Backing up to two drives

Hi
I am using two different hard drives as my backup disk for time machine. I alternate between them. Each time I switch between hard drives, regardless of how many changes I make, TM backs up approx 20GB of my files. Repeated backups to the same drive are efficient but when I change drives I have this extended backup that requires 45 min each time. Does anyone know why this happens? My Entourage Main Identity is about 20GB. Could that be the issue?

ivl wrote:
My Entourage Main Identity is about 20GB. Could that be the issue?
Most likely. See #D4 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Note that when you swap drives, the next backup is of all the changes made since the last backup +*to that disk,+* so it will probably be larger than a normal hourly backup.

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Backing up to two drives at the same time

Is it possible, using Time Machine, to back up at the same time to two external hard drives connected to an Airport Extreme (via a USB hub) ?

If your external drive with the iTunes data is connected to your computer by either USB or Firewire, you can configure Time Machine to backup both your computer and the external drive, you'll have Time Machine backups of both devices.
Post back with some info on how you have things configured now to see if this arrangement might work for you.

Using time capsule to back up two drives?

Hello.
I haver done a search on this but am unable to find a clear answer.
I work on a macbook pro with a hard drive attached, keeping my large files off my system drive.
I currently back up both the system drive and external work drive with superduper, which works, but I want something automatic.
My question is, can I partition a time capsule and have time machine back up to two drives wirelessly? Meaning everything is safe without me having to do anything...
Thanks in advance.

Apologies!
The answer came up in the 'more like this' section on the right. Glad it's possible...

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?

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?

As john noted, eventually that external is probably not going to be big enough, but it certainly is for now. The HD just needs enough capacity to cover the amount of data on your internal HD, not the internal HD's total capacity.
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).
NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (which I always think is a good idea, but does take time), click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.
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.

HT4718 i have two drives, 80GB and a 2nd Windows drive 40GB. I'd like to get rid of the 40GB and go back to original 120GB, MacBook Air 2011, OS X 10.7.5 is this doable?

i have two drives, 80GB and a 2nd Windows drive 40GB. I'd like to get rid of the 40GB and go back to original 120GB, MacBook Air 2011, OS X 10.7.5 is this doable?

If you used Boot Camp to install Windows you may use Boot Camp to remove it and return your drive to as it was.

Backing Up Two Drives To One External Drive

Hello!
I own a 20-inch 250GB iMac, a 1TB Western Digital External Hard Drive, and a 320GB Western Digital External Hard Drive. I recently began running out of room on my Mac, mainly because of all that I have on iTunes. Out of my 250GB I am now down to about 18GB. With this in mind, I went out and picked up a 320GB drive to pluck all my iTunes fluff on.
My 1TB drive is my current Time Machine backup for my Mac. I have been using Time Machine for quite some time and haven't had much problem at all. Today, though, is where I hit a stump. I'd like all my iTunes files to be only on the 320GB drive, and to be backed up on the 1TB drive. I also want my 250GB Mac to be backed up on the 1TB drive as well.
So my question is, can I have a Mac and a 320GB External Hard Drive both be backed up to the same 1TB External Hard Drive with the use of Time Machine? If so, do you mind explaining how exactly this would work? I tried looking at the Time Machine settings thru System Preferences, but I had no luck with my hunt there.
Any help would be appreciated!

dj22091 wrote:
Thank you for the reply. I have just a few more questions if you don't mind. [:-D
Will leaving the volume format as MS-DOS (FAT) be an issue?
yes, it will. as i said, the drive must be formatted mac os extended for TM to back it up. also, FAT has manyother deficiencies with OS X and should not be used unless you absolutely have to.
My 1TB drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)... Seeing as how this is only for iTunes, should I change the volume format for this new drive? And if so, for erase options, should I choose "Don't Erase Data" or "Zero Out Data"?
do not choose the zero out data option. this is just a security measure to prevent data recovery. it's quite useless with a new drive and is mostly waste of time anyway.
I ask because this new 320GB drive came with that icky SmartWare Software already installed. I followed the steps @ http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/?family=wdsmartwareutilitiesmac to remove this software, so my paranoid side is left wondering.
Also, for future reference, do you mind explaining the hierarchy here @ http://twitpic.com/14gva3 ? This is an image from my Disk Utility, and I am wondering what is the difference between the "232.9 GB..." and the "Macintosh HD", as well as the other two drives shown. I ask because, if having to format, should I worry about the "297.4 GB..." or the "disk2s1"? (MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-875...Do you have any idea what that is?)
everything in this pic is absolutely normal. the top one is the whole physical drive. it may have several partitions which are separate volumes and can be formatted separately. but none of your drives are partitioned.
Thanks a lot for your help!

Backing up to two external drives simultaneously?

I have an external 2TB drive that I use with my MacBook Pro.
Costco right now has 3TB Seagate drives for $99 and I plan to buy two ... one as my main external drive and another as a mirror backup.
I want to transfer the contents of the old 2TB drive to both 3TB drives at the same time, mainly because of the amount of time it takes to transfer that much data and to save those extra hours of running time on the old 2TB drive if it has to be done twice.
Can this be done? I've never copied files to more than one backup drive at a time and I don't find anything about it on google. No idea what steps I would need to take to copy contents of one drive to two other drives at the same time.

Well you got this problem.
All hard drives come from the factory with a certain number of bad sectors on the drive.
There is a automatic mapping off process in place to catch failing sectors, but it doesn't work on completely failed sectors with your data on it, thus people tend to lose files, especially if they are large.
Sometimes those lost files are system or preference files, which we use do to spend a lot of time assisting people here to solve them.
Now the odds of you having more bad sectors increases with larger drives, but there is a method to catch most of them before you lay your precious data on them and using it as guinea pig.
Then there is a question of what file format to use on the external drive, because if you don't plan ahead your copying all the data off, then formatting, then copying all the data back onto the drive.
There is a cross platform format called exFAT that works fine with Windows, Linux and Mac's that all can read and write, also use larger than 4GB sized files.
Most drives come formatted FAT32, which has a 4GB file size limit.
However, Mac's don't format the exFAT format so Windows can use it correctly, however Windows will format exFAT correctly and Mac's can use it no problem. Why is this? I don't know.
Anyway this is what I propose you do since you abhor the lenghtly copying.
1: Select each drive in Disk Utility and click Erase > Security Option > Zero All Data (or move the slider one spot to the right and click Erase.) This is going to take a long time to finish because it's going to write Zeros to the entire drive, then read it back for verification. Do not use 3x-7x as it will take days to finish. If the drive fails the Zero, it's likely bad and needs replacement. Better found out now than later with your precious data on it.
2: So once the Disk Utility > Zero (format irrelevant) is completed on both drives, take each to the oldest Windows version your going to use, XP is the big problem. If it doesn't have exFAT installed, there is a free install just search Microsofts site for it.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364
Right click and format exFAT on Windows on each drive, it will apply the proper Partition Table for each depending, XP uses a MBR and Vista, Win7/8 and OS X use GUID.
Again, do NOT format exFAT on a Mac if your ever going to use it with a PC as it can't read it.
If your NEVER going to use the drives with a Windows machine, then when your Zeroing in Disk Uitlity, choose GUID and OS X Extended Journaled as the format.
3: Once the two drives are formatted, your good to go copying files.
Writes are usually slightly slower than reads, unless your drive your reading from is slow or suffers from bad secor issues.
So if you copy from one drive to two, there might be some slight performance gain, but it's only the small difference between read and writes speeds of the parent and child drives. On a large copy if might trim off some minutes, but no way can it copy two drives in the time it takes to do one.
You likely heard of "Mirrored RAID" or RAID 1, this is a more pernament solution for servers mostly that DOES write to two drives exactly at the same time. However the drives in a RAID setup are paired up and it's difficult to unpair them once the RAID is setup and use them like normal file drives like you intend to do.
I always intended to write a User Tip how to resolve this unpairing RAID issue, but rarely does anyone use RAID on Mac's anymore.
So your best solution is to set a lot of time aside and let the machine do the work (non-RAID) when your not using it.
Having the max amount of RAM in the machine will assist greatly.

Backing up to TWO portable drives, alternately --(keeping one off-site)

Can Time Machine be used to alternately (say, one day -- or one week -- at a time) back-up to each of two separate portable USB drives, so that one can always be kept off-site (to ensure security)? If so, how?
Beginning in the days of tape backups (and continuing to Iomega disks and then CDs) we've used a system of rotating backup media so as to always have a set off-premises that was no more than a few days to a week old. That way, in the event of a disaster, such as a fire, we'd still have a secured back up.
Can the same be done by alternating two hard drives? And, can Time Machine be configured so that it can tell the difference and back up each one separately?
In the alternative, can two drives be attached to the Mac (I'm using a MacBook Pro) at the same time, both receiving and storing backup data, so that one drive be removed nightly for secure, off-premises, storage?

Rotating drives is no problem. When you attach a new drive you may have to go to System Preferences > Time Machine > Change drives. Time Machine will know which files need to be backed up for each drive.
However, Time Machine will can only back up to a single drive at a time. You can request the capability you want for future Time Machine releases through Feedback.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
In the meantime you might want to use Carbon Copy cloner to do incremental backups to one drive and use Time Machine for the other. I would however be quite careful about making sure that CCC and TM aren't running at the same time. CCC has a built-in scheduler and Time Machine Scheduler can be used for TM.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26341/timemachinescheduler

How does Smartware handle backing up two drives to My Cloud...and other Smartware questions

When you set up backup from two disk drives on one PC to My Cloud via Smartware, do they both backup simultaneously, or do I need to do one, then the other? I have a Windows 8.1 laptop with two hard drives, one is 500GB, the other 1 TB. After installing My Cloud (3TB) and Smartware, I went into Smartware and set up my backups. I selected various folders on each drive to back up, and I also set up two different folders on My Cloud to receive these files. Setup is like this: PC Drive -> My Cloud FolderSeveral folders in G: drive -> Pictures, Video folder on My CloudDesktop and User folder onmain drive -> Users folder on My Cloud Every time I open my PC at home, I start Smartware, click the Backup tab and let the backup continue. I feel like I need to manually go into the Home and Backup tab for each backup plan (one per drive) and restart it. Regardless, my question is this: is Smartware able to handle these two drives on my laptop backing up onto My CLoud? Other Smartware questions:- Does my PC have to be on my home network (where My Cloud is installed) in order to run Smartware? Can I be on the internet outside of my home and run Smartware?- I run Outlook 2010. Will Smartware back up the latest Outlook file automatically as new files are created (basically, every time I run Outlook)? Much appreciated. - Paul M.

Hello,
When you set up backup from two disk drives on one PC to My Cloud via Smartware, do they both backup simultaneously, or do I need to do one, then the other?
You will need to do one first and then the other and the last one that is selected will be done automatically.
- Does my PC have to be on my home network (where My Cloud is installed) in order to run Smartware?
Yes.
Can I be on the internet outside of my home and run Smartware?
WD Smartware does not perform remote backups.

Time Machine backing up on two external hard drives.

Hi guys!
My question is if I can use two external HDs at the same time with Time Machine, backing up different content on each one?!
Let's say:
My Movies folder and My Music folder to external HD 1;
My Documents folder and My Pictures folder to external HD 2.
Is there a way of doing it? because my iMac has 250GB and my external HDs have 100GB and 80GB each one.
Thanks!

You might have a better chance of getting a solid answer to this question over in the Time Machine forum. In general since TM does incremental backups anything smaller than your current system drive is usually too small. However you can designate TM to only backup certain files and folders. I do not know if you can set it to back up to multiple drives/partitions as there is no user setting to do this.
George

Can Time machine back up to two hard drives?

I want to make a Time machine back up to two different external hard drives. I can't use RAID-0 because the size of my external drives is different.

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html

How to set up my mac mini server to use two drives seamlessly?

I have a mid 2010 mac mini server, with OSX Lion installed. It has dual 500gb hard drives.
I've been moving all my important files to it, and I've always assumed that once I filled one disc, it would seamlessly transfer over to the other and continue backing up. This does not seem to be the case.
I'm at roughly 495gb of data, and when I try to move a 10gb file onto my server, it tells me that I don't have enough disc space to continue the operation.
What can I do to make use of both drives?
-Thanks

It sounds like what you're asking for is to have the two drives in a RAID 0, where the two 500 Gb drives look like a single 1 Tb drive. I'm not sure the exact procedure for installing RAID 0 on a mini's internal drives, but the process would involve backing up, reconfiguring for RAID (which destroys all data,) restoring data from the backup, and more risk than I would personally find acceptable. I'd expect to lose a full day with the backup and restore steps. I can guarantee, there will be pain.
Instead, I'd suggest looking at what's consuming the 500Gb, and seeing if there are particular folders that can be moved. For example, a shared folder is pretty easy. Copy it over. In file sharing setup, edit the share to point to the new location. Make sure remote users disconnect, and reconnect to the "new" share. When you're happy there is no data loss, delete the old location.
User's home directories can also move, but the process has a few more steps, and depends on how the accounts are built (local vs. OD)
If the majority of the data is in a single "your backup files" folder, shared or otherwise, then I would just set up a second folder on the second drive and write to it, leaving the first alone. If it is truly a backup, then you could make the first folder read-only at this point for extra protection. If you go the 2 folder route, keep in mind your boot drive is operating with 1% free space, I like my drives to have at least 15% free, and OS drives more like 25% (you'll find some range in recommended %-free, but most will agree 1% is too little) so move SOME stuff to the new folder, before closing the old.

Can time machine be used to back up one external drive to another external drive?

I use the photography program Lightroom to organize and develop digital photos. All my photos are stored on my iMac internal drive. The internal drive is almost full so I want to move my photos to a new external drive. At present, I have an external drive devoted to backing up my iMac using time machine. I have no need to change this arrangement. I would like to use a new external drive to serve as the primary location for my pictures, which I will move from the internal drive. Then I would like to backup that drive to a third external back up drive. Can time machine be used to automatically back up the second drive to the third drive as well as for continuing to provide ongoing backups to my internal drive as it is currently doing?
Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Jeffery t wrote:
Thanks for the links, but I don't see in the pondini links, the scenario I am asking about.
Time Machine can easily back up multiple internal and/or directly-connected external drives and partitions simultaneously (but Time Machine cannotback up data that's on a network).
From the first link.
Jeffery t wrote:
... Please note that my iMac internal drive is backing up to external drive number 1 using time machine. I want my pictures on external drive two and those backed up to external drive three. So are you saying that if I have 500 GB of pictures on drive number 2, I will need a third drive that is at least 1 TB?
the confusion starts in your above statement...
There should be Only One Time Machine Drive.

Time Machine Back Up 3rd Hard Drive to 4th Hard Drive

Hey All Geniuses . . . .
I have a third internal hard drive that I want to back up to a fourth internal hard. I already have my Time Machine backing up my first hard drive (with the OS) to the second hard drive. I can't figure out how to separate the "back ups" out. Just to be clear: the date on hard drive three will be different from hard drive one and two, and have to backed up to hard drive four exclusively. Cheers, mate

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Lyssa is correct.
TM can back-up multiple drives/partitions, and each source volume is shown separately in the TM interface, but it's destination must be a single volume. It is possible, of course, for that single volume to be a concatenated Raid set, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.
CCC can do this, however. It's donationware, so you can try it out free (but do send some $$ if you keep it, so they can keep it up to date). I think SD can do it also, but you'll need the paid version (about $30 I think) for it to do updates instead of replacements.
You'll probably want to continue with TM on your OSX drive, as it's incremental backups of many files and folders are much faster than either CCC's or SD's will be.
Either is available via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.

How do I back up Wireless Hard Drive using Time Machine

I have a MacBook Pro and I'm running OSX Lion.
I'm having trouble setting up time machine to back up two USB external hard drives (named Portable iTunes and Portable iPhoto) connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. I have a time capsule with a 3TB USB WD MyBook external hard drive that I'm using as the Time Machine Hard Drive.
Portable iTunes, Portable, iPhoto and MyBook are wirelessly mounted to my desktop.
Will someone please explain how I can set up MyBook to wirelessly back up the two portable drives using Time Machine?
Thanks in advance.
Wyatt.

Will someone please explain how I can set up MyBook to wirelessly back up the two portable drives using Time Machine?
Sorry, but Time Machine can only backup a hard drive that is connected directly to your Mac using USB or Firewire.

Backing up to two drives

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