Can time machine back up multiple hard drives

I want to back up the internal drive on my Mac mini as well as an external data rive using Time Machine with a dedicated
second external drive.

Yes. Ensure they're not excluded in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences; if a drive can't be removed from the exclusion list, it's in a format Time Machine can't back up, such as FAT32.
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Similar Messages

  • HT201250 Can time machine back up external hard drives too?

    I'm new to Time Machine. Can I set it up to back up both my internal HD and an external HD?
    Thanks,
    Carol

    Yes but it's poor advice by Apple for the reason hardware fails just as often as software, if you drop that drive, you have ruined all your backups at the same time.
    If you get malware, you have just infected all your backups at the same time.
    Apple created TimeMachine and didnt provide a Windows version, in my opinion it's to trap as much as your data as possible so you can't decide to later to switch to a Windows PC without a great deal of pain and effort.
    So the more drives you backup with Apple's TimeMachine the more data is trapped in it when the hardware or software fails.
    The best advice is to have a multiple backup system and match each piece of hardware with two of it's own seperate hardware backups.
    So if you have a boot drive, you need two external backups of it.
    If you have a storage drive for extra space, then you need two more drives as backup of that.
    Drives are cheap, data is not.
    If you drop the only backup, get a power surge, or a criminal breaks in or a fire and it's dead or gone, or get malware, you won't know until it's already infected the first backup restored that it's still on the loose and need ot take stronger measures, your going to wish you had the second backup safe and sound someplace.
    Most commonly used backup methods

  • Can Time Machine back up external hard drives?

    I have an older Mac Mini with a fairly small hard drive -- I think it's 80G. Most of my data needs to live on a separate 250G external hard drive . I would like to use my brand new 1TB hard drive to back up both the 80G Mini HD and the 250G external hard drive.
    Is this possible?

    Thanks. I had my suspicions about that, but I'm glad to hear it's an easy fix.
    And special thanks for the quick answer. It came so fast, I think I felt wind blowing over my keyboard.
    Jack

  • Time Machine Back Up 3rd Hard Drive to 4th Hard Drive

    Hey All Geniuses . . . .
    I have a third internal hard drive that I want to back up to a fourth internal hard. I already have my Time Machine backing up my first hard drive (with the OS) to the second hard drive. I can't figure out how to separate the "back ups" out. Just to be clear: the date on hard drive three will be different from hard drive one and two, and have to backed up to hard drive four exclusively. Cheers, mate

    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
    Lyssa is correct.
    TM can back-up multiple drives/partitions, and each source volume is shown separately in the TM interface, but it's destination must be a single volume. It is possible, of course, for that single volume to be a concatenated Raid set, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.
    CCC can do this, however. It's donationware, so you can try it out free (but do send some $$ if you keep it, so they can keep it up to date). I think SD can do it also, but you'll need the paid version (about $30 I think) for it to do updates instead of replacements.
    You'll probably want to continue with TM on your OSX drive, as it's incremental backups of many files and folders are much faster than either CCC's or SD's will be.
    Either is available via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.

  • Can Time Machine back up a USB Drive connected to Airport Extreme?

    If I connect 2 USB drives to an Airport Extreme via a USB hub, can I use Time Machine to back one up to the other? I've found multiple discussions about how to use an Airport Extreme disk as a Time Machine backup disk, but nothing on this. I want to use one disk as network storage (i.e. use the Airport extreme as a NAS), but I need a backup solution for that disk.

    That's disappointing. I actually have a separate NAS already, configured for RAID1: a ZyXEL NSA220. Worked fine when I only had windows machines, but isn't reliable with my MACs, and doesn't support extended journaled format, so I need a different solution. I was hoping to just use a USB drive attached to my airport extreme to replace it, but I can't do that if I can't back up that USB drive.
    Can anyone recommend a good backup solution? Surely this can't be that uncommon a scenario?

  • Time Machine back up with hard drive connected to D-Link DIR-655

    Recently D-Link updated the share port utility with a mac version. I have heard that Time Machine does not easily recognize network shared hard drives but to my surprise this morning it did. With using the new software and hooking up my hard drive to my router Time machine recognized it! This is great since I dont have to buy a Time Capsule now.

    First, since this is *unsupported by Apple,* there's nowhere to go when there's trouble.
    Here's the official word: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1733
    Second, you're risking a future update preventing it from working, and perhaps rendering your backups useless.
    It's your choice, of course, but I wouldn't trust my primary backups to it.

  • Time Machine backing up external hard drives?

    I have a Macbook Pro connected to two external drives.  One is a simple 2 TB drive and the other a 6TB RAID1 drive.  Before I switched from OSX 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion, Time Machine appeared to back up both the MacBook Pro and the external 2TB  drive to the RAID1 drive.  After switching to Mountain Lion, Time Machine seems only to back up the Macbook Pro but not the 2TB external drive to the RAID1.
    I have read conflicting information on various discussion groups about whether Time Machine indeed backs up external drives or not.
    If Time Machine does NOT back up external drives, i'd be grateful for advice on how to otherwise back up this drive.
    thanks very much.

    By default, it will exclude all externals. 
    To have one backed-up, you must remove it from the exclusion list
    System Preferences > Time Machne > Options > remove the drive you want backed up from the list

  • HT4413 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, only some files and applications and setting are transferred, not all of them. In my latest back up I have them all. How can I fix that?

    When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.

    sohs wrote:
    When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.
    If you want to use Time Machine to recover the contents of one of its a backups to a new drive, follow the instructions in Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering your entire system. Note that you must select the "Restore System From Backup" option from the Utilities menu of the Installer disc to do this.
    Also note that if you are transferring files to a hard drive to be used with a different computer, you should use Migration Assistant instead. This intentionally will not copy everything because some settings, applications, etc. are not compatible computer-to-computer. Migration Assistant will copy everything that is.

  • HT201250 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ?

    When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ? I need time machine to migrate the latest back-up. Should I delete the older back-ups ?

    As noondaywitch says, it should use the latest backup.
    Where are your backups (external HD, Time Capsule, etc.)?
    It sounds like there are two separate sets, and you're not connected to the right set.

  • Can Time Machine back up a second external hard drive that is attached via usb to a Time Capsule?

    Can Time Machine back up a second external hard drive that is attached via usb to a Time Capsule?
    I have a iMac with 10.7.4

    I want to back up the data on the external Hard Drive that is attached to the Time Capsule to the Tim Capsule using Time Machine.
    Thanks for the clarification.  Unfortunately, that will not work.  You will need to connect the drive directly to your Mac if you want Time Machine to backup the drive to the Time Capsule.

  • Can 'Time Machine' back-up other external hard drives

    Can 'Time Machine' back-up other external hard drives connected to your mac as well as the mac memory itself?

    As Neil says, yes, it can.  But external HDs are excluded by default;  you have to tell Time Machine when you do want to back one up.
    See the exclusions box in Time Machine Prefs > Options.
    If the drive is shown in black, just select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.
    If it's shown in gray, though, it's not formatted for a Mac, and Time Machine can't back it up (and you can't remove it).

  • Can I increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule?

    Can I increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule via the USB port?  My current Time Machine has a total capacity of 1TB.  I'd like to double or triple its memory.  I don't want to use the external hard drive in lieu of the Time Capsule hard drive.  I'd like to use it in addition to.  Just don't know if/how it's possible.
    This is another one of those questions that I've searched the web for answers, and have gotten tricky answers back.  So now I'm trying to introduce a clean slate to the mix.
    Thank you for your time!

    Well, what you mentioning is possible.  However, I don't know whether it's supported (as in, "easy to set up.").  Time Machine officially supports backing up to a locally attached drive, to a machine running a Time Machine server (i.e. running OS X Server software), and to a Time Capsule.  I don't know that it officially supports a drive attached to an AirPort or to a Time Capsule.  Though I know some people have gotten it to work.
    Best I can say is to try it.  Plug the drive into the Time Capsule, ensure it's shared on the network, and then try and set it as a backup target from a machine in the Time Machine backup panel (you'll need to ensure it's mounted first).  If it works, you're all set.

  • HT1553 DO I HAVE TO HAVE THE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION DISCS IF MY HARD DRIVE IS REPLACED BUT I MADE A BACK UP WITH TIME MACHINE TO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ?

    I have an imac from late 2009 and received an email saying the seagate hard drive may fail and apple is going to replace it free of charge. I will back up using time machine to an external hard drive but do I absolutely have to have the original installation CD's or is there a way around this to restore the computer once they replace the hard drive??

    Yes, you can partition your 2TB drive that way. In fact, I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions: one for a SuperDuper! clone of my Snow Leopard partition, one to clone my Lion partition, and one larger partition for Time Machine (which only backs up the Lion partition).
    I would expect the authorized reseller to have a complete set of OS X disks. 

  • Can Time Machine back up data stored on a mounted external drive?

    Can Time Machine back up the data that I have stored on an external drive? It's mounted on the desktop but I can't seem to add it to Time Machine.
    Is it that Time Machine doesn't back up mounted External Hard Drives? If so, does anyone have a hack?

    then the problem is not those external drives. As I said, I've never seen this particular error message.
    Try using a different connection or a different port for your TM drive. If that doesn't help I'm afraid your options are very limited.
    Unfortunately, TM is configured in such a way that when anything goes wrong, there is usually nothing a user can do short of reformatting the TM drive and starting backups anew. I'm very much afraid that's what you are looking at.
    At least, I have no other advice to offer.

  • Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

    Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

    Yes, but you might want to note that the port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0, and that it runs at about half the speed of the USB 2.0 port on a computer, so things are going to be quite SLOW as far as backups are concerned, or anything else for that matter.

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