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

Similar Messages

Backing up to two external drives at same time

I have two external drives, one for Time Machine and one using SuperDuper, both using USB. Can both be running at the same time or should one be disconnected before running a backup on the other? Thanks

Both can be used at the same time.
If the backups run at the same time, both will be trying to use USB at the same time, so both will be slowed down.
Unless TM is doing a large backup, though, the impact should not be great.
And it's best to leave them connected at all times, rather than connect and disconnect (unless you're taking one off-site).

Is back-up to TWO external drives possible?

Is there a trick anyone knows of to use two backup disks for time machine?
Here's my situation:
- two 150GB external drives (total of 300GB for backups)
- need to back up ~240 GB from the computer to these drives
- only one destination drive is allowed by time machine, so it won't even start the initial back up as the source files are greater than 150 GB (the size of one external drive).
- I know file exclusion is an option, but I have over 150 GB that needs to be backed up! I can't exclude enough to make them fit....
So, I have enough space for backups, but it's on two external disks! Is there any way to get time machine to accept or use both drives? Anyone know of any tricks?
Thanks!
Selena M.

How big a drive depends on what you're really backing up. You noted you used to back up your system; you might be unaware that a "system backup" in TM is not the same thing as what you used to do (well, I'm assuming a bit here - that is, you wouldn't be able to "fix" a corrupted system just by dragging your TM backup stuff onto your main drive again).
The size of the backup drive also depends on the kind of work you do. If you do video or heavy-duty Photoshop stuff, those files, and their incremental backups, take up a lot of room. If you surf, email, and use word processor, those are compact files whose incremental backups take up tiny amounts of space. Also consider that, although you currently have 240 gig on your drive, lots of that is System and Applications, and very little of that changes, so the initial backup is almost the only copy of that stuff that's going to go on your backup drive.
In all, Apple's occasional recommendation of 2.5 times the size of your working drive for the size of your TM drive is, for many, or most, people, not necessary. In all likelihood, 500GB is going to be fine. In some of my experiments, I've used a 30GB (not a typo) backup drive for my laptop's 120GB drive, backing up only my User-folder stuff with no problem, using it for many weeks. While I don't do a lot of iPhoto stuff, and no movies, I do have tons of Word documents, and half-tons of large InDesign and Photoshop files. I had plenty of room for the initial backup, the current one, and 2-3 weeks of interval backups. (No system backup, no Applications folder backup, excluded things like the Trash, etc).
When you get your new drive - don't discard the old ones - or, at least, keep one of the old ones. Make it your emergency startup drive, with a system on it in case your main system goes wonky; also, use it if you use something like Entourage, or a PC-emulation software - you don't want TM backing up those files, but you should be backing them up, and an occasional drag of those files to your "special backup" disk can be lifesaver.
s.

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.

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

I purchased Apple TV. I had to upgrade my OS to Lion which I did. I cannot get Lion to open because time machine is backing up to two hard drives, my external hard drive and my internal hard drive. How do I just get the backups going to the external? thx

I have a desktop Mac. I bought Apple tv and wanted to connect my photos to the tv. I learned that I had to upgrade my OS as I didn't have icloud capability. I purchased and downloaded Lion. I cannot open it however, because when I go to select the hard drive to install Lion onto, the dialogue box says that I cannot open it in either my external hard drive or the internal hard drive because of the backups to time machine. I have tried the 'fix' of moving the backup folder to the trash and then putting it on the desktop, but I still can't access either one of the drives to install Lion. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The current OS is Mountain Lion 10.8.3, so I if the purchase was recent, that is what you should have.
It should be possible to see what disk space is being used by opening the Disk Utlity in the Applications>Utilities folder. It looks like both disks are set as TM disks:
If you have Time Machine backup of both the internal and external disks and want to rationalise the system to only backup one, then set the TM preferences>options to exclude volumes as required:
When you download the installer from the Apple Store (MAS) it will come up with a dialogue to run it. It will then ask which disk you wish to install the system on. Is this where you have got to, before it says they are both unavailable?

Me and my wife have two iphone4 can we keep one apple id

can we keep i acct. for both phones yet have difftert app and songs

yes - each phone its it own entity (both standalone, and if you're syncing to itunes).
Bear in mind though that all purchases/free downloads of apps, music, etc will be tied to the same account - so I would switch out the 'automatic download' function under 'settings / store' on the iPhones (its off by default).
The biggest issue really is making sure you setup the sync correctly (so there are something you may want to share (new music etc) but want to keep the app layout separate)

My question is why does firefox close when I click another window off? I have a new window come up so I have two, but when I click one off it closes all of them.

I usually have more than one tabs up and ready when I'm searching the web. But when I look at my mail or when a new window is opened if I click the "X" all of my windows are closed. What could be the problem?

This is not a cure but will make it easier if Firefox locks up.
'''https://support.mozilla.org/questions/997866''' {web link}
From what I have been reading from other posts on this forum, the
issue may be caused by the clear history settings. It was suppose
to have been fixed in v30.
Press the '''Alt''' or '''F10''' key to bring up the tool bar.
Followed by;
Windows; '''Tools > Options'''
Linux; '''Edit > Preferences'''
Mac; ''application name'' '''> Preferences'''
Then '''Privacy'''.
The button next to '''History''', select '''Use Custom Settings'''.
At the bottom of the page, turn on '''Clear History When Firefox Closes.'''
At the far right, press the '''Settings''' button. Turn on ONLY '''Cache''' and
'''Form And Search History''' leaving the others off.

Making two hard drives work or appear as a single drive

I have a G5 with two 500 GB internal drives. One I use to backup the first, however, now my drives are full and I would like to buy 1 TB external to back up the two internal drives but is there anyway to setup the second internal drive to work with the first like a single 1 TB drive instead of two 500GB drives? I'm not sure how I would use the second drive otherwise. I don't want to have to drag files to it every time I want to save something on it. How should I set it up? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks for your help. I will have to research it a bit. I'm not 100% sure what a rAID is or how it works and with regard to the second comment on using the 500 GB as super duper backup...you may have misunderstood or maybe I wasn't clear. I won't have a 500 GB to use as any backup. I want my two internal 500 GB drives to be viewed as a single 1TB drive that can be backed up to a 1TB external drive. I just don't understand how to make my 2 500GB drives into one drive. I prefer not to split it up into application on one of the drives and user info on the other because I won't get the max space out of both. I have tons of photos, music, and video on my machine and little in the way of programs. Will a RAID make the two 500GB drives into a single drive?

How to move lrcatb back to internal drivefrom ext drive

how do i move lrcat 5.3 file from external drive back to macbook pro internal drive and keep all photos on external drive where they are now, my mackbook pro keeps shutting down, with maverick and seagate ext drive, i am thinking if i move lrcat back to internal drive, it may help, i want to do this all thru lr of course, please advise

Just drag it n' drop it (just the lrcat file itself may be all that is required, but it would probably be best to drag the folder it's in instead, so that everything that's associated with the catalog comes along too, e.g. previews). Location of catalog bears no relation to the location of photo files in said catalog..

Back up to two external discs

How to back up my iMac to two external discs? I am now using Airport Time Capsule as one of my external backup drives, and want on a weekly schedule to add another backup drive to be stored off-site.

Simply buy another EHD and purchase either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, both have the ability to schedule backups. Visit each vendors website, determine whch product you prefer (both do the same thing) and that's pretty much it. Both SD and CCC will cost you about $40.
Personally I use a Time Machine (TM) on one EHD and use SuperDuper on another drive. However there are many users on these forums that use CCC and are extremely happy.

Can I clone my Time Machine hard drive, to another HD, and store Off Site?

Good day All, I love my new Macbook, but am trying to come up with a foolproof method of backing up all my data, documents, and business.
I have become very nervous about BACKUPS, and want to have an OFF-SITE week old backup done on a external Hard Drive?
I presently have a 200 gig Time Machine backup/archive, and have a daily clone with Super Duper & Carbon Copy Clone. However these hard drives are at home, so should the building burn down, or should we get broken into, there goes my business and digital life.
My thought is to buy an external hard drive and clone my current Time Machine hard drive to the external on a weekly basis, and store it off-site or at a friends house.
Would I be able to do a clone of my TM HD archive, and have it still useable / bootable / recoverable should a tragedy happen?
I would like to upload it all up to Mozy, or BackBlaze, or similar offering, but 200 gig is way too big.
Is anybody cloning a Time Machine hard drive and able to restore from it?
Thanks for reading my post, and am lookin forward to all of your comments, IAN...

Hi Ian,
Sorry I missed the discussion last night. I'll tell you how I'm accomplishing the backup task and you can let me know if this is what you're trying to do.
I now have 2 external HDs. A 1TB Seagate and a 250 GB LaCie. The LaCie used to be my TM backup drive, but it was the same size as my internal iMac drive. I knew I'd eventually need a bigger drive so I bought the 1TB Seagate yesterday and cloned the LaCie drive onto it using SuperDuper. The only thing on the LaCie drive was TM backups. Now the TM backup are on the Seagate. I unmounted the old TM drive and changed the name of the new drive to "Time Machine". I activated TM and it picked right up where it left off. I did test it by restoring an old file. I also changed a current file and made sure TM was still operating as advertised. Everything worked as expected.
Now I simply used the 250 GB drive to clone my system HD using CCC. It is a bootable backup and can be used to run the system should my internal drive become unusable. I will update this drive once a month with any changes to the system drive using CCC and keep it off-site in a safe deposit box in the meantime. Using this methodology, I don't see why you'd want to swap the drives weekly/monthly. Just let TM run on the large drive and keep the other drive as current as you like. I've decided monthly is good for me. I'm mostly worried about photos, but I keep them on the camera longer than a month, so there's my cover for the month.
Nano

Backing up to two external hard drives

I have two external hard drives - a LaCie FireWire (my first purchase) and a small Targus USB (used while travelling). Backup software is Silverkeeper. I used the LaCie exclusively for about six months with no problems. The initial backup was lengthy but subsequent backups were much quicker, since it was merely an updating process.
The LaCie stayed at home and the Targus was used for four months. It performed in exactly the same manner.....lengthy on initial backup but quicker on subsequent backups.
What happens now is that every time I try to do a backup, alternating between the two hard drives, the software indicates that no backup has ever been performed and I must start from "scratch". In addition, I get a window telling me that if I want to create a bootable back-up, the destination volume must be totally blank. (I do realize that only the FireWire drive can be a bootable copy).
I am totally baffled. Any suggestions?

Sue
Whilst I totally recommend SuperDuper!, and use it myself, be aware that the more advanced features like the fast Smart Backups and scheduling are only available from the full (registered version). The free version will only do a full and complete clone.
That said I think SD! is well worth the asking price and definitely my primary choice.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPods 2G/4G, iPs, AEBS, AX

HT201250 can an external portable drive be used for both time machine back ups and for additional storage or to sync files?

I use a seagate freeagent Go drive to keep a copy of important files. Files that I use with some regularity. I sync the drive every few days to ensure I have the latest. It is a old school method, but works well. I realize that not all things are "backed up" as they would be with a real back up, like time machine.
Can one device drive do both or should I use two different drives?
mb pro 2011, 4GB, 500 GB sata disk

TM performs best on its Own Dedicated External Hard Drive,
Mac 101 Time Machine
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine Tutorial
How do I view or restore selected items?
Video on Restore From Time Machine
http://support.apple.com/kb/VI29
It is recommended that the TM EHD be at least twice the capacity of the Drive(s) it is intending to back up.
Note:
If you connect your current EHD to use as TM backup it will be Erased during the TM setup process.

How do I back up all photos in i photo to a 1 TB seagate portable drive?

Hi there
I am attempting to add the photos on i photo to the back up on a 1 TB Seagate portable drive.
It does not seem to add photos to the backup.
Does anyone know what I do to test if iphoto is saved to the portable drive, and what I should do to ensure that my photos are included in future backups to the portable drive?
many thanks
Barbara

Use Time Machine.

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

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