Backup on main drive

Hi!
Is it possible (or dangerous) to use for Time Machine a partition of my main drive, that is the disk where I installed Leopard?

Yes you can, but doing so will give you no protection against hardware failures. If your drive fails, you've lost all your data and all your backups.

Similar Messages

How do I get Time Machine to ONLY backup my main drive?

I am a video editor that has clients continuously bringing me hard drives to edit from. The problem is that every time I plug in a new disk, I need to disable it in Time Machine. If I forget to disable it, then Time Machine will automatically try to shove it on itself and in the process will wipe out all past versions of my main drive. The ONLY drive that I EVER want backed up is my main drive. I love the feature of Time Machine where there might be some old file I had on my desktop the week before that I deleted and now need back. Well, I can't get it back, because during the process of trying to backup some random drive that a client gives to me, it will automatically wipe out all previous backups of my main drive to try to make room.

All true, and I do not actually use CCC that way. I use TM for my daily backup (actually, I have it set to run every 12hours), and I use SuperDuper for a pair of clones (one offsite) that I manually incremental update weekly or so. I also have CCC for a monthly additional clone that lives in my firesafe when not being updated.
There is an older freeware (or maybe it is donationware ?) utility named Time Machine Scheduler still around, but I do not know how or even if it runs on OS X 10.8, although it runs on 10.7 so may well work fine - it will let you specify a particular time to backup.
The default TM backup frequency can be easily modified from the command line:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 43200
Where the number is in seconds, so 43200 means to kick off a TM backup every 12 hours (the default in the *.plist file is 3600, or every hour).

Time Machine backup and main drive corrupted. Help! (REWARD OFFERED)

Here's the deal:
I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini both runnign Snow Leopard. I use the Mac Mini as a kind of media center / server, it has a few external drives connected to it. On of these drives (1GB) is dedicated to Time Machine, the Mac Mini (80 GB hard drive) backs up to it directly and the Macbook Pro (500 GB hard drive) does it over the network (Time Machine created a sparsebundle). This has worked well for years now. Occasionally I got the error that Time Machine needed to start a new backup because the old one was corrupt. That happened about 2-3 times a year (did the same thing when I backued up via USB). Now about 2 weeks ago, that error came up and I just let the Macbook Pro on overnight and connected the ethernet cable for faster transfer.
When I woke up, the Macbook Pro didn't respont at all, spinning beachball, no response at all beside mouse movement. I let it do it's thing for another 10 hours (while I was at work) and just held down the power button to power off and restart it. But all I got was the gray-on-gray flashing folder with the question mark in it, that's what you get when the Mac can't find bootable partitions. So I popped in the OSX Snow Leopard install disk, ran disk utility. It saw the hard drive, but no partition (i.e. Machintosh HD) on it. I checked the Time Machine backup and the sparsebundle was 300 GB (the Macbook Pro had 400 GB used, the remaining 100 GB were free). There is no way to restore from an unfinished Time Machine backup...
First thing I did was clone the internal (Macbook Pro) hard drive to a DMG disk image using DiskDrill (the only program I found that could recognize the drive at all, not even DiskWarrior could). I also bought the exact same hard drive model and partitioned it like the cloned the corrupted hard drive to the new one using ddrescue (a command line tool that doesn't quit upon i/o errors but proceeds and tries to recover as much as it can). It copied everything except 65 kilobytes, the corrupted drive seemed to be physically damaged in a bunch of sectors relatively at the beginning of the disk. Since I had now an exact copy on a fresh, healthy drive, I went crazy trying out Disk Warrior (didn't recognize the drive at all), data rescue, testdisc, p a Windows isk, etc. Only R-Studio (on windows) showed the EFI and Macintosh HD partitions on there, they started and ended on the same sectors on the corrupted drive and its clone. After some research, I figured that the partition table was corrupt so I reformated the clone disk using the OSX Snow Leopard install disk (1 HFS Journaled Partition with GUID Partition table). R-Studio showed the EFI and Macintosh HD on that reformated drive, again, same sectors as before. So I figured I could just copy just the bytes where the Macintosh HD starts from the corrupted drive to the clone (using ddrescue). That worked, after almost 24 hours, I had the clone drive with a "disk1" partition on it that even disk utility could see.
Now I was able to run Disk Warrior on it, but all it could do was recover a few Application folders (Resource-Folders and lproj-stuff), about 100 MB in total. It couldn't repair more of catalog file apparently. Luckily, Time Machine backed up quite a bit (300 GB out of 400 GB of data) and I was able to manually copy all the Dokuments, Desktop, user Library, Applications, Music, Download and Movies. Unfortunatley, only a little bit of the Pictures folder was copied. iPhoto library (80 to 100 GB) was nowhere to be found, backup must have failed right then. I can salvage the drives (time machine drive, original hard drive with a few broken sectors, DMG-image of that drive, 1-1 copy of that drive with partition table repaired) but that only gives me files with numeric names and today's date on teh JPEGs (instead of the date the picture was taken).
Is there any way I can recover that iPhoto library? It appears the catalog file got corrupted because the hard drive (only 8 months old...) failed on a few sectors. If I understand it correctly, the catalog file on HFS+ file systems is where the folder structure and file names are stored in a B-Tree. I can't imagine that some i/o error during backup can totally annihilate that file when it was working perfectly before. Here's a few things I want to try out but haven't figured out how so far:
- Time Machine had to start a new backup. There's plenty of free space on that drive so there's a good chance there's old data left on it. Is there a way to restore files (including file names) and fodlers from deleted time machine backups?
- Is there any way to re-build that catalog file from what is there left on the original hard drive? I can't imagine 65 kilobytes destroys it all.
- Are there other ways to recover my iPhoto Library? The raw JPEG (and AVI) files with correct file names or metadata would suffice.
Thanks in advance for any help, I'll actually reward the person with a working solution, 5 years of photo memories are somewhat important. It really ***** that a failure during a backup destroys that...

Final Update:
The catalog file on the original hard drive could not be fixed. Seems like Mac OSX tried to repair the catalog file while the sectors this file resides on failed. To make things worse the partition table was also broken beyond repair, even overwriting the sectors with a new correct partition table didn't help. DiskWarrior found less then 100 MB worth of stuff, mainly Applications folders.
I recovered pretty much everything from the incomplete Time Machine backup by right-clicking the sparsebundle and browsing through the folders with the long alphanumeric names, looking for the version of the folder with the most files in there. All I was missing was part of the ~/Pictures folder, i.e. photobooth pictures and the whole iPhoto Library. My best option was to recover these files using data recovery tools.
DiskDrill proved to be the absolute best, fast, responsive, efficient, and the only one able to mount the DMG-file with no valid file system on it. As there were many i/o errors and broken sectors on the original hard drive, I made a copy of it using a free command line tool called ddrescue (the standard dd tool just aborted when it encountered the i/o error). ddrescue copied the whole drive to a DMG image, I had 56 kilobytes with errors on the first pass, but it managed to shrink that down to just 4 kilobytes (wow!) after the second pass where it tries to re-read the broken secors. It took about 24 hours for a 512 GB 2.5" drive (5400 rpm) but well worth it. Be advised that ddrescue is really persistent and tries everything to recover those last errorneous bytes. At the very end of the process, the read/write head of the hard drive just goes wild trying to catch the data on the sectors with different momentum. This works but I assume this is pretty damaging for the original drive. I also copied it all to a new hard drive (again using ddrescue) and tried partition and catalog repair tools on that (DiskWarrion, testdiks, pdisk, etc.). Still no hint of a good result.
I made a deep scan on the clone hard drive with DiskDrill. At the end (after about 8 hours over USB) it found 13 partition (I assume that's the Macintosh HD, EFI and some DMG files lying around) and hundreds of thousands of pictures. I restored some JPG files just to check the quality, some were damaged, some were good with all the EXIF data intact. I just made it copy all JPG files into a folder. I know the pictures taken from my camera produce JPGs larger than 1 MB and smaller than 5 MB, so I sorted them by size and moved the smaller and larger files into seperate folders. I took the remaining folder (100 GB) and just dragged it into iPhoto. It imported them overnight. Auto-Split by events and I got my library back, alas with different file names, originals and edited versions side by side, lots of duplicates, some damaged, some not. But hey, all the pictures in chronological order. Okay there was also one large event with all the JPGs without valid EXIF data landed inside, iPhoto just takes the file creation date (i.e. the date where the recovered file was copied). As far as I can tell, these are all just data corpses, halfway overwritten copies, random pictures from the internet, desktop pictures, etc.
I started to work my way back through the events, deleting the duplicates and renaming the events. There's an app called "Duplicate Annihilator" which apparently can find duplicate pictures in iPhoto and mark them for you. The free version only does 500 pictures but if it works, I'll get the full version. It can mark th eduplicate photos by adding something to the picture comment in iPhoto so you can manually review it all. Good stuff!

How do I save and import my bookmarks from another hard drive? When I try to open the installed Firefox on the old drive, it (obviously) opens a browser from the new main drive, free of bookmarks. Is there a way I can save the bookmarks on the old drive w

How do I save and import my bookmarks from another hard drive? When I try to open the installed Firefox on the old drive, it (obviously) opens a browser from the new main drive, free of bookmarks. Is there a way I can save the bookmarks on the old drive without opening a browser?
The guts of my computer were rearranged and I got a new main hard drive. My old one is still in there and I can get stuff from it, but when I go to the Mozilla folder on the old one, I can't figure out if there's anything I can do to get all my bookmarks from that drive to my new one, where Firefox is newly installed.

If you open Firefox then Firefox will always use the default profile folder as found via profiles.ini on your system drive.
You either need to import the file in your current default profile or copy the file to your current profile folder while Firefox is closed.
Firefox 3 stores the bookmarks and the browser history in [http://kb.mozillazine.org/places.sqlite places.sqlite] and no longer creates an HTML backup by default.
There are also (five) JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder within the Firefox profile folder.
You can either copy the file places.sqlite to your [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox Firefox Profile Folder] or import the most recent JSON backup from the bookmarkbackups folder of that old profile.
See:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_and_restoring_bookmarks_-_Firefox
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
"Application Data" in XP/Win2K and "AppData" in Vista/Windows 7 are hidden folders.
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders
Go to: Control Panel > Folder Options > "View" tab > under "Hidden files and folders", select "Show hidden files and folders".
You may want to un-check the box "Hide extensions for known file types" to see the file extensions of all files.

Is there a way to have iPhoto NOT use the Photo Library on the Main drive?

I have thousands of pictures going waaay back to when iPhoto first came out. Most are on disc and on backup drives. I want to use the external drives to work from, within iPhoto. Is this possible?
I just got a Mac Mini and since i have a lot of external drives(over 6TB, I'm a pro photographer) I didn't need the larger main drive. I like to use iPhoto for snapshots of my family and friends and quickie uploads for them.
Thanks.

sure
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Questions about using an external drive as my main drive

This topic has been addressed in discussion threads before, but I'm in search of a few details.
I have a Mac mini 1.42 combo, 512 mb RAM, with an external 250 gb MiniStack FW drive. The external FW drive spins at 7200 rpm, while the internal drive in the mini is a 4200 rpm model. Because of the higher disk speed, I'm considering making my external FW drive my main drive, then reformatting my mini's internal drive to use for backup purposes only. My backups to the mini's internal drive would be bootable, so I wouldn't have to have Tiger installed on the mini's internal drive.
Additionally, I've got my iTunes library on another partition on the same external FW drive. I'm really happy with the result of that move so far.
I've experimented a bit already. I've used SuperDuper to clone my mini's drive to a different partition on the external FW drive, and confirmed that I can boot from it using the external FW drive as my startup disk, so that's not an issue.
I'm planning to move over to the external FW drive and use that as my startup disk and main drive, but keep the mini's external drive as is for a while before I reformat it and use it strictly for backups. I've got some questions before I commit to this, though. (shudder!)
*Updates for applications and Tiger-If I continue to use Apple's Software Update to conduct my software upgrades, will it automatically update the applications on my external FW drive? I'm assuming that Software Update identifies the boot drive and the app's location before performing the update. I'm concerned that Software Update will become confused once it can't identify my mini's internal drive as the 'main' disk, and will lose the functionality to handle my updates.
*Default drives for other applications-For those of you that have already moved to an external disk as your main drive, did you have to change preferences in other apps (like the MS Office Suite) to tell them where to look for files and save new docs/save updated docs? I use Office a lot for a part-time job, and it would be a pain to have to manually update all that info.
*iTunes-As I've already stated, I've moved my iTunes music library over to a partition on my external FW drive and it's worked well so far. What concerns me is the funky way that Apple requires the iTunes management files and folders be on your main drive in your Home folder, but allows the music files to reside on a different disk. When iTunes needs to update itself, or manage the music library, is it going to be happy working from the home folder on the external disk, or will I have problems? In other words, as long as the iTunes management files are on my boot drive, am I OK?
Thanks for wading through this wordy post. If I decide to make the plunge, I'll report back to the list. I'm sure a bunch of mini owners are considering the move to external drives to boost performance. I love the machine, but I can always use more speed!
Mac Mini 1.42 Mac OS X (10.4.3) MiniStack 250 GB + Hub

No problem what so ever. I am not certain you will gain anything by it, though.

Time Capsule can't backup external hard drives connected to it. Got that.

Hello Apple Support Communities! This is my first post. Hope this finds you all well My first year as an Apple user. I bought a 2-Tb TC and am running my first backup to my MacBook as I write this.
Problem statement: TC can't backup external hard drives connected directly to it, but the ones connected to the Macs that are connected wirelessly to it. Duly noted. However, the Spotlight will reindex the hard drives connected to the Mac and that will take hours; the whole backup will take days. Thus, excluding the hard drives at "System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab" will probably help reduce the time of backup, or just ejecting them will do too. That itself has not proven effective coz it's still taking forever (50Gb in 2 days, still going).
Questions:
1) Do I wait until my first backup to my MacBook's internal hard drive is done before I connect my hard drives to my MacBook and attempt another backup? If yes, how do I go about the excessive time Spotlight reindexing takes if I intend to backup my hard drives connected to my MacBook?
2) Is there any other way of speeding up the first-time backup?
*Note: All versions of OS and firmwares are up-to-date. TC is connected to an external wireless router. TC is intended to be used as backup device and / or file server only.
P/S: Apologee if this has already been discussed before, thus, a link to previous discussion thread would highly be appreciated)
- Shook Hashem, Malaysia.

How do I backup the externel hard drives connected to my MB. I was under the impression that that has already been done, because I've read it somewhere in a discussion that said it's done automatically unless I exclude it from a backup, which I didn't. So it's supposed to backup the external hard drivestoo because I had them connected to my MB the entire time during the backups.
By default an external drive is excluded.. the list is odd.. if I plug a drive into the mac.. it immediately is listed as excluded.
This is not the list of included.. this is the list of excluded.. remove it from the excluded list to include it.
It is kind of reverse polish notation in backups.
If I want to enter the Time Machine, should I enter it with the TM turned on or off?
Not sure what the question means. If you use the star wars display and want to recover files then use TM off.. but read up pondini.. how to do restore etc.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
15A in particular on the how to use TM.
When do I uplug the ethernet and use the wireless connection instead?
Once you have finished the main backup you can go back to wireless. The incremental backups are mostly very small.

In Mavericks, every time I try to create a new folder on the drive I get a prompt for my password. I checked Get Info on the main drive and under Sharing

I got a new 27" iMac with 10.8.5 and migrated a 10.6.8 system and files. It was working fine. After about 2 weeks I was looking at the Sharing & Permissions and saw an account "wheel". I mistakenly (I NOW know it was a mistake) changed the permission to no access and subsiquenty could not boot the computer. I had an older iMac so I built a boot disk with the Mavericks installer on it. Booted the computer and restored from a Time Machine backup previous to the change of permissions of the "wheel" account. I went ahead and did a clean install of Mavericks
The computer is now running with Mavericks installed and I am rebuilding. When I go to create a new folder on the system drive I get prompted for a pasword.
When I checked the permissions and sharing on the main drive it tells me "you can only read".
I am logged in with an admin account. I have run Disk Utiltiy and Tech Tool Pro's permission verify and repair. Given what happend last time I changed permissions I am reluctant to make any changes.
Anyone have an idea as to what I should do.
Thanks in advance.

Here is the dialoge box. My account does not appear. Can I just add my account or is there some other problem?

Backup External Hard Drive with Time Machine

I have several external hard drives and am wondering if I can use Time Machine to backup External Hard Drive #1 on Hard Drive #2? Or is it only possible to backup your Main Machine on an External Hard Drive?
Thanks

These issues with non-apple format drives that you mention, would they concern the dedicated Time Machine external hard drive, the external hard drive one is looking to backup, or both?
What are the issues raised? My current 500GB external hard drive is FAT-32 and I want to use an additional 500GB external hard drive [fresh out the box so I can determine whatever format it is fairly easily] as the dedicated Time Machine backup. Would you suggest reformatting my 500GB FAT-32 drive before initiating the new drive as the dedicated Time Machine backup? It's possible to do so, but would take quite some time. Also, this may move into a different subject, but I enjoy being able to share files with a PC with Windows XP using my external hard drive; would any of the formats you mentioned as being Time Machine-safe allow me to continue to do so?

Can I have a second, external HD with a higher OS than my main drive?

I've started to come across a few programs that need OS X 10.4 or higher to run. I have a beautifully stable system with 10.2.8, and I hate to mess that up, especially since my internal CD drive has stopped running, and am using an external CD/DVD drive, which I'm told can't work as a startup drive if things go wrong. I'm not quite ready to bite the bullet and get a whole new computer, so I'm wondering if I got an external drive, could that one be set to run the few programs that need 10.4 (or 10.5)? How would that work? If it's going to cost too much money, I'd rather get a new laptop and network the two computers using airport extreme, but I calculated the cost of all the upgrades at about $2k, which I really don't have right now.
And if it's not doable -- what's the consensus on using 10.4 or 10.5 on these 17-inch 1 Ghz iMacs? I see a lot of problems in discussions on installing 10.4, and don't see that many entries on 10.5 -- is that because it's working well, or because these machines will pretty much choke on it?
Thanks.

Thanks. I thought I could do something like that -- you used to be able to back in the pre-OSX days, but I don't pay as much attention as I used to, so I don't know if the new technology allows it.
One question -- in case the main machine crashes -- what's the key command or procedure for forcing the backup hard drive to serve as the the main drive to boot, or does the new system simply look around for any startup disk in case of failure?
Also, any recommendations for an inexpensive hard drive that will fill this role and connect to this iMac? I think it would have to be a Firewire -- both my ports are full, can I daisy-chain them somehow? From looking at all the cords back there, I think it's my external superdrive and my iPod dock. The iPod dock can easily be plugged in and out as needed, but the other two should be up full time, so I'd have to plug the dock somewhere. It will be nice to upgrade iTunes to version 7, if my ancient iPod will work with that. (My computer setup is very 2003).

Trying to move my iTunes Music and other media from the main drive on my pc to an external hard drive but iTunes is not recognizing the new file location? Ideas?

Trying to move my iTunes Music and other media from the main drive on my pc to an external hard drive but iTunes is not recognizing the new file location? Ideas?

Hello there, Underwriter.
The following Knowledge Base article provides in-depth instructions on how to migrate your content to an external drive:
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4527
Particularly of note for your situation:
External drive
This option requires more work than Home Sharing, but it creates a backup of your iTunes library on the external drive in addition to moving your content.
Notes before you start:
You can use most iPods as an external drive.
Windows operating systems don't recognize Mac OS-formatted disks (HFS or HFS Plus formats). Because of this, you can't use a Mac-formatted iPod or external drive to move your music to a Windows PC. See iPod: How to determine iPod's hard disk format if you're not sure how your iPod is formatted.
Mac OS X can read Windows-formatted iPods and drives. This means there are many ways to migrate your information from your old Windows-based PC to your new Mac.
Mac OS X: To be sure external drives appear on your desktop, choose Preferences from the Finder menu. Be sure the options for "External disks" and "Hard disks" are enabled.
Part 1: Locating and consolidating the iTunes Media folder
Part 2: Copy iTunes folder from the old computer:
Part 3: Get iTunes ready on your new computer
Part 4: Back up any music that's already on your new computer
Part 5: Copy music to your new computer
Part 6: Add preexisting music that was on the new computer back into the library
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Cloning the main drive

I'm thinking of replacing the 250gb drive that game with my mac pro with at least a 500gb drive.
What's the best way to duplicate the main drive onto the new disk. I was thinking of taking the new drive and placing it in bay 4. (which is currently open) Duplicating the System drive and them replacing it.
Thoughts?

You can install the new drive in any bay. Your startup drive may be in any bay. You can clone as follows:
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.
Be sure to prep the new drive properly:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Find not finding on main drive

I have 2 back up drives connected to my computer: one internal, the other an external firewire.
I tried to find a folder and pressed: CMD + F and put in the the folder name in the upper right field where the cursor lands as default and it found 2 occurances:
one on my internal backup and the other on my external, but not the original folder on my main drive that I am was currently running off of at the time.
"This Mac" was selected, so I assume it should look on all drives connected to my computer, but for some reason isn't finding on my the main drive.
There was one criteria set: Kind = Folders
To be sure I added a 2nd criteria: Name
which was a duplication, I realize, but I wanted to be sure.
Am I doing something wrong? Shouldn't a find, find on the main computer drive?
Mac Pro. Running OSX 10.5.7
Thanks,
Steven

OH... I see the problem. I put my main drive in the privacy window to stop it from indexing because I was trying to find a cause that my system was crashing and SL was a suspect at the time. I just need to delete my drive from the Privacy window and all should be OK. Thanks.

Time Machine backup of external drive

I just noted that Time Machine is not backing up my external hard drive. This drive contains my photos. Can I set up TM to back up this drive too?

Hi guys,
I have similar a similar question but am confused by the response.
Right now I have a 1 TB HDD in my IMac (about 200GB full), along with a number of external HDs == 911 GB (out of 1 TB) & 73 GB (out of 320 GB) used.
Currently I have a 1TB ext drive that I use to backup my main computer HD to Time Machine. I really want to back up the other drives too, but am worried about disc usage, and having a big enough external drive to have everything on.
Is it possible to have time machine split backups across multiple discs?
Ideally I would buy a 3 TB drive for TM backups and just select EVERYTHING that I want to do, but i don't know if USB ones exist, and they are probably expensive.
Let me know if you have ideas. Thanks!

Can i transfer my time machine backup to another drive?

can i transfer my time machine backup to another drive?

Did you prep the new drive?
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
New drives usually are pre-formatted for Windows, not Macs. WD is generally well known for their poor level of Mac support.

Backup on main drive

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