Can I use One Hard Drive for 2x Time Machine Back Ups and another partition for all my data?

Hi Forum,
I am planning to but a RAID disc set up, but if i get a 2 disc set up, on one disc, can i have:
Time Machine back up for one Mac
Time Machine back up for 2nd Mac
Anothe partition for all my data.
then have that RAID'd to second disc?

no one?
and if this set up was on one disc, and one partition for one TM was for the Mini that has this drive attached, would TM back up this whole drive 2x TM Partitions and 1x partitions with data on, ok? it wouldn't get confused by trying to back itself up

Similar Messages

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.

Can I make one iphoto library from two time machine back-ups?

Hi
I have recently purchased a new Mac Book. I previously had two MacBooks, which I backed up with time machine onto two separate external hard drives.
I did a straight transfer of all data from one of these time time machine back-ups to my new laptop. I'd like to migrate select data from the second time machine back-up to my new Mac Book, and I'd like to start by transferring photos.
My laptop has an iphoto library, so I would like to know if I can import select photos from this second time machine back-up, and how do I do that?
many thanks
Linda

First you need to restore the second Library from the back up. You need to restore the whole library, you can't just gather bits of it, I'm afraid.
Once that's done you have two Libraries. The easiest way to do what you want is to merge the Libraries with the paid version ($20) of iPhoto Library Manager This can be set to avoid duplicates. See the Help on it for more.
This is the only way that will get all the versions and all the metadata.
Other than that you'll need to export from one Library and import to the other.
Regards
TD

I have partitioned my time capsule, but I can't get it to work as a Time Machine back up and permanent media server for both mac and PC. What format do I need to partition the drive to so that it works for both mac and windows and so that it will be visab

I have partitioned my time capsule, as I want part of it to act as a media server for both mac and windows. However I don't know what format that I need to partition it to. I also can't make it a permanently accesible drive. I want to restore the drive to the original format (which I don't know) and start again and re-partition the drive in a format that can be used for media by both mac and PC and for time machine back-ups and make the media part of it permanetly accesible so I can add and acccess my files.
Thanks

You are mixing up a couple of things here.
The TC drive cannot be partitioned without removing it.. did you do that?
If you partition it you must use a Mac disk utility and use the HFS+ ie standard Mac format. And GUID partition table not windows type.
You can select erase disk in the airport utility.. that will take the disk back to original format. No partitions. TC is deliberately not partitioned as it is not a media server.. it is a backup device for TM. Over time .. the disk will be filled with TM backups so you have a long history of file changes to your computer.
There is no media server in the TC.. it is merely disk storage.. you can serve files from it to a media device.. but the TC itself is dumb as dumb.
Now the actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. The TC offers SMB file services to the network. You can copy files to and from the TC as if it was a local disk without caring one iota about the format. The TC handles that .. it is not a local disk .. it is a network drive.
Although you cannot partition the TC. you can still copy files to it.. this does have implications for TM.. but as long as there is plenty of free space should not be a major issue.
You can create a disk image via the disk utility in a Mac.. and as stated you can create partitions if you do it on a Mac with the disk directly connected which means breaking warranty if any exists on the TC.

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

Hi Clarkett99,
To use an external hard drive for your iTunes library, see the steps in this article -
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
iPhoto can be used in a similar way, follow the steps in this previous discussion -
how do I save photos and their albums...: Apple Support Communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3744259
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

HT201250 how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up

how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up so that I may view the files independently on apple tv please?

To elaborate on above. I am looking to add about 300gig of photos on an external hard drive to TC.
Once I do this I believe I can then have itunes source its photos from TC without having them stored directly on my iMac?
Then I am assuming once I keep itunes on with home sharing I can stream these photos through Apple TV?
My inital problem is getting the photos onto TC in an individual folder not just a backup folder....is that possible or what would you suggest please?

Can I use my time capsule for time machine back ups and as an external storage device?

I have a time capsule and have set it up so that my time machine back ups are saved on it, but I would also like to use it as an external hard drive. Is this possible?
I know nothing about computers so please tell me in very basic terms. thankyou!

By external hard disk we usually mean one plugged into the computer by USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt.
None of those works on the TC.. it is plugged in by ethernet or use wireless connection.. that means it is a network drive.. not an external drive. The difference might not mean much to you.. but it is totally different to the computer. In the former case the computer has full control of the disk. In the case of the network drive, the disk is controlled by the TC firmware and the files are stored and accessed by network. This has large implications.
So here is my standard response.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

I have an Apple Macbook and will be backing up the entire system to an external hard drive utilizing the Time Machine application. when I am doing this, will the data on the external drive that I am using be erased?

I have an Apple Macbook and will be backing up the entire system in order to upgrade to a newer OS. I will be using an external hard drive to do this and there is already data on it. To complete the backup, i will be using the Time Machine application. Does this application wipe out all of the existing data on the external hard drive, or will it create a new "folder" for the backup?
thank you

No, but as steve359 states you should use a dedicated hard drive for backups. It you need a temporary backup then you can use the drive provided it has sufficient space for all your data on the hard drive.
When Time Machine finds that the drive has data on it already it may decide to erase the drive before continuing, which is another reason to use a dedicated drive.

Can Time Capsule be used for both Time Machine back-up and a place to store other things?

I thought I had heard that it was best to keep whatever external drive you use for Time Machine to be exclusive for Time Machine back-ups. Does Time Capsule automatically partition an area for Time Machine. Also, since Time Machine auto deletes some things when the external drive gets full, does it just keep backing up until it fills the Time Capsules 2 TB or whatever the space is? Thanks in advance for help.

It does not partition the drive but creates a sparse bundle which acts as a sealed directory.
You can store other things on the TC. Just create a new directory for your stuff.
The TC needs to have at least 2 or 3 times the space used by your hard disks in all your computers. So it can manage a full backup plus the hourly incrementals.. !! It can take a long time to fill up if you don't change stuff around much.. or it could fill up relatively quickly if you constantly load files in and out.
Remember though a TC is not a NAS, it has no mirror and if the TC is the only copy of some files you are storing on it, and the TC breaks down, then those files are lost.
I have seen others suggest it is better to use a USB hdd connected to the TC to store files you want access to. Balance between storage and backup won't be that difficult. If the TC is becoming full, make a decision about where you want to store those other files.

Can not use my external driver to setup Time Machine

I just bought a new mobile external driver and I planned to use this for Time Machine back of my Macbook Pro. However I got the following error message when I set up the Time Machine:
There was an error erasing the Time Machine backup disk
Is there anybody can help me about this problem?
Thanks

Thanks very much for everybody's help in this matter. I have done all the process again exactly the same as the steps above. However after the wait for some time, I got the following errors:
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Preparing to partition disk: “Initio MK4006GAL Media”
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: 1 partition will be created
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800:
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Partition 1
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Name : “Untitled 1”
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Size : 40.01 GB
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2010-07-04 21:32:42 +0800:
2010-07-04 21:32:43 +0800: Unmounting disk
2010-07-04 21:32:43 +0800: Creating partition map
2010-07-04 21:32:43 +0800: Waiting for disks to reappear
2010-07-04 21:32:43 +0800: Formatting disk1s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Untitled 1
2010-07-04 21:36:30 +0800: Partition failed for disk (null) File system formatter failed
2010-07-04 21:36:30 +0800: Partition complete.

External Drive Stolen with Time Machine Back Ups

Hello,
Sorry if this has been posted before. I scanned through a few pages of posts and didn't see anything.
My home was burglarized and they took my G5, Cinema Display and my 500GB external drive with my Time Machine backup data. My question is: How secure is the data on the external drive? Can the theif just plug in the drive and see all of the files or does TM password protected? My G5 was password protected to log in to it. Does that log in transfer to the TM files?
Thanks!
DH

As Donald says, the data can be accessed.
Your backups are as secure (or insecure) as your Mac -- if someone steals either, they can get at your data fairly easily, if they know what they're doing, unless it's encrypted.
It is harder to get at Time Machine backups on an external drive, because Windoze can't read it; you'd have to use a Mac (running Leopard or Snow Leopard) to access it.
But most theft is not for your data; it's to resell the hardware.

Can I use one hard drive for two computers? Newbie here.

Newbie here.
I currently use Time Machine for my iMac (Intel)
I've been using my Macbook Pro (Intel) a lot lately and would like to back it up from time to time as well.
Can I simply attach the external hard drive to my Macbook Pro and set up Time Machine?
Can use the external hard drive for both machines?
Will Time Machine recognized that my Macbook Pro is a separate computer and set up a separate folder on the external hard drive automatically?
Thanks

Hi,
you can use the drive for as many Macs as you like, just make sure it's big enough. Time Machine will create separate folders for your Macs and will "know" which one you're using.
Björn

I want to use a nas drive for my time machine back ups.

Hi,
I'm pretty new to macs. I've set up time machine on my kids macs using a time capsule without problems.
Ive now bought my own mac and want to use time machine to back it up but only have a network hard drive to do it on. When I go to choose disk, I'm not given the option of the drive. I can see it in finder ok.
Is this possible?
Thanks
Roy

There's more to it than a "party line." Many folks who have started this, and thought it was going well, found it wasn't as reliable as they thought.
From a post in another forum (found by V.K.):
*The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can't guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.*
*If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.*
*To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.*
That only addresses Leopard, of course. Snow Leopard seems to have some additional requirements, that don't work with some NAS solutions that did work, to a degree, with Leopard.

Complicated corrupted main drive and lost Time Machine back-ups question

Here's tough one I can't pin down answers to: I have an iMac Early 2008 running Lion. The main hard drive system (probably) corrupted over the course of 2-3 months until it became unusable. I had Sophos on it, but removed it about a month ago and reliability improved but only for about a week. Finally the hard drive crashed. I used the Recovery partition while able to have Disk Utility add a second partition to my back-up drive, which contains Time Machine back-ups, my iPhoto folder and a few other files but no system. I installed Snow Leopard from disk to the new partition, checked the first partition, which seemed fine, then upgraded the Snow Leopard partition to Lion and updated and ran under a temporary user. Next I explored the main drive, which Disk Utility said was fine, but doesn't always show up. While in Disk Utility, I noticed that the first partition on the back-up drive showed up as empty! After some panicking, I've a second back-up drive on the way, but how do I access the TIme Machine back-ups, get my original user back and get access to over 15 years of files that are locked into that user?
My (2nd) back-up drive arrives tomorrow, so I'll able to get to work soon.
Thanks for any help.

Ok so wahat you mean is I need to name a partition "Time machine" in order for TM to back up any volumes and TM will always start with the volume titled Timemachine ?
so as I stated
A. All my OS applications _________Rename this to time machine or can I ues the volume name it is now?
B. All my files for those applications ---------Once that is done TM will back this up?
C. All My Itunes / Music etc---------Once that is done TM will back this u last?
Also I did a test run and I geet the error msg that the backup disk of my OS needs 1.36 TB but only 1.34 exists. The orignal OS disk has only 232GB of data why is tome machine asking for all that space?
I set the partition at 1.34 so there would be way more than enough space to copy.
R

I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries to an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the externa

I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives. Is this possible? Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?

I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive.
That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives.
Let me be clear.. you want to partition the one disk.. use it for TM and move your files to the external disk.. and then backup to the same disk.. You can do it.. but that is not a backup.. that is an experiment in how long you can get away with running files and backups on the same disk before you lose everything.. like Russian Roulette.. pull the trigger enough times and laws of probability will do you in.
You must have backups on a different disk .. otherwise it is pointless.
Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
No.. you can buy special USB and Thunderbolt external drives that support RAID..
BUT that is still not a backup.. let me show why.. you make a silly move and corrupt your file in aperture.. it is not that rare.
Raid will corrupt all copies of the files.. it is replicated across all disks.
Delete a photo it is deleted across all disks.. you have no recovery.
Alway, always consider RAID system one disk.. backup onto another disk.. and if the photos or movies are at all important to you.. ie your family .. make another copy and store in a relatives house.. There is no such thing as too much redundancy.

Can I use One Hard Drive for 2x Time Machine Back Ups and another partition for all my data?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for