Can Time Machine do two different backups for me?

I've got Time Machine nicely backing up my main HD to a 1TB external ESATA drive. It does it's thing. That backup on the external drive shares space with my main iTunes library which is now about 280 GB and growing. Would Time Machine also be able to make a backup of that iTunes library to another HD that I would buy for the purpose?
TM was so easy to set up and use I don't remember the choices. That wonderful bonus from Apple brings me here to ask this question.
Thanks all.

You could do it, but it would take some work. First, as I think you currently have things set up, TM backs the main HD to the 1TB drive.
To perform an independent backup of the itunes folder on the 1Tb drive, you must exclude the main HD, and the TM folder that holds the main HD backup. Then "change disk" (TM preferences) to the new HD you will buy. Do a manual backup.
When done, undo all these settings and go back to the setting of backing up the main HD to the 1TB disk (undo the excludes I mention earlier). Now you can go back to "normal" backups of the system drive.
When you are ready to do another backup of the itunes folder, repeat my second paragraph. Like I said - it's a bit of work. You can't have TM do both sets of backups automatically, you must do the manual stuff each time.

Similar Messages

HT201250 Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?

Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?
I have one 1T Western Digital backup drive that works well with Time Machine and my MacBook Pro. I now want to back up my wife's MacBook Air using Time Machine on her Mac and want to know if I can use the same WD external drive or if I need to get a 2nd back up drive? If I can use one external drive for the two Macs do I need to do something special on the drive or will Time Machine do it automatically?

Yes. You will need to configure Time Machine preferences on each computer to backup to the same drive. Note that you cannot connect the backup drive to both machines at the same time.

Time Machine creates two sparsebundle backups on network drive, then questions their validity

Time Machine first creates a sparse-bundle backup on the network-drive, called xxxxxx MacBk.sparsebundle, which appears to be at or near the full qunatity of data being backed up (about 65Gb).
Then a message appears saying something like the Identity of the backup disk cannot be confirmed, has it been changed (don't have the exact wording before me), and asks me to confirm whether I want to continue using that disk.
When I look a this disk, I see the first sparsebundle that was created, xxxxxx MacBk.sparsebundle, at about 65Gb, and then a second one, called
xxxxxx MacBk.sparsebundle1, which has just started to be created, and is perhaps a few hundred Mb.
The TM message asks me to confirm whether I want to continue using the disk, which it regards as suspect ( I am not asked to confirm the sparsebundle itself, there is no option for that).
If I click yes, the TM then reports that there isn't enough room on the disk to create a backup, so presumably it is still ignoring the first sparsebundle and trying to create yet another.
I have tried deleting the smaller sparsebundle, and trying backing up again the same, with the same effect (not enough space reported)
I have also tried deleting all sparsebundles and starting again with the backup, and then the problems of two sparsebundles reappears, so back to square one.
I am backing up a 13" white macbook, using OS 10.6.8. and a hard-drive connected to an imac, which is connected to a brand new Airport Express base-station router . The macbook is connected to the router via Mains Internet , not wi-fi.
This system has worked very well for me for several years, first with a Time Capule, then an old Netgear router after the TC broke, and never had problems. A couple of weeks ago I switched to the new Airport Express base-station, due to unrelated problems with the old router, and now have this problem.

Denis77 wrote:
One evening about 8 I came to the the computer to find a dialog box indicating that it was backing up something over 800,000 files, about 60 GB and counting; Time Machine indicated a Latest Backup at 3:30 that afternoon. No unusual events that afternoon to set things off track, as far as I know. It was creating a new sparsebundle as Pete A indicated, same name with a <space> "1" added. Unlike his experience, however, deleting the newer sparsebundle does not provide access to the older one.
Any ideas how to redesignate the older sparsebundle as the real backup? The Mac is not seeing it now, which is why it keeps starting a new one. Since this is apparently a baseline snapshot, I would like to get my backup history back.
Most likely, the old sparse bundle is corrupted, and Time Machine can't use it. Try repairing it, per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If it can be repaired successfully, Time Machine may continue using it.
If it can't be repaired, or TM won't continue using it, there's not much you can do. Keep the old sparse bundle for a while (you may be able to browse and restore from it, per #E2 in the Troubleshooting Tip. Once you're sure you don't need the old set (or Time Machine runs out of room and has to start deleting backups from the new set), delete the old sparse bundle via the Finder.

Can I use Time Machine on two different Hard Drives?

Hi, I have a Time Capsule on which I make my Time Machine back up every time, but I also want to back up all my data on another external HD using Time Machine as well... how can I do that? Thx

Alfonso, let me give you a warning. What you want to do should work, but does not work well for me. Here's my story:
I have Time Machine (TM) backing up a MacBook Pro to a Time Capsule (TC) on my home wired network. First backup (BU) took 24 hours. Subsequent incremental backups were very fast and convenient. All was working well.
About 6 weeks setting up TM/TC, I had to take my MacBook in for repairs. Being paranoid, I wanted a second backup, so I connected the computer to an external LaCie drive via FW800. Second BU also took 24 hours, even over the MUCH faster firewire connection. That really hacked me off, so I got CarbonCloner and made a bootable image on another external LaCie drive over FW800. That took only 2 hours.
I got the computer back from Apple after repairs and directed TM to start backing up to the original TC drive (no changes to the drive during repair). The TM software decided it had to do another initial backup! As I write this, it's been running 36 hours and has completed only 19 of 76 GB. This is MUCH MUCH worse than the first initial backup.
I want to like this TM software because of the convenience, but it is really crap and unusable in my opinion. With my setup, I simply cannot switch to a second backup drive without triggering another lousy initial LONG BU process. Frankly, I really regret buying TC and trying TM.
I used to use Retrospect with great success with the two external LaCie drives, but they went into the toilet when EMC bought them and spun them out. The quality of the software has really suffered and it is very buggy now.
So, unfortunately, it looks like my best strategy is to use CarbonCloner and the two LaCie drives.

Can Time Machine combine two HDs into one big one?

I know Mountain Lion added the ability to use multiple HDs simultaneously (I have done this). As it stands, it just rotates among the different HDs each time it does a backup. Is there a way to have OSX combine two HDs to make a 'virtual' bigger HD?
The reason I ask this is because my existing iMac has a 1TB internal hard drive. I have two external LaCie drives of 2 TB each that I use for Time Machine. I'm planning on getting one of the new iMacs and custom-ordering it with a 3TB internal drive. Obviously a 2TB drive won't fit, but if OSX can combine the two HDs virtually, it'll end up with a 4TB volume, right? Can it do that?

A hardware RAID is as reliable as the hardware. I believe the LaCie product you mention is a hardware RAID. I have no opinion of its reliability, and I don't know whether you can configure it as a mirrored RAID.
Maybe I should clarify. I see no reason to use a RAID for backup unless you need the space. If you need a 6 TB Time Machine volume, you have to use a RAID -- striped, not mirrored. For the safety of your data, regardless of the amount, you need redundant backups, not RAID. That is, you should have at least two independent backups, at least one of which is off site at all times.

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

Can Time Machine be used to backup both internal and external drive?

I have a Mac Book Pro with Lion OSX installed. I have an external fire wire hard drive connected which contains my iTunes Library. I would like to use Time Machine to backup both the internal drive and the attached external drive. Can this be done?

Yes, make sure the drive is not excluded under the Privacy tab in Time Machine.
System Preferences > Time Machine

Can Time Machine be used to backup BootCamp?

I wish to use my Time Machine to backup Bootcamp. But is that of any use? My purpose is not just to backup the data. I wish to have the OS to be backed up also. So that upon restore the entire OS should be present as it was during the Last TM Backup.

Time Machine doesn't directly back up the Boot Camp volume. If you use the third-party utility "WinClone" to image the volume in a file, that file will be backed up, but it's a very inefficient way to back up your Windows data. You should do that from within Windows, using a native backup tool.

How can Time Machine be configured to backup external drives?

I was running out of space on my Mac internal hard drive. I bought an external drive and moved all of the iTunes data to the external. It freed up 100 MB on my internal drive. However, Time Machine isn't backing up the data that I moved to the external drive.
I still want to back up that data. How do I configure Time Machine to backup both my internal Mac drive as well as the external drive, which is seperate from my backup drive?
Thanks.

External drives are automatically added to the list of items excluded from Time Machine backups. To remove the exclusion, open the Time Machine preference pane, click the lock icon to unlock it if necessary, and then click Options.

Is it possible to make two different backups for one device?

So, here is the problem: i got an 8 gig 4, and since for now i didn't have enough money to buy, which i would like to have, a 64 5. I found out recently that social medias are wasting my memory, which also a problem that we can't delete caches. I'm just curious that if we can do more than one backup files from one device?

You can back up to both iTunes and iCloud. The following link has a section on using the two methods together. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5262
Also, the following link gives the location of the iTunes backup and suggests including that in your regular computer backup -- which would effectively give you multiple backups via iTunes. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4946

Can a constraint check two different tables for the existence of a parent item?

My database has a table Message, and a table MessageReply.
Each MessageReply has a ParentID and a MessageReplyType (Message, or Reply).
When the MessageReplyType is a message, I would like to ensure the MessageReply.ParentID (MessageID) exists in the Message table.
And when the MessageReplyType is a reply, I need to ensure the MessageReply.ParentID (MessageID) exists in the MessageReply table.
I am doing this through client code, but I would like the database to enforce this to protect the database from well intentioned programmers like me.
Can it be done?
Thank you

There is a problem with your function and the whole idea of using a check constraint and a function to simulate a foreign key constraint is problematic.
The problem with your function is when you do a statement like
Set @ReturnValue = (Select MessageID From MessageReply Where MessageID = @ParentID);
then if that row does not exist in MessageReply, @ReturnValue is set to NULL. Then you are returning that NULL from the function and using the check constraint to test whether or not that returned NULL is > 0. Comparing NULL to a value does
not give you TRUE and it does not give you FALSE, instead you get a logical value called UNKNOWN. Check constraints only reject a row if the resulting value is FALSE. It allows the Insert or Update if the logical value is either TRUE or UNKNOWN.
So even if the parent row does not exist, that check constraint will allow the new row to be inserted.
Second, using a function and check constraint to simulate a foreign key constraint always has a problem. If you go with that (and you have written the function and constraint correctly) and you attempt to insert a row with a bad ParentID so that the
ParentID does not exist in the appropriate table, you will get a check constraint error and the insert will be rejected. That is good. However, suppose you successfully insert a row in MessageReply. For example you insert a row in Message with
MessageID = 1 and then insert a row in MessageReply with ParentID = 1 and ReplyType = 1. That will work fine as it should. But now suppose someone deletes the row in Message with MessageID = 1. That delete won't fire the check constraint.
So it will allow the delete of the row in Message and now you have a row in MessageReply which doesn't have a parent.
If you want a method that will work completely, you could do that by 1) doing all of your updates to those tables thought stored procedure(s) that check the data to be sure it is valid before inserting/updating/deleting, or 2) writing trigger(s) on both
Message and MessageReply to make sure that any changes are valid, or 3) add computed columns to the MessageReply table so that you can write foreign key constraints.
I would go with method 3. That would look something like changing your MessageReply table to look something like
Create Table Message(MessageID int Primary Key
-- other columns as needed
Create Table MessageReply(MessageID int Primary Key
,ParentID int Not Null
,MessageReplyType int Not Null Check (MessageReplyType In (1,2))
,ParentMessageID As Case When MessageReplyType = 1 Then ParentID Else Null End Persisted
,ParentMessageReplyID As Case When MessageReplyType = 2 Then ParentID Else Null End Persisted
-- other columns as needed
Alter Table MessageReply
add constraint chk_MessageParentExists Foreign Key(ParentMessageID) References Message;
Alter Table MessageReply
add constraint chk_MessageReplyParentExists Foreign Key(ParentMessageReplyID) References MessageReply;
Tom

Time Machine Managament of oldest backups

I have a question about Time Machine's management - and deletion - of its oldest backup versions
I've just upgraded one of my Macs from OSX 10.8.5 to 10.9.4. Now I've re-engaged Time Machine. Before the OS upgrade, I had a two year history of Time Machine backups, after the OS upgrade TM was pretty short of space, the messages in the log indicate that it deleted about a years worth of backups, and the oldest backup is now 28 Aug 2013.
What does this mean about files which I have not changed since August 28 2013 - I assume Time Machine now has no backup for those files?
If I had known that TIme machine would have done this, I probably would have removed all the system files from the backup, and deleted their backups, probably a few other things as well.
Is there any setting one can make for Time Machine that will cause it to stop and ask "Do you want to Proceed" before deleting oldest backups, ore even just cause it to stop with an error message?

Thank you Linc and etresoft. The backup finally finished, I checked some older files, and it works as you describe.
There was even a user message after the backup stating "Your backup drive is now full, you should migrate to a larger disk". Its unfortunate it couldn't have given that message before it started to delete information; I'll send that in by Apple feedback.
In the mean time I've turned Time Machine off until I figure out what to do about getting a larger drive.

HT201250 Can I partition my external hard drive and use one partion for time machine and the other one for data that i may want to use in different computers?

I have this doubt. I've just bought an external drive, especifically a Seagate GoFlex Desk 3 tb.
I want to know if it is recomendable to make a partion exclusively for time machine and let another one so I can put there music, photos, videos, etc that I should need to use or copy to another computer.
May half and half, 1.5 tb for time machine and 1.5 tb for data.
I have an internal hard drive of 500 GB (499.25 GB) in my macbook pro.
Any recommendation?

As I said, yes. Be sure your Time Machine partition has at least 1 TB for backups.
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 two (2). 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.

I just bought and backed up my computer and time machine with a "Seagate BackUp Plus for Mac". Now my time machine is empty. Panicked. can anyone help?

I just bought and backed up my computer and time machine with a "Seagate BackUp Plus for Mac". Now my time machine is empty. Panicked. can anyone help?

Lets start over...
Please restart the network.. shut down everything..
Restart in order.. modem.. router.. if different to TC.. or TC.. client devices.. wait 2min between each startup.
If the TC does not show up on the computer, in finder.. then we need more info.. what OS are you running?
Does the TC show up in Airport utility? Are you running wireless or ethernet?
If you still have issues.. plug the TC directly into the computer by ethernet.
Do a full factory reset of the TC.. and see if it now shows up.
Please tell us exactly what model TC it is and how old.. the A1xxx model number from the base will help if you don't know.
You take a screen shot of the TC opened in finder.
eg..
My TC is named Tardis4.. click on it.. and then open the data folder.. on this one called Tardisdata.
Then take a screen shot of it so we can see what the problem is.. screenshot.. with area selection.. control + shift + 4 .. the picture goes into the desktop.. and then you click the picture icon in the posting web page controls and select the picture.

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos.

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos. I wanted to see if I could view them from the hard drive. Thanks

Hello, eco1.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like you are wanting to move your iTunes media folder to an external drive and have iTunes this folder from this location. If this is the case then I would recommend taking a look at the article below.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Cheers,
Jason H.

Can Time Machine do two different backups for me?

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