Backing up Air SSD and external drive to Time Machine

Hi
Sincere apologies if this has been asked and answered but I cannot find an answer or phrase a search properly to do so.
I have a 500gb MacBook and am planning to get a MacBook Air. I would like to move much of the content from my MacBook to an external drive b/c it won't fit on the Air--music, photos, etc.
What I cannot seem to understand is how I will then back it all up. That is, I will have some content on my Air that I use frequently--work files and so forth--and I will have mostly media on the external drive. Do I then use a second external hard drive for Time Machine backups and if so can I set it to back up my Air's SSD and the external drive that is storing my media files? (In case it's relevant, I also currently back up my MacBook offsite using Crashplan.)
I hope I phrased this correctly and that my question is clear.
A related question: Part of the reason for wanting to get an Air is the increased ease of mobility. I would like to have some music stored on the Air, and accessible via iTunes, so that I can listen to it when I take it to the office, when traveling, etc. Is this possible?
Thank you very much

Correct. Having Time Machine store it's backups on the same drive as data it's backing up is mostly self defeating. If that drive were to fail then you'll lose the data and it's backup. Time Machine to Time Capsule is also great because it is wireless and just needs to have power nearby. You can even hide it behind furniture in the house (out of site) and it'll still backup continuously whenever your laptop is in the house and not sleeping. It's so easy you'll forget about it until you need it someday.
If you want an ideal home backup solution I would recommend:
1) A TimeCapsule on your home network to serve as your passive, local, incremental backup system for accidental file deletions, or rolling back changes.
2) Use a cloud backup service such as CrashPlan or BackBlaze for passive, off-site backups in case of a disaster (fire, theft, etc.)
3) And lastly, it's always nice to have a third backup type, a bootable clone (using SuperDuper!, etc.) that you actively create just prior to any major upgrade of Mac OS
Having even one of these puts you far ahead of the majority of home computer users. Having all three backup types should give you great piece of mind that you are really protecting your data files and media.

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Best way to back up mac and external drive to time machine?

My LaCie external Time Machine drive crashed on me somehow and I had to repartition it. I have a second back up (different external drive) through CCC so Im not worried about data loss, but for the life of me, I cant remember how I had time machine configured to back up. I have a second separate external drive that contains my iphoto, imovie and itunes libraries on it. I think I had time machine set up to back that drive up along with my mac separtely somehow, but after thinking about it, isnt that a little redundant. Am I not backing up my iphoto/imovie/itunes external drive through my mac back up? Seems like before I could go into time machine and open that drive from there. If so, is there any reason to back up the iphoto drive separately along with my mac back on time machine, or is that even possible? Would it be easier to restore the iphoto hard drive if it were backup up separately, not as a part of my mac backup? I have had my CCC back up (a second external back up drive) set up to back up the mac and the pic/video/itunes drive separately.

If you open TimeMachine's preferences and click on the Options button you'll see that it works with a simple exclusion rule. It assumes it should back up everything on every drive connected to it except for those files, folders, and drives you exclude.
Like you, I have a separate external drive for media. After playing around with TimeMachine way back when I realized that each time I edited the meta data for music the song or movie got backed up again. I also discovered that at that time TM didn't play nice with iPhoto's library. Given these issues I decided to exclude my media hard drive from TimeMachine and back it up using ChronoSync (on an automatic schedule) once a week.
After some thought I decided I didn't want a simple clone because if a song or movie became corrupt I didn't want to overwrite a good song with a corrupt version. ChronoSync does archiving. When doing a backup if it finds a file has been changed it archives the old one and overwrites with the new one. I look at the logs each week to see if any archiving took place. If I didn't do any editing that week there shouldn't be.
BTW - being a belt and suspenders kind of tech, I have multiple backup drives so one TM drive and one media drive is always off site. A backup is no good if the thief steals it.

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Use migration assistant to move your files. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4889

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This is a re-post with additional background information requested by several responders:
I recently added a G-Speed Q RAID array to my MAC PRO to use exclusively for back-up with Time Machine. I purchased this RAID array from the Apple store, so assume that means it's acceptable to use for this purpose. Maybe that's a bad assumption on my part. In any event, it worked great with Time Machine on my MAC PRO. The G-speed array is connected to my Mac Pro via Firewire 800 port for now. I am awaiting delivery of an eSATA expansion card for the Mac Pro which I intend to switch to when it arrives. In any event, it is not configured or capable of acting as an NAS device. It is a shared external drive on the MAC PRO.
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I can write test files directly to the remote back up partition from either mac and I can read, modify and save files directly to this partition from either mac.
Please let me know if any additional information related to configuration is needed. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In my "dispute" with Pondini in the other thread, I came across some information that will certainly explain things, but not in a good way.
Apparently you cannot use an external drive as a Time Machine repository. People who use Snow Leopard and Lion Server to provide Time Machine services have already discovered this.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3327294
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2472139
It may work better when your eSATA card comes in. My theory is that a Thunderbolt RAID would show up as an internal drive and would be useable as a Time Machine repository. There is a chance that an eSATA card would do that too. You'll find out. Apparently, one of the things you get with Lion Server is a warning pop-up if you try to use an external drive with Time Machine.
While I'm a big fan of Time Machine, I still consider it Apple Black Magic. You can use it, but don't get too clever. I don't like to take chances with backups. Simple is usually better. Time Machine isn't simple, but it is so convenient that I like to ignore the incredible complexity of it.
If the other machine were a notebook with local snapshots I might say you could manually plug it in to do backups. With two iMacs, I would recommend just getting another external drive.
Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.
- Gandalf

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If the external drive can be seen at all in Disk Utility, follow the instructions for repair here.

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Hello,
I want to use a dedicated external drive for Time Machine backup and another drive for a SuperDuper backup. Before even adding another drive, I'm already pulling and replacing usb connections from the back of my computer.
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7-Port USB High-speed Hub with Splitter Cable -- http://www.shop4tech.com/user.htm?go=view_item&id=8997&r=183 -- or perhaps other recommendations ..
Thanks.

...I recall reading that USB 2 was faster ... but I think they said faster than FW 400, but the drive I have is FW 800.
USB2 is 480mbps and Firewire400 is 400mbps. On paper, this would appear that USB2 is faster than Firewire400. But USB2 cannot handle large data transfers very effectively. I can't explain the technicals, but suffice to say that the figures I gave of 40min-versus-2-hours-for-25GB is typical of Firewire400 versus USB2.
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But regardless, USB2 cannot keep up with a large data stream like Firewire can. Potentially USB3, which is up to 5Gbps, would be faster than either Firewire 400 or 800, although I suspect would be on par with Firewire3200 in the real world. However since there are no adapters for either USB3 or Firewire3200 for the Mac, it's a moot point for now. (Your drive is not USB3, there are only a few USB3 drives available, and you'd need a Mac Pro to add the adapter in anyway, if they existed.)
So are you saying that FW 800 is faster than USB 2.0 -- and that I should be using the FW connection to get better throughput? And that I can resume daisy-chaining multiple external drives through the one port?
Definitely Firewire would be faster than USB. And I have 5 external hard drives daisy-chained through a single Firewire800 port on my Mac. So daisy-chained Firewire is the way to go.
Like I said, for the small, incremental, hourly Time Machine backups, the speed difference is insignificant. But when the day comes that you have to restore your hard drive, (i.e.: hard drive dead so you buy new blank hard drive. Or you just want to replace with a larger drive,) if say your Time Machine backup is 80GB, that restore would probably take several hours over USB2. On my Firewire400 drive, my 100GB Time Machine restore of my Macbook Pro took about an hour and a half. (The data transfer was about an hour, but OSX took awhile after that to finish up the restore.) YMMV, of course, but IMHO, use Firewire over USB2 as much as possible. If you're lucky enough to have a Mac Pro or iMac and can use multiple internal hard drives or eSATA, then that would be even faster than Firewire800. Only owners of a Macbook Air or non-Firewire Macbook should resign themselves to USB2.

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini (256gbSSD + 2tbHDD)?

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup what I have on my Mac Mini?
My Mac Mini has one 256 SSD and one 2tb HDD. I want to use Time Machine to do a backup of everything.
Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
Might I suggest as an alternative that you not use Time Machine but a third-party backup utility that simply overwrites older files with new ones such that the backup drive can be the same capacity as the drive backed up.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
a LaCie 1TB external hard drive.
Everything works fine.
But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
because diagnostics and repair programs
only works properly and fully when they run from
external drives. Anything on the internal drive can be repaired
and examine. Impossible to do if Techtool is on the same
drive that's been examined.
Any thoughts as to what I should do?
Thanks
iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

pitou wrote:
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?
As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.
But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

HT3275 New macbook, old external drive for time machine

I got a new macbook pro a few weeks ago and set it up using my last backup from time machine. I want to use the same external drive for backups but there is no room. Can I delete all of the old files from the old computer or do I need to keep them?

kat.hayes wrote:
I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
As long as they're formatted HFS+, yes. Be sure there's enough room, though -- Time Machine needs considerably more room than the data it's backing-up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

If i move itune to external drive does time machine still have backup?

if i move itune to external drive does time machine still have backup?
I just moved my itunes off my macbook pro because it was taking up too much space and put it on an external hard drive. i have a second external hard drive that i use for time machine. when i update time machine next will my itunes files be removed from the backup since they are no longer on my internal hard drive (what time machine backs up?) basically, i want to make sure i have a second copy of my itunes besides the one on my first external hard drive and i was wondering if time machine will still have all of that data (on the second external hard drive).
i cant find this answer anywhere!!! thanks so much!!!

Check to see whether or not it's excluded in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences.
Items deleted from the hard drive won't be deleted from the backup until the backup location runs out of space.
(63157)

Backing up Air SSD and external drive to Time Machine

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