HT201250 Separate Backups for Multiple Drives?

I have 4 drives in my MacPro’s 4 HD bays: A, B, C & D.
A & B are 2TB drives, and C & D are 750GB drives.
I want B to backup A, and D to backup C.
Can I set this up, and if so how?
Right now it seems I can only set up multiple redundancies, rather than setting up separate backups for different drives.
Any help is appreciated!

You can set it up, but not with Time Machine if that's what you had in mind. You would either have to write a script of some kind, or (more easily) use a third-party application such as "Carbon Copy Cloner."

Similar Messages

Problem with Time Machine backup for multiple drives

Time Machine has the ability to exclude drives attached to the system via usb, firewire, etc. I have an external USB drive attached directly to my MacBook (not via a hub). I want to include this in my backup, so I removed it from the exclusions list under Option in the Time Machine preferences. Since I have done this, my backup to my 1TB Time Capsule stops at 128K. When I put this drive on the exclusions list or eject the drive, the backup is successful. I have tried backups over both Ethernet and Wi-Fi, and get the same results.
The files on the USB drive are important to me and I really need to be able to include them in my Time Machine backups. I would prefer not to have to get a second external drive to copy my files to as a backup. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
JDBTek

If the HFS+ USB HDD is connected directly to the MacBook, TM should be able to back it up. Sorry, I don't have any other suggestions.

HT3728 do i have to do separate backup to hard drive for each user?

Do i have to do separate backup to hard drive for each user?

Sorry, I am not understanding what you are trying to say.
Time Machine is software on your Mac that allows it to back up to another hard drive.
A Time Capsule is an Apple wireless router with a built in hard drive that can be used to store Time Machine backups from one or more Mac computers.

Time Machine questions: Handling backups for multiple Macs to one FW drive

I am reviewing the Time Machine thread and seeing a lot of helpful information, but I would like to ask something I haven't quite found yet.
We have 2 Leopard Macs, a MacBook Pro and an intel iMac... with plans to upgrade another MBP from Tiger to Leopard at some point.
In planning for Time Machine, we set up a 1 TB drive, attached it via FW 800 to the iMac, partitioned it GUID for Intel, and made 3 partitions, one for each planned Mac we want to back up to it.
I started Time Machine on the iMac first and the first backup of about 100 gb took maybe 4 hours.
Then we tried to start the Time Machine backup for the MBP over the network (wireless). It was understandably much slower and quit with some error last evening, so I took advantage of the pause to move the notebook to a wired ethernet connection. It got even slower so this morning I directly connected it FW 800, erased what had been backed up, and started over. So far, so good. 6GB out of 100 in 10 minutes or so. The idea being, if we can get the first backup completed faster over wired connection, maybe doing the incrementals over wireless network will be okay. Sounds like some folks are doing that successfully. I am hoping that works out.
Questions: Was it necessary to partition my 1TB drive into a partition for each Mac's Time Machine backup? I did make each partition bigger than the hard drive it is designated for.
To get the MBP to mount the external FW drive on its desktop, I had to disconnect the drive from the iMac. Is there any way I can connect the FW drive to both the MBP and the iMac (the drive has two FW 800 out connections, so it is physically possible)? I'm thinking (from reading posts of others with notebooks) that one strategy is to connect your notebook to your Time Machine drive at night and let it back up, but it'd be great if I could leave the iMac connected while doing so. Is there a way the volumes on the drive can mount on both desktops?
When I try wireless again, I'm seeing mixed posts regarding whether the MBP will need a password to log in to the remote volume each time, or only the first time when the Time Machine backup is established... if I could get clarification on that, it would be helpful.
Thanks!
thanks

What do you see on your notebook when you click on your TimeMachine icon in the Dock?
My notebook is mounting the backup drive on an hourly basis, running a backup, and looking like it is doing something... but when I then look at TimeMachine, I can't see the backups. (On my iMac with the drive directly attached, I see a progression of windows showing all the hourly backups the last 24 hours, etc.) I just called Apple to ask why this is so, and they told me they couldn't help me because wireless Time Machine backups aren't supported.
I know backups to a hard drive attached to an Airport Express Base Station are not supported. But when they say "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. +Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices+"... well, how can you DO that?

Time Machine backup FROM multiple drives?

I'm in the process of choosing a new MacPro, someone on these forums recommended Digilloyd's Mac Performance Guide as a good place to get help setting up a new mac for speed. The simplified version of what he advocates is replacing the stock internal drive with an SSD drive, on which you put the OS, apps & home folder. He then recommends creating a 0-raid stripe from 3 other drives to separate & hold your data, then using the forth internal bay drive (or another 0-raid stripe of the leftover, slower portions of various partitions of the drives) for Time Machine.
My question is, can Time Machine backup both drives (boot & data raid-0) or would I have to choose one of them?
+The more I read, the more confused I get+.

OK, I've scanned through the various articles. My thoughts are still essentially the same, and that is just how effective the entire system is when using multiple partitions from several drives to combine into multiple RAIDs. In reality this is not speed effective if the RAIDs need to be accessed concurrently. A read/write head can only be in one place at a time meaning that when one partition on the drive is being accessed, the OS cannot concurrently access another partition on the same drive.
Essentially this is how I understand the configuration at a simplistic level. Let's suppose we have two hard drives that we'll call Drive A and Drive B. Each drive is partitioned into two equally sized volumes that we'll refer to as follows:
....................... *Drive A* ......................... *Drive B* ......
Volume................. 1 ..................................... 3 ............
Volume................. 2 ..................................... 4 ............
Now, we will make two RAID arrays. RAID A uses Volume 1 and Volume 3, and RAID B uses Volume 2 and Volume 4.
Suppose you want to copy data from RAID A to RAID B. In order to do this the OS must first copy data from RAID A before it can write the data to RAID B. However, if RAID A was created using two separate drives (say, Drive A and Drive B,) and RAID B was created using two separate drives (say, Drive C and Drive D,) then the OS can copy from RAID A while concurrently writing to RAID B. This is physically possible because two read/write heads are involved instead of one. Theoretically the second construct is going to be much faster than the first construct.
My second observation is with regard to the reliance on external storage. A 2nd or 3rd generation Mac Pro's SATA bus is capable of a data interface rate of 3.0 Gb/sec. Firewire 800 is capable of 800 Mb/sec. The MP's internal SATA bus can support data transfer rates nearly four times that of Firewire. A modern hard drive is capable of saturating the Firewire bus, but not the internal SATA bus. The higher interface rate of the SATA bus means it's much better suited for truly fast RAID arrays. This is not the case for the Firewire bus.
External Firewire arrays are better suited for storage that does not require frequent or fast access.
Now with all this said it makes more sense to fully understand what your overall storage needs are then consider suitable designs. One need not rely on complicated RAID arrays if they aren't required. The focus should be on data access, data storage, and backup needs.
Although it's nice being able to brag at the cocktail party about having a fast SSD for your boot drive, let's consider how often you even need to boot the computer. I put my computers to sleep when they aren't in use. I never boot the computer unless a software update requires it or the computer has crashed completely. I haven't had the latter occur very often - mainly when I'm experimenting. Literally days, weeks, or months may go by before I reboot the computer. So a fast SSD boot drive would be for me a hugh waste of money.
My 1st generation Mac Pro is set up for my needs. It has four 500 GB fast Hitachi enterprise level hard drives. I use enterprise level drives that cost more because the computer is always on, so I want drives that will be reliably working. I used to have four Maxtor 300 GB drives that lasted for four years before I replace them with the Hitachis. My setup has one drive partitioned into a startup volume and a Boot Camp volume. One drive is my 'scratch' drive used for different OS system versions and/or seed testing. Two drives are configured as a mirrored RAID and used as the primary backup for the boot volume. The boot volume is 450 GBs and the Windows volume is 50 GBs. There's no backup for the Windows volume at the present time. Backups are usually done in the late afternoon using a backup utility. Presently that utility is Synk Standard, but I've also used Synchronize! Pro X and Carbon Copy Cloner. Backups are done on a fixed schedule in the background so they are virtually transparent to me. I use a mirrored RAID for backup to provide redundancy. If one backup drive fails hopefully the other will still be usable to protect the backup. I also have one external Firewire drive that contains a clone of the startup volume. The clone is updated monthly by incremental backup. It's for security in the worst case scenario that both drives in the mirrored RAID were to fail simultaneously.
Now, my need for frequent and fast access to data such as might be needed for streaming music or video is non-existent, so my configuration is one that is well-suited to my needs. You'll note that it's both simple and practical while providing data backup that's doubly secure.

TimeMachine Backup to Multiple Drives

Hi
I've asked similar questions before on using TimeMachine. I'm stuck in confusion.
I have 3 external drives. One drive A I store my photos and music.
I would like to be certain that my photos and music are backed up on each drive (B and C).
I've reviewed James Pond's extensive instructions, but I still feel lost.
I feel that I am creating conflicts by backing up to multiple drives.
Can someone walk me through step by step?
Or are there screen shots of my set up I can share that will allow someone to verify if I have things right or wrong?
Thanks

I think A Silverstone asked for a step-by-step procedure.
I have a similar issue I would like a procedure on. Actually two identical issues.
1. I wish to purchase Apples new 3TB tower Airport/Time Machine to replace a 1TB Airport extreme/Time Machine. I want to migrate the old to the new using Apple processes/procedures without a lot of workaround. How can this be done? Does Apple have a procedure?
2. I have a desktop with four drives (three 2TB & one 1TB) and wish at least two of them to be Time Machine capable, i.e., backup every hour like the Airport/Time Machine does. Can this be done? Does Apple have a procedure?
I want to migrate the old Time Capsule data to the new Time Capsule and to two HD's in the desktop.
The idea is to have backups for a Time Machine backup in the event of a power disruption or a hacker that might impact the tower Time Machine. There are other reasons such as storage capacity using a daisy chain process.

Time machine osx server backup to multiple drives?

Hello,
I've just discovered Time Machine for Mac OSx Server. It can act as a centralizad point for the backups of all the computers in the network, how cool!
I know that Time Machine "client" can back a system up to multiple drives. My question is, can I do something similar with Time Machine "server" so I can have more than one storage product onto which I can back up all the systems? That would be very interestin if I want to implement a off-site backup from all my systems.
I would love to hear your inputs.Thanks in advance,
Regards,

I don't know. If the TM preference pane is scriptable then you could do it with an AppleScript. Unfortunately, TM is not designed to also schedule different backup times. For example, assume you could automate drive switching, you still need to tell TM to backup to one drive at some time then backup to another drive at a different time.
I suppose the latter could be done via a cron job as long as you did not use TM preferences to turn TM on in which case it will backup each hour automatically.
It seems to me you'd be better off using a different backup utility that would allow you to schedule such backups. For example:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Not all of the above will backup over a network, but most can backup to any mounted device including a network drive except SuperDuper!.
In an enterprise setting your best choice of the above is Retrospect. There are a few other enterprise level backup utilities (costly) that you can track down at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. BRU is an example.
Oh, and if you know how to use the command line you can use the Unix tools, ditto and rsync.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Backup for Scratch Drive?

I'm setting up backups for my hard drives. My Photoshop CS 5 scratch drive is on a separate drive. Should I back it up?

There is no useful data there, so no. Kind of like a scratch pad when it is working.

Time Capsule backup for multiple users

I have my iMac setup so that each member of my family has their own account. I am the administrator. When I run a time capsule backup is it backing up their files as well or do I need to create a backup for their accounts.
If I create individual backups for their accounts will it backup the shared files like the applications or just files specific to their accounts? Is this something I need to control by selecting what files to exclude in the preferences
Time capsule seems great for simple backups but concerns me if I ever have a HD crash. It seems very difficult to restore a backup to a new mac if I ever have to do that. Does anyone else have this concern? I am considering buying another external drive and use SuperDuper to create full bootable backups at least once every 6 months or so.
Thanks,
Gil

It is much harder to check what Time Machine has backed up.. you can assume that everything currently needed to reproduce the same setup on another computer is there.
To double check you must spend a bit of time understanding both how Time Machine works and how to restore from it.
Read up a bit from Pondini's excellent KnowledgeBase of articles.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Q7-9 are highly relevant.
Also go back to the main page and read the main articles on how TM works.
I must also say at the moment, on Yosemite in particular, I would not fully trust Time Machine.
I encourage people to make a bootable clone using Carbon Copy Cloner for example to a USB drive. You do not need to do it continually but the clone makes for a much easier return to normal.. since you can simply change boot disks. It costs $40 and is excellent value.. there are others you can buy.. and I am not connected to CCC in any way.. other than I use it and been amazed at what a great piece of software it is.

How do I remove a TM backup for a drive that is no longer used

Since starting using TM I have transferred all the files from one drive to another and removed the original drive from the machine.
Will TM realise this and remove the back up data from the TM drive or do I have to identify the specific part of the backup and delete.
Please do not say clear off all the data on the TM drive and restart - it takes over 24 hours to run the first back up to the Time Capsule.
THe redundant backup is taking over a third of the TM drive and so is a resource hog.
Thanks for any answers.
Message was edited by: cwog

cwog wrote:
Since starting using TM I have transferred all the files from one drive to another and removed the original drive from the machine.
Will TM realise this and remove the back up data from the TM drive or do I have to identify the specific part of the backup and delete.
As Thomas says, Time Machine will, eventually, delete them. You can do it manually but it will take quite a while, so connect via Ethernet cable. That will still be slow, but 2-3 times faster than WIFI.
You'll need to use the procedure in #E3 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) to see the backups of that drive.
Then use the procedure in #12 of [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) to delete all backups of the drive. That will take quite a while, and won't immediately get the space back. To do that, you'll need to manually "compact" the sparse bundle, per the pink box in #12.

Time Machine backup to multiple drives?

Hi! I need to know if it is possible to use Time Machine to backup to different disks!
We have a RAID module that's already used to keep track of the Server's files, but we'd like another disk that's going to be offsite to track changed files once every 24 hours.
Would it be possible to add such a thing in a configuration file somewhere?
Another acceptable solution would be a cron job telling Time Machine to swap disks, do a backup, and swap disks back.

I don't know. If the TM preference pane is scriptable then you could do it with an AppleScript. Unfortunately, TM is not designed to also schedule different backup times. For example, assume you could automate drive switching, you still need to tell TM to backup to one drive at some time then backup to another drive at a different time.
I suppose the latter could be done via a cron job as long as you did not use TM preferences to turn TM on in which case it will backup each hour automatically.
It seems to me you'd be better off using a different backup utility that would allow you to schedule such backups. For example:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Not all of the above will backup over a network, but most can backup to any mounted device including a network drive except SuperDuper!.
In an enterprise setting your best choice of the above is Retrospect. There are a few other enterprise level backup utilities (costly) that you can track down at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. BRU is an example.
Oh, and if you know how to use the command line you can use the Unix tools, ditto and rsync.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Time Machine settings for multiple drives?

I have two hard drives installed in my mac, one is for system related stuff and one is a working drive for FCPX. Is there a way to set my time capsule to create a backup of my boot drive and an external drive to use time machine to back up the 2nd internal drive? Thanks!

Won't that change the preferences for both drives? I want the system drive to back up wirelessly to the time capsule, and then the 2nd drive to back up through Time Machine to a FW800 external drive... but only copy the 2nd drive, not the everything else that is backing up wirelessly.

Time machine backup of multiple drive of one computer?

Can I use Time Machine to backup multiple drives of one computer?

Yes, assuming they're in a format Time Machine can back up. This doesn't include formats such as FAT32.
(66627)

Windows Server 2012 Standard Scheduling for backup for multiple disk

Hi,
Iam using Windows Server 2012 Standard,
How to create backup schedule for multiple hard disk. 1. I have scheduled a multiple backup for disk1, disk2 but the backup fails.
How to create different backup schedule for single Hard disk.
Please help

Hi
Check these artciles,same on 2012 r2 standard;
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754054.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd834883.aspx

HT201250 My backup external hard drive hasn't work since I insalled Snow Leopard. Bad:( I am still learning about my MAC and would just like to re-format the hard dive and set everything up again. I want to upgrade to Lion but can't untill I backup what

My backup external hard drive hasn't work since I insalled Snow Leopard. Bad:( I am still learning about my MAC and would just like to re-format the hard dive and set everything up again. I want to upgrade to Lion but can't untill I backup what I.

Read through the links here, calm down and take your time.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

HT201250 Separate Backups for Multiple Drives?

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