Multiple backup drives

Greetings,
I have a SBS 2011 Server, Presently the Native backup is configured to backup to one 2TB hardrive. I would like to add a second drive so that we can keep one offsite. As I understand I can add a drive to the backup (Job) routine already in place. I can add
it in using either the backup wizard or I can use the DOS command Below:
Run the following command from an elevated command prompt to determine the Disk Identifier of the new disk:
    wbadmin get disks
Based on the output, locate the disk that will be added to the scheduled backup. Make a note of the Disk Identifier. The output will resemble the following:
Disk name: xxxxxxxxxxx
Disk number: x
Disk identifier: {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}
Total space: xxx.xx GB
Used space : xxx.xx GB
Run the following command to add the new disk to the Scheduled backup.
Use the Disk Identifier from the previous step as the "AddTarget" parameter.
WBADMIN ENABLE BACKUP -addtarget:{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx} Be sure to include the brackets.
When you receive the following prompt, type Y for Yes.
"Do you want to enable scheduled backups with the above settings?"
I just want to confirm that I do not need to completely remove the existing backup and then start over. Also when it comes time to remove one of the drives, how do you eject the drive to be stored offsite?  Do you go down to the system tray and
eject the drive from there? I do plan on swapping out a drive at the beginning of every week and taking the other home. Should I pay close attention to the drive Letters when changing out drives?   Does that sound like it will work properly?
Thanks, Paul
PAUL

Hi:
The Wizard in the SBS Server Management Console is the preferred way to do SBS backups. Below are specific articles in the SBS Official Blog and the SBS Unofficial Build Wiki. These are excellent references for you to find information regarding
SBS.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2008/11/03/introducing-sbs-2008-backup.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2011/02/15/introducing-the-small-business-server-2011-backup-wizard.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1919.sbs-2011-v-backup-restore-and-disaster-recovery.aspx
Larry Struckmeyer[MVP] If your question is answered please mark the response as the answer so that others can benefit.

Similar Messages

Time machine multiple backup drives question

Time machine to backup to my 2TB MyBook drive. I wanted a second backup on a portable 1TB, so in time machine settings, I selected the 1TB drive, and then clicked the "Replace" button, instead of the "Use both" button. Currently the 1TB drive is backing up from scratch.
So will I be able to select my 2TB MyBook drive after the 1TB is backed up and disconnected? I mean, can I resume time machine backups where I left off?
Most of what I've read (after the fact) seems to suggest that I should have clicked the "Use both" button, then just removed the 1TB drive.
-Thanks

I find tm doesn't remember the drives anyway. I have a dedicated drive for lion and mountain lion as I have both lion and mountain lion installed on my mac. When I'm in either os and connect the appropriate drive and start tm I still have to go in and select the drive. Tm says there are no older backups, but there are, until the new partial backup completes. Then it lists al the backups on that drive.
Now maybe if you leave tm on all the time it might work differently but I don't care for it creating local snapshots and I only connect the externals when I want to do a backup.
So bottom line is you shouldn't have any problem when you connect the other drive. At that time, when you have to select that original tm backup drive, you can click the option to use both.

Can I use multiple backup drives?

Hi
I currently use one external USB drive to back up my Mini (running Yosemite) using Time Machine.
I would like to back up to two drives instead of just one, perhaps using a strategy where I alternate back up between drives, so that if one drive fails, I'm always one back up away from file recovery.
This may sound excessive, but I always remember this: there are two kinds of people, those who have lost data and those who will lose data
thanks
nick

Hi,
You certainly can use two backup disks under Time Machine, and it is a smart idea to use two backup disks for added protection. When you have more than one disk chosen for Time Machine, it is smart enough to use both disks on an alternating basis. Just connect the new backup disk and choose "Use Both" and both of your disks will be used as backups. The 1st time you do a full backup (depending on how much data you have) can take a long time. Then it will take turns between each disk when Time Machine works it's magic. You can even have 3 disks if you want the extra protection?
Regards,
NS

TM with multiple backup drives.

Maybe this has been answered before, but I can't find it.
I have 2 external drives a 1.5TB and a 1.0TB drive I wish to use for TM. I have about 1.2TB to backup across to volumes: 1) the OS partition (and drive) - 500GB max and a data volume- 1.5TB max. Currently everything is 1.1 TB total.
If I use the 1TB external drive for TM it complains it isn't big enough (the 1.1TB backup size) So what I want to do is backup the OS dive to the 1TB external and the Data Volume to the 1.5TB external drive.
Does TM allow this?
If so I can't figure it out. I can't select items to exclude per drive selected to backup to...

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Not exactly. TM backs up to only one "volume" at a time.
However, you might be able to put the two TM drives into a "Raid" set that is a single volume; for most purposes, including display on your desktop and/or Finder sidebar, the set will appear to be a single disk. TM would then back both "source" drives up to the single volume.
Start Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). In it's Help, select +Using Raid Sets,+ then
+About Concatenated RAID sets+ and +Concatenated RAID.+ There's step-by-step instructions on how to make and deal with these.
Do note that the usual rule of thumb is that TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up, so while you may be able to get TM working, you still may not have enough space for it to work well. This depends mostly, of course, on how you use your Mac. If you frequently update lots of big files, TM may not be able to keep backups for very long. If you're a relatively-light user, your setup might be acceptable. It is, of course, a trade-off between space and depth of backups.
Let me recommend that for your first backup, you exclude the external disk (via TM's Preferences > Options). Even that will be lengthy. Then remove the exclusion and be prepared for another long backup of everything on the external drive.

Multiple Backups to more than one drive

I tried to find the answer to this here but hopefully someone can help me:
I have 4 external drives and i want TM to backup drive1 to drive2 and drive3 to drive4 - because the largest drive cant backup drive1+2 together.
What is the solution? Only a raid system for TM?
Thanks

TM can only have one destination drive. you can RAID the backup drives but also keep in mind that TM drive should be at least twice as big as the total amount of data you are backing up. that's needed for overhead free space that TM requires and to accommodate incremental backups. if you don't have that don't use TM. use some other backup tool like CCCloner or superduper. they allow multiple destination drives. or you can use TM for one drive and something else for the other. also see this post for more backup options
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7495315#7495315

Multiple Computers, one main backup drive?

Can multiple computers backup to one main backup drive?
I have a G5 desktop with a 250-GB drive (Mac OS X) and a 750-GB drive (which used to contain iTunes until I moved it to a new iMac).
So I was planning on using the G5 as the drive for Time Machine to back up to. I have my iMac, and two MacBooks using it.
Is this going to be problematical? Such as when more than one machine attempts to make a backup?

Time Machine can back up multiple computers to the same hard drive.
There are two options... one you can physically move the backup hard-drive around among the computers.
The second option is that you can backup over the network as long as all computers involved are running Leopard. To do this connect the backup drive to your G5. Turn on file sharing on the G5 for that drive. On the other computers connect to the shared drive from the Finder sidebar. The run System Preferences and in the Time Machine Preference pane select "Change Disk" and choose the network backup drive as the destination.

How to use multiple tape drive from single client when I want to backup single filesystem?

Hello All.
I want to backup 1 filesystem using 4 tape drives for reducing backup time.
In case of symantec veritas netbackup, they can user "NEW_STREAM" for multi-streaming backup.
Please anybody let me know that how to do use multiple tape drive for single client.
1. Backup Source server : Linux (1 client)
2. Backup Soucre : /data1 (500GB)
-> Current directory structure doesn't have sub directory under /data1, just files present under /data1
If direcotry struceture has a sub-direcotry like( /data1/aaa, /data1/bbb ), Is it availble to use multiple tape drives?
3. Tape Drive with OSB : LTO6 * 4 drives
Thank you.

You would have to create a different dataset for each sub-folder. If you only have files at the top level folder then even the NEW_STREAM option couldn't be used to split the job.
Organise it into folders and then create datasets in a client folder such as :
/usr/local/oracle/backup/admin/config/dataset/Linux/data1_aaa
/usr/local/oracle/backup/admin/config/dataset/Linux/data1_bbb
Then in the schedule you just specify the Linux folder. In each dataset you list the hostname and the folder name, such as :
include host Linux
include path /data1/aaa
Now it will create a new job for each dataset and therefore each folder.
Thanks
Rich

Time Machine Backup across multiple external drives

Hello all-
I have about 1.5 TB of data in my computer (video editing- fills things up fast)... I was wondering if it were possible to tell Time Machine to recognize multiple external drives as the backup volume? I'm not talking about creating cloned backups of my data on different drives, I'm talking about plugging in three 1TB external drives and having Time Machine use them as targets for the backup image.
Thanks

Yes, you can use Disk Utility to create a +Concatenated Raid Set,+ also known as a JBOD (Just a bunch of disks). See the Help for Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
This is kind of the opposite of partitioning: it combines 2 or more disks into a single volume. The three disks won't appear on your desktop or Finder sidebar individually, just the one volume.
I'm not sure that's necessarily the best solution, though. Is all that data on a single internal HD, or do you have, say, OSX, applications, and most of your data on one drive, and media on a second? If so, it might be better to use TM on your main OSX drive, and something else, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! on the media.
That would greatly reduce the time needed for a restore, as you'd only have to restore the drive that failed.
It could also reduce the amount of storage needed, as you might not need (or want) TM's hourly backups of the media files, and keeping all the previous versions. Using another app would allow you to back that data up somewhat less frequently, such as once or twice a day.
But, of course, it all depends on your situation and preferences. As usual, there are many options.

Multiple Hard Drives: one for system & applications, one for backup

I am planning the upgrade of my hard drive setup. Presently, I have only the original 74.53 GB internal drive that came with my June 2004 G5 1.8 dual CPU. I have two goals for the upgrade. First, more hard drive space. Second, a drive for automatic backup. Since I am running OS 10.4.11 and not intending to upgrade to 10.5 at this time for application reasons, I will be using something like Carbon Copy Clone for the backup software (not Time Machine, which requires OS 10.5). My thinking, so far, is to install a 1 TB internal drive for system and another internal or external 1 TB drive for the backup. In perusing the discussions here, it looks like an external drive is always used for the backup. Is this true or would an internal drive work just as well for backup? I want the backup to be as free as possible from any corruption or problems that might arise on the system drive or other computer parts. Does the Firewire or USB connection of an external drive offer a greater amount of freedom from potential corruption as opposed to the direct SATA connection of an internal drive?
I realize that burnt DVD’s offer the greatest amount of freedom from corruption but one doesn’t burn a DVD hourly, daily, weekly or so on. Hopefully, if a problem arises my work underway is residing on the backup drive unaffected. I’m not sure how close in time this can be. I imagine this probably depends on the backup software used and how often the backup is run. I’m not yet fully aware of the options.
For the internal system drive is there any good reason to partition it? I f so, why, and in what way? Do the OS and applications need to reside on the same partition? If not (or better that they don’t), how should a 1 TB drive be partitioned?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on the best configuration of my hard drive upgrade.

1) The backup drive is best to be external (security from computer failure).
Yes. I am not sure about the "in some ways" my esteemed colleague qualifies.
2) The external backup drive should be connected by Firewire (ability to be bootable & greater speed).
Yes. Just beware that some of the Western Digital models have presented problems. Not the drives themselves but the enclosures. [List of Western Digital bootable and non bootable models|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9022456#9022456]
Is a Firewire connected drive any less vulnerable to damage by computer hardware failure than an internal drive?
Yes & no. The yes: I don't know about G5s (they use a different connector from the G4s and earlier with which I am familiar) but in some computers the drives will share the same controller. If the controller goes then all connected drives can be corrupted. The no: Then too, I have had two Firewire drives be corrupted. One was by trying it with a PCI card (not what you're using) that was incompatible with my model computer. The other was when the power source in the enclosure went bad.
This is almost leading me to think that 3 drives would be the best! One internal for OS system & applications (1 TB), one continually connected for auto backup (my original 74 GB), and one (a bootable clone) attached only during occasional backups (2 TB).
The more the better. I usually buy drives in size increments that make sense for my configuration. I have two 120GB internal drives so I bought a 250GB external drive for backup and partitioned it into two so I could just back up one internal to one partition and the second to the other.
I'm perplexed with both your feelings about burnt media. I was not aware of this and fortunately have not experienced problems. However, it is only recently that I gravitated from 700MB CD's to 4.7 GB DVD-RW's for backups. I've been using Maxell
There's backup and there's archiving. Backup is for having a copy of what you're actively using. Archiving is storing stuff that is unlikely to change. Optical media is lousy for backup because files are constantly changing. Backing up a 120 GB onto 4GB media either requires a super organized person or you're spending a day sticking DVDs into your computer.
Optical media is less lousy for archiving, but still not great. Where's the floppy drive on your computer? Where will the DVD drive be in 15 years? It's also a lot faster archiving onto hard drives, and the cost of drives has come down to where the per GB cost is about equivalent of less than high-quality, archival-grade DVDs. Yes, drives change too, but it is also easy to copy from drive to drive. I have items archived on drives that are over 10 years old and as long as I make sure I keep on top of being able to connect those drives to a computer they are usable.
BTW: I tried to quote your messages for this reply, went to "Help" to learn how that is done and found this: "If you want to quote specific text from the original message, click Quote Original to add all the text from the original message to the Message box." I could see no such button "Quote Original". Can anyone please tell me where it is?
There's a '"' icon in the compose window when you type a reply. If I'm doing a lot of quotes (as I did here) I use that, then edit out the bits I don't want. Otherwise I copy and paste the text and add a > before the line to get it to appear in the special format.

Multiple Target (Backup) Drives

I have an external 1-TB drive I used for more than a year until the power supply died. At the time I needed an immediate backup before extended travel. I used a spare 250 meg external drive and started a new backup series. It has been 3 months and I have finally gotten the Power Supply replaced. (I needed to pull a file from early this year.) I was able to choose the 1-TB drive and retrieved the file. I decided to continue current backups with the original TB drive, but Time Machine does not recognize the drive. Does anyone have a clear understanding of how drives are identified? I can select the old 1-TB drive, but I'm afraid it will wipe the previous backups.
At this point I am tempted to buy a 2 TB drive, clone the recent Backup drive (250 meg) and continue with that drive... (Put the old TB drive in the safe) Anyone have a better plan?
Thanks, Sam

samtc wrote:
I can select the old 1-TB drive, but I'm afraid it will wipe the previous backups.
You're on the right track.
Just select the new drive via TM Preferences > Select Disk. Time Machine will not erase the drive. I would strongly recommend, however, that you use different names for the two drives, so you're sure which one is which. (Time Machine keeps track by the UUID so it doesn't really care about the name).
To rename a drive, right-click it in a Finder Sidebar.
Time Machine figures out what to do based on what's on your system, and what it finds on the backup disk you point it to. (That's how you can have separate, independent backups on two different TM drives.)
Normally, it will just do a usual incremental backup of everything that's changed since the last backup +*to that drive.+* If it's been a few days, it may have to do a "deep traversal" to figure out what's changed, which just takes a bit longer in the +Calculating changes+ phase (and if you're on 10.6.3, you'll see "Scanning nnn files" on the TM Preferences panel.)
After 3 months, however, it might do a new, full backup, which means it might have to delete a number of old backups to make enough room.
At this point I am tempted to buy a 2 TB drive, clone the recent Backup drive (250 meg) and continue with that drive... (Put the old TB drive in the safe) Anyone have a better plan?
That will work, too. The one thing you cannot do, is merge the two sets of backups.

Using TM to backup multiple boot drives

hello all,
Relatively new to TM. I have new Mac Pro's each with 2 320 gig drives, each with a different OS configuration - 1 boot drive for Final Cut Pro, the other boot drive for Avid.
I want to use TM to backup both of these drives whithin each OS. It seems that no matter what OS i am in, the backup is always made to a folder named the same thing "John Doe's Backup".
Its seems though when i am in Boot drive 1 and backup TM names my back up the same things as when i am in Boot Drive 2.
Does this make sense. Can anyone help? Do i just change the name of the computer on one of the boot drives?
Any info would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
MB

MustafaEditor wrote:
i tried renaming my alternate boot drive
no, don't rename the drive. that will do nothing. rename the computer. boot from that drive, go to system preferences->sharing and change the name of the computer. that's the name that TM uses.
but when i instruct time machine to "back up now" the backup that mounts is still named the same as my other boot drive.
I don't understand what you mean by that.
not sure where the backups.backupdb folder is located?
the folder backups.backupdb is located on the backup drive and contains all TM backups. inside there should be folders with the names of the computers that are being backed up. if I understand yoursetup there should be two folders there with different names. however, there should normally be no reason for you to look inside that folder using finder.
as you said there may be different folders whithin there but i don't know where to find those folders.
thanks for any help you can provide.
best
Mustafa

Multiple Hard drive how to customize Time machine backup

i know we can do mutiple HD back up using timemachine .
But-
is there way i can costomize what to back up for each hard drive?
because-
im back up 2 diifferent hard drives.
my computer is almost 4TB to fully back up.
i have
4TB External HD
and Apple airport time captule 3TB.
looks like i have to do exact ONE Setting ( Option) for both HD.
is there anyway i can do timemachine back up different setting
for two different Hard drives?
such as
1st drive 4TB back up fully
2nd drive back up ony music and movie
ONLY using timeachine so always scheduled to be back up. and i can go back using timemachine...
please help

You have a lot of data to protect. With that much data you may want to consider cloned backups instead of Time Machine backups. You would need at least one backup hard drive for each live hard drive. Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and Super Duper! (SD) are good applications to use.
Closing backup techniques are covered here.
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
From your description you appear to be storing as single copy of some of your data (music and movies) on the Time Capsule 3 TB drive. If so, that is not a good idea. If that drive crashes you will lose that data, even if there is a copy of it in the Time Machine backup because the Time Machine backup and the live data are on the same drive.
So I suggest you reorganize your large live data onto external hard drives that are not the 3 TB Time Capsule drive and then create a backup drive for each external live drive and run CCC or SD to clone them. You can continue to backup the internal drive to the Time Capsule but, in addition, I would make a cloned copy of it on external backup an external hard drive.
If the data that won’t fit on your internal system drive will fit on the external 4 TB drive then you would have only one external drive to clone. If it really is more then 4 TB of total data then you could use two external live drives and two clone drives.

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

Transferring data from 750GB backup drive to new MacBook Pro with 256 Gb PCI-e flash storage?

Yesterday my late-2008 aluminium unibody MacBook died - absolutely and definitively. I've tried SMC reset multiple times to no avail. However, it served me well for almost six years and it's now time to move on. I've decided to buy a 13 inch MacBook Pro Retina with 256Gb PCI-e flash storage. Obviously, it will come with Mavericks installed as the operating system.
When it died, my MacBook was running OS X 10.8.5, the original hard drive had been replaced with a Western Digital 750GB, 7200 rpm drive of which I believe about 350GB was used. I keep two x 1Tb Lacie Rugged backup drives, each of which has both Time Machine and SuperDuper Bootable Clone backups.
My questions are these -
1.     How should I proceed to transfer my data from my external backup drives to my new MacBook Pro Retina, given the difference in storage capacity of my existing backup drives and my new MacBook Pro?
2.     I have over 32,000 photos in my iPhoto Library which, obviously, consume a big slab of disk space. I'm not sure how I go about 'quarantining' the iPhoto Library so that it doesn't use all the flash drive storage.
3.      One of the Lacie Rugged's has a 'triple interface' - i.e. USB 2, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. The other has a USB 2 and 2 x Firewire 800 (IIRC).    The MacBook Pro Retina has two USB 3 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports. I want to continue to use the Lacies as my backup drives. Am I better off to use the USB ports or should I invest in a Thunderbolt to USB cable? Does it make any real difference in terms of backing up (which, in my case, doesn't have to be all that speedy).
4.     What else should I be thinking about? I know I'm bound to have overlooked the most obvious problems but can't think what they may be ...
Cheers
Tricia

Patricia Henwood wrote:
3.      One of the Lacie Rugged's has a 'triple interface' - i.e. USB 2, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. The other has a USB 2 and 2 x Firewire 800 (IIRC).    The MacBook Pro Retina has two USB 3 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports. I want to continue to use the Lacies as my backup drives. Am I better off to use the USB ports or should I invest in a Thunderbolt to USB cable? Does it make any real difference in terms of backing up (which, in my case, doesn't have to be all that speedy).
USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2, so you can use the old USB cables. For faster data transfer rates, Firewire 800 would be available using this adapter:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapte r
Firewire 800 is about twice as fast as USB2, theoretically.
Ciao.

Wiki: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption

I have lately found myself with the issue of having multiple hard drives and wanting to do LVM stuff & encryption with while retaining maximum flexibility. After scanning through wikis, manpages and forum entries I came up with a solution for myself. The only thing I don't cover with it is mounting while booting as I don't need and can't test it.
I want to share the knowledge I gained and help other people find a solution faster and so I wrote a Wiki entry (first on my user page). I would now like to hear the opinion of the community regarding the following questions:
Do you see any security risks with my solution (especially the part on storing the unencrypted keyfile on a ramdisk)?
Do you think this text is worthy for a wiki entry or should I keep it in the forums?
Do you spot any errors (typing or else)?
Would you improve this article anywhere?
Of course, if you have further comments, I would like to here them as well. And now without further ado: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption.
Regards,
javex
P.S.: As a small side question: Is my user page a good playground for article creation or would you recommend some other area where to do this (since here noone else could improve the article while in this early stage)?

mwmmartin wrote:
I have a 1 TB hard drive; but I have a 500GB and 250GB usb external hard drives.
Wouldn't it be cool if I could make the two external hard drives a RAID drive and use Time Machine to use all the 750GB of external memory to do my backups???
You can, but I would +*strongly recommend against+* it. See +Concatenated RAID+ in the Help for Disk Utility.
There are several potential problems:
Depending on how much data is on your 1 TB drive, 750 GB may not be enough to back it up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
To set up a +Concatenated RAID+ set, both drives will be erased.
When (not if) either drive fails, you'll lose all the data on both.
Both drives must be connected any time you do a backup or want to browse your backups.
Especially with USB, if one drive wakes from sleep, or spins up, quickly enough, but the other one doesn't, the backup may fail and/or your backups may be corrupted.
For now, it looks like my only solution is to go buy a bigger external hard drive and spend more money,,,
That's your best solution +*by far.+* Anything else is taking a large risk with your backups.

Multiple backup drives

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