time Machine backing up service settings, in particular the Open Directory archive. Time Machine backs up all the service data independently from the rest of the data on your server startup volume.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5139
You can see this data in Terminal.
serveradmin$ cd /Volumes/[YourBackupVolume]/Backups.backupdb/[YourServerName]/Latest/[YourBootVolume]/.ServerBackups
serveradmin$ ls -al
total 16
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root admin    68 4 Jun 14:44 (null)
drwxr-xr-x@ 14 root admin   476 4 Jun 14:44 .
drwxrwxr-t@ 43 root admin 1462 4 Jun 14:43 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin    37 4 Jun 14:44 .serverBackupSignature
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root admin    68 4 Jun 14:44 addressBookServer
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root admin    68 4 Jun 14:44 calendarServer
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root admin   170 4 Jun 14:44 iChatServer
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root admin   204 4 Jun 14:44 mailServer
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 3826 4 Jun 14:44 master.browse.plist
drwxr-xr-x@ 4 root admin   136 4 Jun 14:43 openDirectory
drwxr-xr-x@ 61 root admin 2074 4 Jun 14:44 serverSettings
drwxr-xr-x@ 23 root admin   782 4 Jun 14:44 sharePoints
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 root admin   272 4 Jun 14:44 webServer
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root admin    68 4 Jun 14:44 wikiServer
If you take a look inside the openDirectory folder you should see this:
serveradmin$ cd openDirectory
serveradmin$ ls -al
total 81936
drwxr-xr-x@ 4 root admin       136 4 Jun 15:32 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 14 root admin       476 4 Jun 15:33 ..
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 41947136 4 Jun 15:32 ServerBackup_OpenDirectoryMaster.sparseimage
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin       249 4 Jun 15:32 openDirectory.browse.plist
The ServerBackup_OpenDirectoryMaster.sparseimage contains an archive of your Open Directory database like the one you create from Server Admin. The only difference is that it appears to be unencrypted. This is a bit worrying since Snow Leopard, as far as I know, does not have an option to encrypt your Time Machine backup. This image seems to invisibly mount whenever a Time Machine backup is triggered. This can be verified by checking /private/var/log/system.log and filtering for backup
serveradmin$ tail -b 100 /var/log/system.log | grep backup
Jun 4 16:00:56 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Starting standard backup
Jun 4 16:00:56 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Backing up to: /Volumes/YourBackupVolume/Backups.backupdb
Jun 4 16:00:56 yourservername servermgrd[75]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePreBackupHook called.
Jun 4 16:09:26 yourservername servermgrd[75]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePreBackupHook done.
Jun 4 16:09:44 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.60 GB requested (including padding), 8.40 GB available
Jun 4 16:10:14 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Copied 744 files (364.4 MB) from volume YourBootDrive.
Jun 4 16:10:14 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.09 GB requested (including padding), 8.04 GB available
Jun 4 16:10:17 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Copied 87 files (877 KB) from volume YourBootDrive.
Jun 4 16:10:18 yourservername servermgrd[75]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePostBackupHook called.
Jun 4 16:10:18 yourservername servermgrd[75]: servermgr_backup: TimeMachinePostBackupHook done.
Jun 4 16:10:18 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Starting post-backup thinning
Jun 4 16:10:29 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Deleted backup /Volumes/YourBackupVolume/Backups.backupdb/yourservername/2013-06-03-155910: 8.40 GB now available
Jun 4 16:10:29 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Jun 4 16:10:29 yourservername com.apple.backupd[25117]: Backup completed successfully.
You can see at 16:00:56 Server Manager got a call from Time Machine to start the services backup and finished at 16:09:26. Open Directory would have been backed up during that process. Take a look at /private/var/log/hwmond.log
serveradmin$ tail /private/var/log/hwmond.log
Tue Jun 4 16:08:36 BST 2013 - Number of drives change from 4 to 5.
Tue Jun 4 16:08:48 BST 2013 - Number of drives change from 5 to 4.
You'll see that both drive change warnings from Server Monitor occured just before the services backup completed. You can also use the sudo diskarbitrationd -d command along with tail /private/var/log/diskarbitrationd.log in another terminal window, trigger a Time Machine backup manually and watch this disk image mount during the backup process. Compare the mount times with the above logs to see if they all match up.
Although I have discovered the cause (which thankfully seems harmless) I have not discovered a way to stop it from generating pointless alerts. I'll post here if I figure it out. I am in the process of upgrading all of my servers to Mountain Lion so it may be a moot point. I am hopeful this information may help someone out there even though it is thoroughly out of date.
Scot

Recurring directory errors in Time Machine backup

I'll try to make this brief:
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 GHz Xeon
4 - 500 GB internal drives set up as 2 - striped 1 TB RAIDS
OS X 10.7.3
For years, I have used Time Machine to backup RAID #1 to RAID #2 with no errors at all. Recently, backups have been failing every few days. Disk Warrior rebuilds of the directory on the Time Machine backup RAID fix the problem for a few days.
When the problem was not being solved, I reinitialized and zeroed both drives in RAID #2. S.M.A.R.T. tests show the drives as fully functional. I checked both drives for bad blocks (using TechTool Pro 6.0.4), found none, and recreated RAID #2.
Every few days, the Time Machine backup fails and Disk Warrior finds numerous problems with the directory file on RAID #2, mostly iNode overlaps.
All tests on RAID #1 are clean.
Does anyone have thoughts on what I should try next, short of replacing drives that test out as functioning perfectly?

I'll try to make this brief:
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 GHz Xeon
4 - 500 GB internal drives set up as 2 - striped 1 TB RAIDS
OS X 10.7.3
For years, I have used Time Machine to backup RAID #1 to RAID #2 with no errors at all. Recently, backups have been failing every few days. Disk Warrior rebuilds of the directory on the Time Machine backup RAID fix the problem for a few days.
When the problem was not being solved, I reinitialized and zeroed both drives in RAID #2. S.M.A.R.T. tests show the drives as fully functional. I checked both drives for bad blocks (using TechTool Pro 6.0.4), found none, and recreated RAID #2.
Every few days, the Time Machine backup fails and Disk Warrior finds numerous problems with the directory file on RAID #2, mostly iNode overlaps.
All tests on RAID #1 are clean.
Does anyone have thoughts on what I should try next, short of replacing drives that test out as functioning perfectly?

HT3275 Time Machine full - compatibility with external mirrored drive???

A friend of mine is using a 2TB mirrored drive (so 999GB capacity available for back-up). He is getting messages saying time machine cannot back up as drive is full. As Time Machine is meant to delete older back-ups as and when space is needed obviously drive should not become full.
Apologies if I am writing complete rubbish - as this area is a little over my head . . . but I was wondering if it is possible that the mirrored aspect of the drive is not backing up in the same way Time Machine does (i.e. not deleting older back-ups / have a different archiving method) and is possibly becoming full when the main back-up is not.
Thanks

To OSX (and Time Machine), a hardware RAID set is just a drive, like any other -- it has no idea there are 2 (or more) physical drives in the box. The mirroring is done by the hardware in the RAID box.
You need to have your friend look at #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, and see which message he's getting, as there are some differences depending on the situation and what version of OSX he's running.
If that doesn't clear it up, have him use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from his logs. Locate the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here.

Time Machine Server - external firewire 800 RAID array incompatible??

Hi all
I originally posted in the wrong forum... so here I go again...
I have an XServe G5 connected to an 8TB RAID array via firewire 800 (running latest version of leopard server) purchased solely to act as a time machine server for a whole bunch of machines. A lot of money and resources went toward this as this is a vital part of our office. One of the machines is a completely decked out Mac Pro with 4x500GB Hard Drives striped for multimedia processing. (Thats why I need a HUGE backup partition on Time Machine)
Now, this was working for about 4 months. Some computers still see the backup array as a destination, but can't write to it, (just sit there for ever "preparing backup") and one machine successfully is still backing up to it.
But for the majority of the machines, when I try to set the Xserve external raid array as a Time Machine destination for the network, it comes up with a yellow "!" sign and "This disk drive may not support Time Machine over the network. Get more information about compatible drives" with a link that points here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306332
As you can see, that was completely not helpful, and now i'm wondering if I'll still have a job after the boss finds out I've just wasted his several thousands of dollars...
When selecting a backup destination for time machine backups, the array appears, but it always says "Failed" with an "i" next to Latest Backup in the system preferences, with the message "Backup volume cannot be found". Thats not true because i've so much as gone to the effort of actually mounting the dang drive in the finder... so its just not looking hard enough!
Here is some info about the external device:
It looks like a PC tower thing, with 8 firewire 800 ports on the back and 8 internal SATA slots. I purchased 8x1TB drives and inserted them in, and software partitioned them to create a giant striped drive (I understand that this might be a little unstable but its just a backup drive).
I daisy chained the firewire 800 ports on the back to output 2 cables, both going in the back of the xserve. Formatted fine, and works a treat. Except for the silly time machine thing....
I think what I am going to do is completely and utterly start again... go nuts one weekend and erase everything, every computer, every wireless router, everything, and start fresh. Since there have been so many little glitches here and there I just want them dead.
Well, if anyone has a quick fix, i'd appreciated it before the weekend

Hi everyone, Just thought I would give you all an update on how things went.
Lets just say that I got everything working fine... this is what I did.
1. I went through, completely un-raided and formatted the external 8 Bay firewire 800 drive
2. Completely reformatted XServe and reinstalled fresh (Probably not an option for a few, but I had a spare weekend)
3. Completely reformatted all client computers and reset all client accounts (Once again, probably not an option for most)
Essentially, I was starting out with a completely virgin setup and setting up for the first time. I installed the firewire 800 drives, and made them into a RAID again. Then installed Leopard server. Brought all the backed up files across, and when I plugged in the drive in Finder, it asked "Do you want to use this as a time machine backup" to which I said "Yes". It proceeded to create a backup.
When that finished, I went into server preferences, and selected the external as a time machine backup for the network. It worked...
I then went about everything like business as usual, and everything worked great. Still going... for now.
So thanks for all that helped, maybe try completely reinstalling everything and it may work.

RAIDS and Time Machine?

I want to get a Mac Pro with 4 500 GB HDs. I want to stripe two of the HDs together, and then stripe the other 2 together giving me two RAID 0's of 1 Terabyte each.
Then can I use Time Machine when it is released to backup the primary RAID to the secondary RAID.
Would this be a good solution?

Assuming your RAID setup is as follows:
Drive 1 and Drive 2 are Striped into a RAID 0 (Logical Disk 1)
Drive 3 and Drive 4 are Striped into a RAID 0 (Logical Disk 2)
Logical Disk 1 and Logical Disk 2 are Mirrored into a RAID 1
You can remove Logical Disk 2 from your Mirrored RAID array with no noticeable difference in your system. You could then use Drive 3 and Drive 4 separately or Re-Stripe them into a RAID 0 Logical Disk 2 which could then be used as the backup disk for Time Machine.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and it is mirrored with Logical Disk 2 all your data will be safe though running/existing exclusively on Logical Disk 2 until you replace the faulty drive in Logical Disk 1.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and it is not mirrored with Logical Disk 2 then you will lose all the data on Logical Disk 1 even though only one of the two drives failed.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and you have been using Logical Disk 2 as your Time Machine drive you will (in most circumstances) be able to replace the failed drive, recreate a Striped RAID 0 Logical Disk 1 from Drive 1 and Drive 2 and then use Time Machine to restore your files and applications. As I do not have the Leopard Preview I cannot tell you how this will work in practice but it is part of Time Machine's prerogative to aid in situations like this.
There is a caveat to keep in mind concerning Time Machine that may or may not affect you depending on how you use your computer. John Siracussa at ArsTechnica explains it very well so I'll just copy and paste from his recent article on Time Machine:
"There's still plenty of room for legitimate Time Machine criticism, however. While the hard link trees are a clever solution, given the constraints of HFS+, the strategy dictates a file-level granularity for all backups. In other words, if you change a single byte of a 500MB file, the entire 500MB file will be copied to the backup volume during the next Time Machine backup. Frequent modifications to large files will fill your backup volume very quickly."
"Worse, there does not appear to be a way to prioritize backup retention. When space runs out on the backup volume, presumably Time Machine will recycle old space. But if it does so based on date rather than (user-specified) "importance", a relatively unimportant change to a large file could necessitate the loss of hundreds of small files from the backup volume. Where once a small text file may have had an entire year's worth of revisions on the backup volume, now only the past month's revisions may exist due to the need to reclaim space for a few recently modified large files."
So just keep in mind that if you want Time Machine to keep a backup of your entire system throughout it's use you will in all likelihood need considerably more storage space than the amount available on the drive(s) Time Machine is monitoring.
-Berylium
Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Time Machine on Raid 1

I have had two Time Machine external hard drives crash within the last year, so I've decided to create a Raid 1 mirror to use as my Time Machine. I understand the basic requirement is that the drives be of the same size. I have two 1TB drives, different in size by only .03TB (999.16TB versus 999.13TB). However, the drives are of different manufacturers, and one is Firewire and the other is USB. Will I have an issue creating an efficient Raid 1 array?
Thanks,
Nick
Message was edited by: nickditoro

nickditoro wrote:
Thanks for the response about different connection types; that's what I was looking for. That takes me back to your other response and my reply about cloning TM periodically to another external drive. Is it possible with Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper?
Nick
I haven't tried that, you can look over at the CCC forums if cloning a TM drive is possible and if TM will accept it afterwards.
Supposedly the only thing that can access a TM drive is TimeMachine, not EVEN ROOT USER (which CCC uses obviously), can access TM drive because of MAC (Mandatory Access Controls) built into OS X.
So Apple really ties everyone's hands with their TM solution and when your hard drive dies, or you can't use your Superdrive to c boot off the installer disk, your totally SOL with TimeMachine.
With a clone, your up on the clone in the time it takes to boot.
And, you can clone that to another drive, or a thousand drives, whatever gives you the most peace of mind.
Heck I got clones of Leopard and even Tiger laying around. All just a option boot away.
What you can do, is do both, a clone AND a TimeMachine drive, just make sure to label them so as you connect the clone OSX pops up that annoying "You want to make this a TimeMachine drive" window and you might make a mistake and say ok on a clone.
So like once a week you hook up the clone and run CCC to update it. Keep the TM drive connected all the time.
Some people do this. I don't see the need unless your prone to deleting stuff or can't do a "Save As..." for file revisions. That's the only thing TM is good for, not worth locking all one's data to being only accessible from TimeMachine if you ask me.
But using both is a option.
These forums are filled with woes about TimeMachine, but hardly any about cloning. After all a clone is a clone. Hold option and boot and it's just the same.

Time Machine to a Raid 5 Array

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