Using TM to backup multiple boot drives

hello all,
Relatively new to TM. I have new Mac Pro's each with 2 320 gig drives, each with a different OS configuration - 1 boot drive for Final Cut Pro, the other boot drive for Avid.
I want to use TM to backup both of these drives whithin each OS. It seems that no matter what OS i am in, the backup is always made to a folder named the same thing "John Doe's Backup".
Its seems though when i am in Boot drive 1 and backup TM names my back up the same things as when i am in Boot Drive 2.
Does this make sense. Can anyone help? Do i just change the name of the computer on one of the boot drives?
Any info would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
MB

MustafaEditor wrote:
i tried renaming my alternate boot drive
no, don't rename the drive. that will do nothing. rename the computer. boot from that drive, go to system preferences->sharing and change the name of the computer. that's the name that TM uses.
but when i instruct time machine to "back up now" the backup that mounts is still named the same as my other boot drive.
I don't understand what you mean by that.
not sure where the backups.backupdb folder is located?
the folder backups.backupdb is located on the backup drive and contains all TM backups. inside there should be folders with the names of the computers that are being backed up. if I understand yoursetup there should be two folders there with different names. however, there should normally be no reason for you to look inside that folder using finder.
as you said there may be different folders whithin there but i don't know where to find those folders.
thanks for any help you can provide.
best
Mustafa

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Is it possible to use External HD as main boot drive? (Help!)

Hi all
I am about to buy a Seagate FreeAgent Pro (link: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/478636-REG/SeagateST305004FPA1E3_RK_FreeAgent_Pro_500GB_eSATA.html) with 500Gb and FW400/USB2.0/eSATA. I have a Mac Mini, and its internal HD is too small for me (80Gb total for about 70Gb of data).
What I'd like to do is install OS X on the External HD and use it as my main boot drive, and perhaps the Mini's internal HD for data backup. Would that be possible/legal (I only have the install discs that came with it - my first Mac :D)? If it is complicated, could you guys explain me how to do it?
I'd also like to know whether the performance would be better or worse. The Mini's got a 5400 RPM drive, and the external is 7200 RPM and would be connected through FW400 (plus a lot of free space for now).
One last question: if it is indeed possible/legal to use the External HD as my main boot drive, would it be possible to install and boot Windows on the external HD using Boot Camp or Parallels?
Cheers
Daniel
Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Core Duo 1 GB Ram 80 GB HDD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Performance will be worse because FW400 is considerably slower than the internal bus. For startup I would continue using the internal drive. You can use the external drive for data storage as well as off-loading any music, picture, and movie files to free up space on the internal drive. You can also partition a chunk of the external drive (80 GBs) to use as a backup partition for the internal hard drive. You can clone your internal drive to the external (partition) which will give you a bootable backup. Here's how:
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
8. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Verify the settings for Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only. If they are not correct then reset them.

I am using a Seagate backup plus portable drive on my iMac 7 with OSX 10.9.2. At startup up I always get a popup window stating "The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer. I click ignore and everything seems OK. Is it?

I am using a Seagate backup plus portable drive as my time machine backup on my iMac 7 with OSX 10.9.2 Mavericks. At startup I always get popup window stating "The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer..? I click ignore and everything seems to be OK. Time machine seems to be backuping up to the seagate. I can open time machine and see the history of backups. Why does this message come up at startup of computer????

If you installed the Seagate software, remove it according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Possible to use TC as clone of boot drive in Leopard?

Time Machine seems to take FOREVER whenever I run it, so I end up not running it. I was wondering if it is possible to use Time Capsule as a pure hd and clone my boot drive to it for a full backup option? If so, how? Are there reasons not to?

Bad sectors automatically get re-written when new data are supplied. If the new data don't "stick" a spare will be substituted.
If you are happy with your clone, just update it. There is no need to write Zeroes to it. I was suggesting that process for when you make major changes -- it takes several hours to complete.
You may prefer to use you smaller drive, Zeroed, to start a new clone, wait a little while to assure success, then start a Time Machine backup set on the larger Iomega.
Or some other approach that has not occurred to me.

Be careful with App Store and multiple boot drives.

I just had a strange thing occur. I was fighting with a Messages server problem as described here : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322859?start=0&tstart=0 and was alternating back and forth between an upgraded boot drive, where Messages was not working, and a fully functioning backup boot drive. Two physically separate disks on the same system.
A solution to the problem above was to manually delete Server.app from the boot drive, reboot, and reinstall Server.app from App Store.
Working on the non working (Messages Server) upgraded drive which was the boot disk, I removed Server.app and rebooted. There is now no Server.app on this drive.
Log in to App Store and ask for install of Server software. Did not receive a drive selection request. Assumed install would be on boot disk.
Reboot.
App Store had upgraded my backup drive to the new Server.app. The boot drive still did not have Server.app on it.
I now have no backup.
Be careful.

The issue seems not only for TweetDeck but also for other applications and functions. For example, I tried to buy and install the following Mac app, but actually nothing happened after I clicked the BUY APP button.
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sudoku-deluxe/id410038420
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HT201250 Using the Seagate Backup plus Portable Drive on iMac with MacOs 10.7.5 (11G63)5

I have a 2008 iMac with operating system MacOS 10.7.5 (11G63)
I have just bought a Seagate Backup plus portable drive.
When I use it with the Time Machine, the backup starts, does 431.5 MB of the 33.64 GB and the gets stuck with the estimated time for the backup slowly increasing to 2000 days.
The formatting of the disc in Extended (journalled) as suggested.
Prevously I has a GoFlex external drive, that gave me no problems on this system. Unfortunately this drive was lost on one of my travels.
Could nayone help, please?
thanks
zavertal

If you installed the Seagate software, remove it according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Something annoying this way comes: using targeted disk mode for boot drive

So, this should be doable, but it's not working. Can anyone explain why, or what I'm doing wrong?
I have an Intel iMac, and an Intel MacBook - both are running Leopard. I temporarily want to use the iMac as the workstation, and the MacBook as the operating system hard disk. So, I put the MacBook in targeted disk mode, and connected it to the iMac via firewire 400. From the iMac, I option-booted to see the available boot disks. I then selected the MacBook's disk and clicked the arrow icon to boot. Once the iMac attempts booting, it displays the spinning cog on gray screen for longer than usual, then goes to a blue screen with an intermittent spinning cog. It seems to hang at this point.
I've done this with PPC machines in the past, so I'm not sure what the deal his here. The only things I can think of that would be a problem, but really shouldn't be are: 1) the MacBook is running 10.5.2 (keeping it at v2 due to the CS3 issue) and the iMac is running 10.5.3. Also, the iMac is the 24" model - so perhaps there's a screen resolution issue...
Any advice out there? THANK YOU!

Hi
Presumably the version of Leopard on both models are hardware specific? I would have thought extensions for device specific hardware such as graphics drivers etc on the Macbook would not include support for the 24" iMac. Bigger screen, more resolution support and a more powerful graphics card.
If you were to go the other way I can imagine the driver included for the iMac 24' would probably support the smaller Macbook screen.
I don't have any link or kbase that I can point at to prove this 'theory' because thats all it is - a theory. But it kind of makes sense to me and does explain the behaviour you see.
Tony

Any problems using diskutil createRaid with multiple external drives

Thinking of connecting 3 - 1tb drives Via FireWire and using diskutil createRaid.

jimgilbride wrote:
Thinking of striping across all three 1tb drives for a 3tb virtual drive that can be mounted and used for storage, but one change though will be using USB 2.0 instead of FireWire. I think I would be using RAID-0.
USB 2 is rather slow interface, the RAID 0 would make little difference. Firewire 800 would be fastest, 400 next.
Problem with RAID 0 is the data path is separated, one of those drives has a problem and you lose data on all drives. Some people use external RAID 0, but merely as a "scratch disk" or temporarily as they are working on it in a program like Photoshop or similar for faster performance.
For permanent storage, RAID 0 is very poor and highly risky unless you also have it being backed up daily or using a RAID 0+1 which the RAID 0 set is "mirrored" (RAID 1) at the same time to another drive or another RAID 0 set, thus giving a live backup in case the one RAID 0 fails, which they tend to do more often the more drives are added to the array.
In your case a RAID 0 of three drives has the 3x potential of failure than using one drive (spindle)
Another issue is RAID 0 (RAID 1 as well) via Disk Utility is software based RAID, OS X handles it, thus there is a higher potential for failure than hardware based RAID sets. OS X tends to hiccup and if it does, so does your RAID set.
Another problem with RAID 0 is that you need the storage drive your transferring from to also be a RAID 0 in order to gain maximum speed of the interface (FireWire 800, Thunderbolt) transferring or else when you transfer files you default to the fastest speed of the slowest drive, likely meaning your internal hard drive.
You could set up two exact drives on the same interface, RAID 0 those, use it as a working diisk. Then use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to auto-update the RAID 0 to the 3rd drive nightly. This would give you the backup of the RAID 0 you need, unfortunately you will be confined to 1TB of drive space available of the 3rd drive.
Disk Utility doesn't support the more complex RAID sets, like RAID 5, 10 etc., that dedicated hardware and external controllers can do. RAID 5 with a lot of drives will give the performance and redundancy, in fact if a drive dies you just replace it and it's auto-matically rebuilt from the data on the other drives. Sweet.
For more information and external hardware solutions in RAID to better meet your video/audio needs on your Mac, I highly advise you visit MacGuru's
http://www.macgurus.com/

Can you SEPARATELY backup multiple hard drives with Time Machine?

I have an IMAC (let's call it HD A) and an external HD (Let's say HD B) with all my photos on. I would like to use time machine to back HD A on another external HD (HD C) and HD B (the one with the photos) on another HD called HD D. Is that possible?

Thank you. I want to do that because the backup of HD A + HD B is larger than each one of HD C and HD D. So I wanted to split the backup. But I guess it is not possible (see below). Switching config each time takes too much time and is prone to errors so I won't do that. Maybe there is some software that can do that.

Why does mac mini power shut down when trying to use external harddrive as boot drive?

I connected a OWC Mercy Elite Pro external hard drive that has it's own power source to my mac mini. It's connected by firewire and I'm trying to use it as an external boot drive. The problem is when I have the power turned on the OWC before I turn the power on the mac mini, the mac powers up but then shuts down after about 30 seconds. However, if I wait to turn on the OWC power after the mac boots up there is no issue. Of course this defeats the purpose of using the OWC as a boot drive because it needs to be on before the mac boots up. I don't have any issues using another external hard drive as a boot drive that doesn't have a power source.

Hmmm, very strange, could there be a ground loop where the OWC drive is plugged in?
If you hold alt or option key at bootup, without the OWC drive, once the boot manager shows up connect the OWC drive, wait, does the OWC drive show up eventually as a boot choice, or what happens?

Using Time Capsule as external hard drive

Hi. I have a Mac Book Pro, and external hard drive, and now, a Time Capsule. Since I don't have a Mac, all photos and music (occasional backups, etc.) have been stored on the one external hard drive. I got the Time Capsule to replace the external hard drive as primary (keeping it as secondary)–in addition to using the Time Machine.
If I'm understanding correctly, I open finder, open Shared>AirPort>Data–and then drag and drop all the files currently on the external hard drive onto this window? Is this correct? Will it COPY, and be accessibe, and not cause problems?
Will it mean, as I hope it means, that my MacBook and iPad will be able to open and use iTunes and iPhoto through this AirPort? (Instead of having to plug-in the external drive.)
I'd love to use the Time Machine as well. But can hold off, continuing to back up only occassionally, since this dual purposing may not to be advised?
Thank you for your guidance.

Will there be a problem running Time Machine in the back ground while using the Time Capsule's internal hard drive manually?
No.
Thus far, instead of using Time Machine in an automated mode, I've turned it on when I want to make a new back-up. Will it be necessary to run Time Machine in manual mode only or can I use its automated feature?
Or–I may be seeing the light–will running the two in tandem allow me to save each new back-up on both devices simultaneously, keeping both drives up to date?
I would suggest that you consider changing your backup strategy. Time Machine was designed to be an automatic "run and forget" operation that performs incremental backups of your Mac's internal hard drive. It will also backup an external hard drive attached directly to your Mac. Running it manually is not very effecient and you stand the chance of not getting a very recent (they run once an hour) backup when you need it.
For Time Machine I would suggest that you continue to use your external hard drive as is and dedicate your new Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. If you still need more external storage, you can always add additional external USB hard drives to the USB port on the Time Capsule.
Even better you will also want to include a second "full-clone" method to your backup strategy. This method will make a full copy of your Mac's internal disk drive that is bootable. Why do this? In case your Mac has a fatal hard disk crash, you can use the clone backup to boot your Mac back up and continue to use it within seconds. Without the clone backup, you would first need to install a new drive, then load a fresh copy of OS X, and then, perform a restore from Time Machine. This can take a while.
To perform these clone backups, I would recommend that you get another external USB hard drive with a capacity at least twice that of your current internal drive. I use Western Digital My Passport drives for this purpose, but any similar drive should do. To create the clone backup I would suggest using either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.
I would suggest that you create a new clone backup at least once a month or more often if your data is critical to you. Just connect a dedicated clone drive to any available USB port on your Mac and run the clone software to make the clone backup.

Configuring SSD as a boot drive

Hi!
I've finally ordered a six cores Mac Pro and I'm waiting for a SSD from OWC.
I intend to use the SSD as a boot drive so I plan to copy the content of the Mac Pro boot drive with SuperDuper when I'll receive it and restore it to the SSD.
I've read few comments here from users who says that could be a risky operation doing so due to the fact that a SSD doesn't behave as a regular hard disk. I'm a bit skeptical because it is a very common operation to backup and restore a boot drive.
Anyone has used SuperDuper with an SSD ?
Thanks!

Tom Nelson1 wrote:
I don;t see why it would be a problem. But then again I'd be more inclined to just re-install using the DVDs that come with your new Mac Pro. After all you have no data to save at this point, so doing a fresh install is just a nice simple process.
Tom
I'm not familiar with the Mac Pro and the supplied DVD. There is no special driver or configuration specific to the Mac Pro already installed on the HD ? The regular install DVD would do the job ? If so, you're right. It is a lot easier just to reinstall from the DVD.
Many thanks.

Time machine munching boot drive space

I am running a server with a boot drive, a data drive and an external backup drive. I am using TM to backup the data drive ( which includes the service data). The boot drive is excluded from the backup as is the folder containing the Service data. While TM is calculating the changes the available space on the boot drive drops alarming from about 22 GB to 1 GB.
The backup then copies the data and the available space goes back to normal.
Any thoughts on what I can do to stop this?
thanks
PS on our other server which basically just hosts Filemaker server this doesnt happen.

johnl927 is suggesting you wipe your external hard drive to remove any ghost files or errors in the file system. That would be the fastest and least time consuming way to go.
Your alternative is to run Disk Utility, verify disk and the partitions of the external hard drive, and if still in doubt verify permissions. The disk may sometimes claim to have less free space than really available because at some point in the past your computer or else where you plugged it in forgot to do some general housekeeping on the external hard drive.

Installing New Boot Drive ?

Sorry to double post but, had this in the wrong section.
Hello, fellow G4'ers.
Mine is G4 MDD 867 Dual CPU and has a giga 1.4 CPU upgrade, 1.75 GB RAM.
ATI 9600 Mac OS X (10.4.11). 400W PS
Still runs well enough for my purposes.. besides drives are pretty cheap these days, so why not.
I Have 3 drives total now. 2 are Internal, 1 is External (FW400).
1 - (original) Boot drive 60 gig (20 GB avail.)
2 - Maxtor 200 gig with 2 partitions,
a) 40 GB partition w/ 40 GB avail. and
b) 160 GB partition w/ 90 GB avail.
I also have a 250 gig FireWire External (bootable) drive that has a cloned, used CarbonCopyCloner,
backup of the main boot drive and still has ~ 180 GB avail.
I only want to replace the original (aging) boot drive BEFORE it goes bad.
I read somewhere here that a separate partition for the system alone, could b a good idea. can anyone confirm this for me ?
I got and installed the 2nd drive myself (Maxtor 200 GB), so I think I can do this.
I need to be sure, as to a plan of attack here (software-wise), and appreciate any input as to a good way to do this.
I'm sure there are a few ways it can be done.
My best guess's are;
1-get the new ATA drive (500 gig drives can be had for under $100) Any hot tips here ???.
(How's this sound "500GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 7200rpm 8.9ms 16MB Cache UltraDMA 100/ATA 5 HD" ?????
2-Check and be sure a good bootable backup of boot drive exists on the External drive.
3-Shut down and physically install the new drive, discard old drive, plugging it into the same place the old one was in. (I guess this is right, but not real sure about this, any jumpers to move/check ??? , ) any other possibilities here ?
Now the variables/my best guesses :
4.a ) Power On, Startup use the (C key), and boot with my Tiger Install disk, and install a fresh Tiger OSX 10.4.xxx system onto the new drive.
QUESTION; Not real sure how to get this updated to 10.4.11 yet, but I think there's a "Combo" that will bring it right up to 10.4.11, but I'll need my internet connection for that.
Perhaps boot with the clone/external and download the update file to disk and install it that way ??? Definitely need some help with this .
4.b ) I could just copy/Clone in reverse from External to the new drive (I should think a clean install would be better here as to not keep any system flaws from my existing system, including that messy stuff that the latest security updates introduced. But, this could work, right ? Perhaps not ? I think I would really like to have a New Clean system as the Original HD may be weak/flawed.
4c ) Perhaps there's a function in Disk Utility that can help with doing all this, Restore? Archive ? whatever ?
OK. That's about where I am here. I'm not really a noobey, but I just never had to do all of this and want to be sure of a good plan before I get started, and don't want to overlook anything.
Thanks very much

Good News here, just to finish up.
I Got a FW external. Cloned boot drive to it (CCC 3.1.2). Did a archive & install on the external clone with Tiger DVD, and updated it to 10.4.11 + all misc updates. Fixed permissions between all phases. Deleted previous sys folder. Rebuild & optimize w/DiskWarrior. Pull old boot drive, install new WD 320 GB, connections were all "Cable-select", no master/slave stuff. Started up with tiger DVD and formated the seen new drive. Booted from external, cloned clean, archived/new SYS to new boot drive. Done.
Only a few small probs. with prefs. here and there, but all back and running fast & smooth and now I even have a regular backup plan to the external.

Switching boot drive to new internal drive??

I just got a new 150 gb internal drive installed and I've been trying to install the restore software to use it for the new boot drive instead of my old 80 gb. Disk Utility will recognize it but the install software process just shows the old drive. I've tried several times, starting up with the restore disk. Disk Utility will not format it either, all options remain greyed out. The new drive is a ST3160811AS, the profiler says SMART status is Not Supported if that is relevant.
power mac g5 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1.5 ram, dual 1.8,

That's odd...the link doesn't work but I can do a search and access the popst from there...so I copied and pasted the text from the post
"Some of you might know that Seagate 7200.9 series SATA drives have had a problem when installed inside a PowerMac G5 because the G5s are not compatible with the Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) feature on those drives.
Apparently, Seagate has been paying close attention to this problem, because they have recently begun shipping some of these drives with SSC disabled.
The clue to whether a 7200.9 drive has SSC disabled is in the part number. If the part number has a suffix that is NOT -301, the drive has SSC disabled, which means that you can install it in a G5 without first installing it in a PC and running Seagate's MS-DOS utility to disable the feature.
For example a 400GB drive with SSC disabled would be ST3400633AS-303.
In case you don't know, SSC is a feature intended to reduce electronic emissions (EMI) in large multi-drive installations. These drives meet EMI standards for a single drive without SSC enabled.
FYI. FWIW."
Do a search on 7200.9, SSC and you'll see several threads which may help you solve the problem....I'm afraid it sounds like the old SSC issue.

Using TM to backup multiple boot drives

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