Two External Hard Drives and Time Machine

Hi All
Does anyone out there know if it is possible to use Time Machine to backup information from one external hard drive to a second external hard drive? I dont want to store this particular information on my internal hard drive (partly because the HD is not big enough. If Time Machine cannot do this, does anyone know of another way?
Thanks
Regards
Sonia

Hi Sonia
Yes you can do that. In Timemachine you just tell it to use the one external HD for Timemachine. In the same panel you can tell timemachine which drives to backup, and here you just specify the other external HD and leaves out your internal HD.

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External Hard Drive and Time Machine questions

Hello, I am new here to the forums and I have looked all over for the answers to two questions that I have regarding external hard drives and the time machine feature.
For some background, I recently had a scare (water spill but luckily I had a keyboard cover on and the entire spill landed on the cover) with my Mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro (2.5Ghz) and due to almost losing all my data I've decided to invest in an external hard drive. However, rather than just purchasing a 500GB HDD to use as an external hard drive, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade my Macbook Pro as well by investing in the 480GB OCW Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. I'll be using the SSD as my internal drive so the original hard drive that came with my Macbook will serve as my backup external drive. Lastly, I plan to use the external drive solely for the purpose of backing up my MacBook in case something ever happens to my Macbook.
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Format the new SSD in Disk Utility to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and that will solve question No. 1.
After formatting, clone the new SSD using Disk Utility>Restore or Carbon Copy Cloner (down load from the Internet). Test the new SSD and if it performs as expected, do the physical swap.
Question No. 2. Erase the Time Machine HDD using Disk Utility and then install Time Machine. See this excellent website regarding Time Machine.
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
If you want an external boot HHD, get another one and use Carbon Copy Cloner. This will give you redundancy in backups as well which is a good strategy. CCC also can update the contents in an incremental manner similar to Time Machine.
Ciao.

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Brandbasher wrote:
Thanks Pondini but i have closed time machine, removed external hard drive.
Did you eject it first?
Now i cant drag and drop anything on my desk top, or mail or any other application. Ive tried moving folders, documents none of it works. Even moving around documents within a folder, it wont let me chnage the position of files.
That shouldn't be related to Time Machine (especially if the backups aren't mounted).
What happens when you try those things? Do you get any messages? Anything you can post a screenshot of?
Have you tried a Restart?
Does it happen in another user account? (If you don't have one, create one via System Prefs > Users & Groups.)

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Just purchased WD My Book Essential external hard drive. I would like to back up the files on my macbook pro, but I am unsure what to do with time machine. How should I go about backing up my files?

Hi B,
Prepare the external HD by connecting to the Mac, open Disk Utility, select the manufacturer’s name of the external HD, select Partition and choose GUID Partition Table, format to Apple OS Extended (Journaled); quit Disk Utility.
Open System Preferences.
Click on Time Machine.
Click on “Select Disk.”
Click just to the left of "On" to turn TM on if it's not already on.
Click on the disk or partition you want to use.
Click on “Use for backup.”
Leave external HD connected, and TM will automatically do its thing.
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I recently installed a new 1TB HD in my MBP but am still using a 400GB external as my Time Machine back up. Not suprisingly, in a recent backup attempt, I got an error message that said there isn't enough room on the external to back up my MBP. My question is, is there any way to set TM to backup only selected folders and applications (e.g. email) rather than doing a backup of my entire MBP? If not, my only other option would be to purchase a bigger external.

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Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?

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Format/partition the external as follows and you should be set to go:
1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.
2. Open Disk Utility on the MBP.
3. Select the external HD in the left pane.
4. Click on the Erase tab.
5. Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
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6. Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.
7. Click the Partition tab.
8. Click on Volume Scheme: and choose the number of partitions (just one in this situation).
9. Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.
10. Click Apply.
11. Quit Disk Utility.
Backup your internal to the external. What application are you using to backup with? I highly recommend both SuperDuper! and CarbonCopyCloner.

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there.

I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?

I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.

sydababy wrote:
and then deleting them off of my computer.
BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous. One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
follow here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

Two External Hard Drives and Time Machine

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