Can I Backup My Time Machine Backups?

I am currently using Time Machine to archive my iMac to a 1TB USB drive. The Backups.backupdb folder is just part of the disk contents but currently comes in at over 500GB and contains archived data back to May 2009.
Because I was in need of a little more disk space and was able to get a brand new DLINK DNS-323 NAS enclosure for 30% of retail at a chain's liquidation sale, I have just set up a small NAS with two, 2TB drives (formatted as two separate volumes, without RAID and using ext3). I understand the DLINK NAS uses SMB.
*My question is this: If I copied the Backups.backupdb folder to the network drive, would I be able to successfully recover the Backups.backupdb folder and its contents should my 1TB disk ever fail?*
My vision is to do nightly backups of my 1TB drive to the network drive, thus providing additional data protection. Should my 1TB USB fail, I would then copy all contents (including the Backups.backupdb folder) from the network drive to a new USB or Firewire drive and have Time Machine continue on as if nothing happened and if necessary, restore files from its archive.
Doing things this way would provide the additional data security I desire, while giving me access to the Time Machine archives when I needed them.
I am on the first day of a full-function trial of Chronosync, so using another archiving application is within the realm of possibility. However, because of the amount of archived data currently held in Time Machine (that and I like the way TM looks and feels, for the most part) I don't want to throw away everything and start my archives all over from today as "day 1".
Thank you very much in advance for your input.

I'm sure it's possible to make this work, but you shouldn't make this work. Backing up a backup is not a good idea, since any problems with the original backup will be propagated into the "backup backup". Instead, make a fully independent backup with different software. That way, if you one day find that you need your backups, but the TM backup is corrupt for some reason (not implying that's normal), you'll still have a second independent backup. If it's just a copy of a corrupt TM backup, it won't help you much.

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ivan wrote:
How Can I Migrate My Time Machine Backups To A New External Hard Drive?
I have a external hard drive that has 500 GBs left, but I want to buy a larger drive.
Hi iVain
Fire up *Disk Utility*, click the Restore tab, then drag your old and new TM drives into the Source and Destination fields. Click Restore, and a complete copy of your old TM files will be made on the new drive. Go to TM preferences and select the new drive, and it will continue backing up just as it left off.
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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2595485&tstart=0

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I sort of followed the instructions found here -->> http://pondini.org/TM/18.html.
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http://pondini.org/TM/27.html.
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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.
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Thank you for your reply. Yes I did try that, but no luck.
After several hours of calls to a very unhelpful WD and further calls to Applecare, there was nothing anyone could do. Out of frustration when holding the WD 1.5TB hard drive, I smacked it (NOT recommended). Well, to my surprise the WD reappeared on my devices list. Let me tell you, I pulled my files off as fast as I could on to my MacBook Pro. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I confirmed that everything transferred back to the MacBook Pro fine. I spoke with the Applecare tech and he talked me through the set up on a new Lacie hard drive.
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I was LUCKY.
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Read and apply A1, A4 and A5
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
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1. Hook up the drive to your husband's computer. If you don't get the same error message, then it is likely a backup of his computer. If you don't get an error message when attached to your husband's computer, enter Time Machine and check the admin user name.
2. Depends on answer to first question. If it is your computer, start a backup.
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Of course. Note that you can restore a Time Machine backup on all the Macs you want, always that the Mac uses the same or a newer OS X version than the one that had the Mac you used to make this backup.
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polishedstaple wrote:
Won't it let me backup to two different drives?
Yes. All you have to do is tell it you've changed destinations, via +Time Machine Preferences > Select Disk.+ (Use different names for the drives, so you know which one is which.)
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CCC is donationware; SD has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling. Either is easily found via Google.
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Thanks Kevin for the suggestion posted on MacOSXHints how to "Repair Time Machine after logic board changes".
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
It seems as though I am not alone with my frustration with the way Time Machine uses the MAC address of a computer to tell one system from another. This means that if you have your Mac repaired with a new logic board, or replace your system with a new one, you can't resume backups where you left off. Reading through the readers who used the fix using Terminal, it appears that the fix does not always work. I contacted Apple again, but they were no help. Surely Apple should come out with a solution as more and more people use Time Machine/Time Capsule.
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I am running Mountain Lion on a 2008 iMac. About 1 week ago, my internal HD failed. I had the hard drive replaced and then hooked up my external HD time machine back-up to restore my system. I started the computer with the command-R option and selected restore from time machine backup. It recognized the hard drive itself, but when I get to the screen to select the backup, it tells me there are no backups on the selected volume. I have run the repair in Disk Utility and the drive checked out ok. I have since installed Mountain Lion again on the internal drive, but didn't bring any files.
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Thanks,

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