Best software for backing up an external hard drive to another

I used to use the echo feature within SyncToy on a PC to create a backup of the external hard drive i keep all my work files on but want to find software that will do this Mac based.
Effectively SyncToy scanned the primary drive for additions and deletes and replicated these on the backup hard drive... it was called ECHO within SyncToy
Is there software for the mac that can do this?

Clone  - Carbon Copy Cloner          (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone  - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
Commonly Used Backup Methods

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  • How to back up my external hard drive to another hard drive?

    So I dropped my external Iomega 1TB hard drive and now it wont allow me to back anything up however I can thankfully access everything in there.  Basically I read that I need to back THAT up and format it and start from scratch.  I sucked it up and finally bought a second External Hard drive a Seagate 1.5TB (great deal at costco BTW for $79).  So now I connected both to my MacBook and tried to copy everything in my iomega to paste it to the seagate and I got the error message "The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup."  What does that mean?  How do I do this efficiently? 
    I greatly appreciate any info!  Thanks in advance!!!

    I've not seen that error message but did you partition and format the new hard drive for use with Macs? It needs to be partitioned with the GUID scheme and formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled. If you have a lot of data on the original drive it's best to not try to copy it all at one time, of there are separate folders copy them one or two at a time. If your original drive is a Time Machine drive it's more complicated than simply copying and pasting http://pondini.org/TM/18.html

  • Backing up one external hard drive to another in time machine?

    I have a 1 tb external hard drive I'd like to keep backed up to an identical external hard drive. Can I do this using time machine?
    I'd like to do this separately from the standard time machine backup I'm doing of my internal hard drive, which backs up to another external one.
    Not sure how clear this is but any help would be appreciated. I'm on a MacBook Pro.
    Thanks!

    I'd like something that'll only move over the files that are new. My guess is Disk Utility.app doesn't do that. Maybe Retrospect?
    You're right - Disk Utility doesn't - it will do a full-disk copy, not just an incremental change.
    I can't recommend :: shudder :: Retrospect, though. it used to be the bees-kness in Mac backup but it has seriously lost its way, with too many users complaining of it being a resource hog and not being able to restore data, which is kind of important for a backup utility.
    Given your requirements, your best bet may be Carbon Copy Cloner. It will do full-disk as well as incremental backups to create a bootable clone of your system.

  • How do I back up one External Hard Drive to another?

    I have two identical partitioned WD External Drives.  Drive 1, Partition 1 is a Macbook Pro Time Machine backup. Drive 1, Partition 2 is for photo & video storage uploaded directly from the camera or disk (so I don't overload my internal storage).  How do I backup Drive 1, Partition 1 & Partition 2 onto the partitioned External Drive 2? 

    I should back up my Internal Hard Drive directly to each of the 2 external Hard Drives, right?
    Yes.
    Since the External HD's are typically not plugged into the computer, should I not use Time Machine?
    When the drives are connected, the backups will take place. If you rarely connect the drives, then you should also back up over the network to a Time Capsule, a hard drive connected to a current-model AirPort base station, or another Mac via File Sharing.
    See also:
    Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac
    iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location
    iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

  • Using TM to back up an external hard drive to another external hard drive

    My question/problem is as follows: I have two external hard drives--one a LaCie 500GB and a new Western Digital 750GB (which I bought because I thought that the LaCie had crashed but, as it turns out it was just the power supply that went out). I have set up Time machine to back up my internal hard drive on my Mac Mini to the Western Digital drive, but I also want to back up the LaCie drive(where I keep my iTunes library) to the Western Digital hard drive. I was recently on the phone with an Apple technical guy who said that it can be done but he told me that he couldn't help me because Apple does not "support" that set up. They only "support" backing up the internal to an external.
    Any guidance that someone may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks.

    Simon,
    Time Machine uses a lot of internal tools within the system files, so it's never a good approach to begin to fool it with duplicates, renamings the exact same names etc such tricks.
    Better handle TM the "official" straight way:
    Plug both external drives, and tell Time Machine through its normal Preferences, that you are now moving your TM backup routine to the other external drive.
    Let it do the first backup then one next, and then only, unplug the first drive so you can send it for repairs.
    When you get it back, use TM Preferences again to tell it to backup now back on the first drive again.
    That's what I would do personally, or another simple solution:
    set Time Machine OFF temporarily while the first drive is being repaired, and use
    SuperDuper!
    to make daily clones of your Mac on the temporary second drive.

  • What is the best option for working live off external hard drive?

    I have 3 iMacs all networked together and working off 1TB of files stored on an old MacPro. I'm wondering what my best option would be for upgrading moving forward. I need more space (preferable 2TB or more) and I'd like the connection to be as fast as possible. A server seems like overkill ...
    I have an external 3TB WD Cloud backing up all of the files, but it's far too slow to work off of live as it needs to 'wake up' every time I ping it.
    Would running a 'headless' Mini directly off my router work? Or perhaps attached to one of the iMacs?
    Other options?
    Thanks in advance

    Hi there,
    Ive always followed the idea that journalling is turned off, so I would follow the advice given and turn journalling off.
    In addition I would also make that drive "private" to spotlight so it doesn't search or catalogue there.
    If its of interest, I've always formatted my drives in the following way
    make 2 partitions,
    partition 1 - make this about 10% of the drives capacity and label DO NOT USE
    partition 2 - make this the remainder of the capacity
    the reason being (So Im told by the drive gurus) is that the first sector contains the volumes boot block - this can get corrupted/damaged so having it partitioned like this means you can erase it safely whilst keeping your media.
    Ive followed this for years and it has worked on the few occasions a drive has misbehaved.
    cheers
    Andy

  • How to backup external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ?

    Hello,
    i have an external hard drive which i store all my drum samples and sound library on and files are contantly changing, adding new sounds, deleting old ones etc ..
    So my method of back up as of now is to just copy all the edited files and click and drag to the back up disk.
    Now, my question is, how do i back up my external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ? I read somewhere that you can do this, i cant find the post however. It would be nice to automate the back up process rather than manually finding the files to copy over.
    Thanks in advance !

    The question you pose is conditional, in that you should have more than an exact
    capacity replacement for a clone, if the drive you are going from (or one going to)
    has insufficient free space and that has a bootable clone on the drive; any space
    tied up in a partition for Time Machine backup, takes away from the running space
    if you should need to run the computer from a clone on the external HDD's other
    partition.... Better to have a good capacity of additional reserve unused free space.
    Be sure any clone copy that you hope to use as a re-close, that each in turn is tested
    after a clone operation. Also consider using each running system's Disk utility and
    have First Aid 'repair disk permissions'. Preparation of a new drive or even an old
    drive that may have questionable artifacts or errors on it, should be reformatted. To
    even go as far as Secure Erase (overwrite) at least one-pass before reformatting it
    again, could help.
    However, I'm not sure if the drives and situation you are looking at would necessarily
    be a good match. It could work, but you'd need a reasonable size partition or hard
    disk drive for a system. Snow Leopard and all its associated applications, can do
    OK in a 100GB HDD. (My computers have more storage capacity than is used; so
    for mine to have 60% free space, is good.) Virtual Memory is drive space used by
    OS X, that can be a substantial amount for swap and temp files. Some applications
    make duplicates of works-in-progress, for each change in an open file; that adds up.
    {This question (& my reply) should've been in their own thread & not at the end
    of one that is nearly three months old, + marked 'solved' by the original poster.}
    So I guess I don't have a direct answer to your question; having just returned from
    a few hundred miles and automobile issues, too. I'm not really thinking on-topic...
    The clone should be on its own separate drive, and up to 3TB drive dedicated to
    Time Machine may be overkill, however that software will consume old backups first
    when it uses up all the space. Or usually that is what happens in TM backups. If
    that isn't happening, there may an issue in how Time Machine is set up.
    Good luck & happy computing!

  • Will Time Capsule back-up an external hard drive that is connected to it directly via USB?

    I'm considering a macbook air, but I have ~200GB of music and photos that currently lives on another laptop (and is manually backed up to a 500GB ext. hard drive).  Ideal set-up would be as follows:
    1. MBA (128GB) with just the OS, applications and ~ 5GB of .doc, .xls, .pdf, etc.
    2. The 500GB hard drive (loaded w/ music and jpegs' and permanently connected to Time Capsule so that I don't have to plug it into the MBA everytime I want to use music/jpegs)
    3. Time capsule (constantly backing up the MBA and hard drive via time machine).
    Does anybody know if this is possible (i.e. will the TC back up an external hard drive that is permanently attached to it, rather than attached to a Mac?)
    Does anybody have other suggestions (without having to buy any more gear) for storage/back-up that don't require that I plug that external HD to a computer every time I want to access the data?

    sixschlitzes wrote:
    Does anybody know if this is possible (i.e. will the TC back up an external hard drive that is permanently attached to it,
    No, sorry, Time Machine cannot back up from a network location.
    Does anybody have other suggestions (without having to buy any more gear) for storage/back-up that don't require that I plug that external HD to a computer every time I want to access the data?
    The 3rd-party apps CarbonCopyCloner and ChronoSync (and probably others) can back up from a network location.

  • Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

    Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

    In addition to Kappy's comments, the external drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in order for Time Machine to be able to back it up.

  • Is it possible to back up an external hard drive to Time Machine from two different computers without creating two different records?

    I have an external hard drive that I do my work on. I use it on my office MacPro and on my MacBook Pro. I have Time Machine setup on both computers to back up the external hard drive to a remote backup drive, but when it backs it up, the backup goes into either the MacPro record of it, or the MacBook Pro record. The effect of this is that if I'm at my laptop and I need to access an earlier version of a file that existed when I was working on my MacPro, I can't access it.
    Is it at all possible to create a universal record (or Sparse Disk Image Bundle to use Apple lingo) for my external hard drive?

    Hi BDAqua,
    Thanks for your help as always, sorry I never thanked you earlier, finally got some time to attend this.
    I'm in the mail folder in the library of my user name. Just to make sure I get all my mail boxes I'm going to archive simply the whole 'Mail' folder after going in to the library of my unsername.
    I notice you mentioned about importing there .... I've seen the .emix files you mention .... i have 30,000+ of them.
    What I find helpful in mail is that if I type a client's second name, in this case 'Lopez' I can pull up all the mails relating to him in an instant, around 450. Obviously it would be impossible to pick through 30K .emix files to find the right ones .... so could I easily import them in to my Mail on my new computer?
    Could I select the whole lot of them, then drag and drop them in to my new Mail on the new computer, and then use the search function on Mail? ... the normal desktop search function doesn't seem to look through the emix files, or emails for that matter.
    Also, just as an extra precaution, could I make a smart folder in Mail with the name of said client for example for, then archive that folder separately?
    TY
    Message was edited by: Scottishengineer

  • How do you back up an external hard drive with time capsule?

    how do you back up an external hard drive with time capsule?

    Will time capsule back up the machine and the hard drive that is plugged into the machine?
    Yes, if the hard drive with the video files is formatted correctly for Mac
    On the Mac with the hard drive connected....click on the Time Machine "clock" icon at the top of the screen
    Click Time Machine Preferences
    Click Options
    Here you will see a list of items that have been excluded from backups
    Click the name of the hard drive to highlight it
    Click the - (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the hard drive from the list of excluded items
    The hard drive will now be backed up with your Mac on the next pass that Time Machine makes

  • How to back up an external hard drive?!

    I have a 500GB external hard drive that I use to store a very large photo catalogue. I also have a 1TB external hard drive that I have set as my Time Machine volume.
    TM isn't backing up my 500GB drive, and I've verified that it's not on the exclusion list in TM preferences.
    Anyone know how to get this going? I need TM to back up that external hard drive as well as my computer's internal drive.

    Don't forget that repartitioning/reformatting will result in a blank HD; put the goodies in a safe place beforehand. If you have problems getting rid of the existing format, [check this writeup which I did for NTFS|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7783365#7783365], but applies to FAT32 as well.

  • Set up to save directly to external Hard Drive so cannot have separate 'back up'I now want to reverse i.e save to internal Hard Drive and 'back up' on external 'hard Drive'. Please advise me how to do this.

    Macbook Air 13 inch purchased October 2013. set up to save [mainly photos] to external 'hard drive' i.e. not saved to internal hard drive. Cannot find easy way to create 'back up'. Please advise how I can reverse i.e save directly to internal 'hard drive' and 'back up on external 'hard drive'

    For backing up your data I recommend that you use Time machine:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
    rob at the orchard wrote:
    save directly to internal 'hard drive'
    When you import images or create other data files, file them in the appropriate places on your internal drive, don't delete them and let Time machine back them up.
    Ciao.

  • Does Time Machine also back up wired external hard drives?

    I apologize if this is already answered; I can't find the answer. But I am running out of space on my hard drive, and I am thinking about moving my music and movies (ie multi-media content in iTunes) to an external hard drive. I am torn between two options. 1) use my existing external hard drive (LaCie d2 Quadra 1T) and partition it for Time Machine and a Multi-media folder, or 2) just buy another external hard drive, likely another LaCie and dedicate it for my multi-media. I lean towards keeping my back-up hard drive as is -- for one purpose so as to minimize loss of data should (when) the unthinkable happen. Anyhow, I'd like to know whether Time Machine can be told to include my 2nd external hard drive in its regular back-ups. Likewise, if I partition my current LaCie, can I tell Time Machine to back up my multi-media folder? Any info or links you can provide is appreciated. Regards.

    I appreciate the comment. Is there a way to find out whether Time Machine backs up external hard drives without having to buy one and plug it in to see if it is listed in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences? If I could read between your lines, I assume you are saying is Time Machine is "smart" enough to include external hard drives provided that I don't exclude it. Right? PS - I will be using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

  • Trying to back up to external hard drive (iomega).  Instructions say to erase hard drive.  Won't entirely erase.  Can't enter iomega in Time Machine. Computer is minimac, operating system is OSx 10.6.8.

    Trying to back up to external hard drive (iomega).  Instructions say to erase hard drive.  Won't entirely erase.  Can't enter iomega in Time Machine. Computer is minimac, operating system is OSx 10.6.8.

    All you need to upgrade the iBook for Tiger is another 128 MBs of RAM. It has both Firewire and USB ports. You do want to upgrade it for what you plan to do. The problem you may continue to have, however, may be due to the fact that the age of the computer is such the disk controller does not support hard drive volumes larger than 128 GBs, which is probably the reason the drive won't mount.
    The reason you get DU errors is likely because the drive was formatted using the Intel Tiger version of DU, while you were using the Jaguar version. That's a definite no-no.

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