Recovering Time Machine after backups were deleted

The event I will describe occurred from an incomplete operation. Hindsight is 20/20. After the mistake, I stopped using the Time Machine drive.
Fearing that my Time Machine drive (1 TB) was becoming full, I proceeded to delete some backups between the start date and the present. Thinking that on the dates I deleted nothing really changed, I thought it was safe.
The dialog appeared, "Preparing to delete files..." and was still on the screen when I realized that any deletion was idiotic. The dialog never changed to indicate files were actually being deleted. After inspection, some files were deleted. There is only a small subset of backups remaining. As no data was ever written to the drive, I'm sure I can recover all or most files.
What is the best path to recover as much backup data as possible? I own the Stellar Phoenix recovery program.
What should I know about the structure of Time Machine archives? My latest attempts have resulted in almost no complete files but rather in hundreds of files named "iNode xxxxxxx" being recovered. I don't find that helpful at all. All changes can be reconstructed with work. All I care about are the original downloaded files. The diff files (I assume that is how TM works) are negligible.
Thank you for helping this Macintosh and TM amateur.
Robert

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't do a very good job of warning people: +*Never, ever, move, change, or delete anything in your TM backups via the Finder.+* That can hopelessly corrupt them.
They do have special "deny everybody everything" permissions, but that isn't enough, as you've found out.
Just for future reference, see #12 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Time Machine uses some rather complex techniques, so it can perform only incremental backups of what's new or changed, but have each backup be, in effect, a full one. This is done with multiple "hard links" to the actual backup items, at both the file and directory level. Think of them as multiple aliases. Few 3rd-party apps understand this. So be sure your recovery program is fully compatible with Leopard.
I think that +Data Rescue II+ is, but I've never used it, so can't be sure.
Most likely, the best you'll be able to recover are some "raw" files.

Similar Messages

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    Beautje wrote:
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  • Recover time machine old backups

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    Command-R to the rescue.
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  • Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

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    Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
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    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
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  • I have chosen to fil migrate from old ibook to new MacBook Pro using Time Machine after establishing admin account. I now have two admin. accounts and wish to delete the later one and transfer files manually. I am worried I will loose both accounts. ??

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  • Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion

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  • Time Machine after Migration Assistant restore

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    Pondini wrote:
    Michael Lowry wrote:
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    The iTunes Library was not restored.
    Was it in the default location (the +<your home folder>/Music+ folder)?
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    I hadn’t seen that option. That fixed it. Thanks!
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    Ordinarily it does; this is quite unusual.
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  • Time machine back up and deleting photos from macbook pro

    I have a macbook pro. I need to free some space on my hard drive. As I am a keen photographer I decided it was best to have at lest to back up in the event than one fails. I keep one off site at a friends. This way if the unthinkble happens.. fire, flood theft etc I do not lose all my images. To do this I require 2 hard drives. Having purchased the second I thought it would make sense to actually do a Time Machine back up as previous back ups were only of photos.
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    There are several concepts that may help you create a defense-in-depth approach to securing your valuable data.
    - Your data is much more valuable than external disk drives.  Do not hesitate to purchase the size and number of external drives you need for great (not just good) backup practices.
    - Always maintain at least two copies of any data.  This means never place live (offloaded) files on a backup volume, even in a separate partition.  If the drive fails the backup and the live files will go poof together. 
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    - Place the offloaded live files on a separate disk drive.  Then you will need to backup that live volume or if that offload volume fails then poof again.
    - You already some of this base covered.  Maintaing two copies (one backup) is good practice.  Maintaining more than two copies (two or more backups) is a better practice.  Maintaining multiple copies in multiple backup formats is a great practice.  Time Machine is great for restoring accidentally deleted or altered data but it is a complex system that is more prone to failure than simpler schemes such as cloning.  I recommend maintaining both Time Machine and cloned backups of the internal drive and cloned backups of offload drive.
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    - External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
    - Backup drives 1 and  2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A and B.
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    - External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
    - Internal drive —> Clone backup to partition C on the backup drives.
    - Backup drives 1 and  2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A, B and C.
    A great feature of having a clone of your internal drive is if the internal drive crashes you can boot off of the backup disk while you replace the internal drive.  As mentioned above it also avoids Time Machine backup/restore problems.  I have had Time Machine full restores fail so I do not trust them as my only backup method but I find them very handy for restoring individual files.
    Create partitions sufficiently large enough for each backup source.  Time Machine should be about 50% or more larger than the volume it is backing up to leave room for the older incremental backups.  The cloned backup partitions need only be as large as the volumes they are backing up, or larger if you include incremental backups in your cloning scheme.  This means you may need 2 or 3 TB backup drives.  (4 TB drives are not yet reliable so avoid them.)
    For more information on great backup schemes see:
    Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
    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
    PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

  • Time Machine hourly backup seems a tad large

    Hi all
    Occasionally, my hourly Time Machine incremental backups to my Time Capsule seem a tad large. One hour the backup is a sensible size, then an hour later, when I've been doing very little on my machine, the backup is massive (as in, several gigabytes).
    Not only that, but the backup seems to grow in size as its happening. the pictures below should help illustrate.
    The backup is listed as being 719MB, only an hour after a more modest backup. Time Machine seems to be claiming that is has transferred all of the required backup:
    !http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4988/picture2gih.png!
    But then, only two minutes later, see how the situation has changed:
    !http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3739/picture3m.png!
    And the situation continues:
    !http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9339/picture5.png!
    Any ideas? This issue happens intermittently (although it is happening now... that last image was taken a few minutes ago and the backup was still going - up to 3.1GB - before I told it to stop).
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    Cheers.

    Hi,
    I had the same problem today as well. The last backup was done this morning at 2 a.m. When I turned my PowerBook G4 on again this afternoon, the backup size continually grew, just like on your machine, Rob. I aborted the backup a couple of times, deleted the inProgress file, but it always got bigger and bigger. After downloading Time Machine Buddy and Time Tracker, I just let Time Machnine "do it's thing". Luckily, I had enough free space on my WD MyBook 500 GB I use for the backups, because it stopped only at 24.8 GBs, after initially displaying 61,3 MB in the menu bar, and requesting 1.05 GB according to Time Machine Buddy.
    Time Machine Buddy protocol:
    Starting standard backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.05 GB requested (including padding), 32.74 GB available
    Copied 139261 files (24.8 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.16 GB requested (including padding), 7.36 GB available
    Copied 7042 files (2.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Starting post-backup thinning
    Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-202501: 7.36 GB now available
    Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-192342: 7.37 GB now available
    Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-123736: 7.37 GB now available
    Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-113526: 7.38 GB now available
    Post-back up thinning complete: 4 expired backups removed
    Backup completed successfully.
    So I took a look at Time Tracker to see what was backed up. I was suprised to see, that the biggest chunk was my Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support folder. This folder is 23,9 GB in size, mainly because it contains Final Cut Studio media and templates. Time Machine backed it up completey. This seems weired, because none of the files I looked at in this folder were changed during the last couple of months, if not the last year, since I installed them. I don't know why Time Machine would backup all of those unchanged files.
    For the sake of completeness, the external drives contains other, non-backup, files as well.
    I hope this gives you some more information to work with Pondini.
    Greetings,
    Claas

  • Time Machine vs Backup

    I plan on reformatting my computer and would love to know if I should use Time Machine or Backup. I want to keep some of the programs and data from the computer, but not all of it. Which one will allow me to select data to "bring back"?
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    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
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    Unless your internal HD is over 85% full, your best bet may be to get an external drive thats at least twice the size of the data on your Mac and let TM do a full backup. Then start identifying and deleting the things you don't want. If you delete something you shouldn't, you can easily get it back from Time Machine (for a while).
    Most applications on Macs can just be deleted. Some need uninstallers. Apps will be where you put them, hopefully in your Applications folder. Most data will be in +<your home folder>/Library/Application Support,+ usually in a file or folder containing the name of the app or maker.
    Unless you're very tight on space, you could make a folder named +Apps to be Deleted+ or something similar, at the top level of your home folder, and move them and their data files there, rather than delete them immediately. You could even create a sub-folder for those apps that have data files, and put both the apps and files inside them. Once you're sure they're not needed, delete them.
    Doing it the other way is much riskier; if you omit things you actually need, all sorts of things may go wrong, unpredictably.
    For info on Time Machine, you might want to review this Time Machine Tutorial
    and this: Time Machine Features
    and perhaps the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of the Time Machine forum.

  • Time Machine everytime backups everyting!

    My main system disk "Macintosh HD", 500 GB
    Media disk is exernal disk named "Media", 1000 GB.
    My Time Machine disk is named "DeLorean" and its external 1,500 GB.
    I have about 340 GB more free space in the Time Machine disk than my data currently uses up.
    My problem is that the Time Machine VERY often starts its backup FROM THE SCRATCH!
    Doing FULL BACKUP! Deleting over 800 GB of data. If you see my logs, you will see it doesnt like something about the external "Media" disk.
    It does this thing called "Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Media reason:must scan subdirs|"... * see logs later.
    Funny thing is, if i delete/erase the backup, or let it do the FULL backup when it wants, it usually after that does the normal smaller backup just fine.
    BUT if I unmount the Media disk even once and do one incremental backup(which it does fine), then after i mount the Media back, next time it does this FULL backup and says in the logs about the Deep even scan.
    All my disks are encrypted via FileVault2. Shouldnt time machine still work or is this setup fine?
    Here are the logs. Yesterday i even shuffled all my disks and erased the Media and the time machine disk and encrypted them again.
    You can see the first full backup starting at 2 am, then ONE succesfull incremental backup while both disk were still mounted. When i woke up at (13:20 pm) I did one incremental backup without the Media (ummounted it) and then again new one with media mounted (13:29 pm) and BAM ! It started FULL backup (deleting 800+ GB of data). Nothing has been changed on the media disk during that time. Weird !
    Logs showing fresh first new backup stuff:
    Dec 18 01:03:48 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 81.9 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1469 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 02:03:49 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 172.8 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1516 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 03:03:50 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 264.8 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1563 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 04:03:50 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 357.1 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1615 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 05:03:51 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 449.1 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1666 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 06:03:51 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 541.5 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1696 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 07:03:52 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 633.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1741 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 08:03:52 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 725.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1786 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 08:10:55 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1796 files (736.3 GB) from volume Media.
    Dec 18 09:03:53 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 773.9 GB of 1047.6 GB, 621723 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 10:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 803.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 936589 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 11:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 878.4 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1019840 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 12:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 951.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1107382 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 13:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1034.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1110125 of 1156879 items
    Dec 18 13:13:49 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1140722 files (1041.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:13:58 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: 1.72 GB required (including padding), 341.53 GB available
    Dec 18 13:13:58 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
    Dec 18 13:14:15 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 6665 files (1.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:14:17 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copying Lion Recovery set
    Dec 18 13:14:42 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Backed up Lion Recovery to /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
    Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Starting post-backup thinning
    Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
    Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Backup completed successfully.
    Ends.
    This backup i Initiated after i woke up, with both system disk and external "media" mounted:
    Dec 18 13:22:02 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Starting standard backup
    Dec 18 13:22:02 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
    Dec 18 13:22:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: 1.70 GB required (including padding), 340.96 GB available
    Dec 18 13:22:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Dec 18 13:23:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Dec 18 13:23:48 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
    Dec 18 13:23:55 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 1780 files (8.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:23:56 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
    Dec 18 13:23:56 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
    Dec 18 13:23:59 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 1596 files (268 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Starting post-backup thinning
    Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
    Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Backup completed successfully.
    Ends.. This seems to work like it should.
    Now, see the time stamps, i just toke some coffee and came back....
    This next backup is done while "Media" drive has been umounted:
    Dec 18 13:28:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Starting standard backup
    Dec 18 13:28:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
    Dec 18 13:28:01 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
    Dec 18 13:28:04 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Copied 1455 files (78 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:28:04 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
    Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Copied 115 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Starting post-backup thinning
    Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
    Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Backup completed successfully.
    Incremental backup seems to finnish ok, without the "Media" drive.
    This backup is the third one done just after couple minutes after i mounted the "Media" drive back on:
    Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Starting standard backup
    Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
    Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Media reason:must scan subdirs|
    Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Finished scan
    Dec 18 13:31:51 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: 884.92 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
    Dec 18 13:31:51 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
    Dec 18 13:31:52 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted backup /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb/imac/2011-12-18-131415 containing 8.7 MB; 341.40 GB now available, 884.92 GB required
    Dec 18 13:31:52 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Removed 1 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
    Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted backup /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb/imac/2011-12-18-132359 containing 736.30 GB; 1.05 TB now available, 884.92 GB required
    Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted 2 backups containing 736.31 GB total; 1.05 TB now available, 884.92 GB required
    Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Dec 18, 2011
    Dec 18 13:35:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Copied 526 files (4.3 GB) from volume Media.
    Dec 18 13:35:03 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backup canceled.
    I canceled that scan(it would take about 12 hours again
    OK. Couple questions:
    - Why time machine does this deep scan? What does it actually mean?
    - Why time machine thinks that it needs to do a 800GB worth of new backup. Those data have not changed a bit (they are movies).
    - How its related to the unmount/mounting the Media drive?
    I would really hope some answers from somebody. I have strugled with this issue almost a month now.
    Thanks!

    ECONOMAN wrote:
    Time Machine Incremental Backups S...L...O...W and seem to bog down things so as to make the machine unusable. Why doesn't it simply backup changes, not the entire drive (less exclusions)?
    Normally, that's exactly what it does. So start by calming down.
    And, it gobbles processing power so I can't even check mail.
    Can you schedule the frigging thing or do I just stop it all the time in order to get anything done?
    It's cute, but kind of worthless.
    First, are these backups larger than you think they ought to be? If so, that's likely at least part of your problem. See #D4 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum, for some possible causes and a way to find out just what's going on.
    If that's no help, or they're still slow, try all the things in #D2 of the Troubleshooting Tip.
    If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.

  • Using time machine to backup Logic Projects

    Hi
    I was wondering if it is possible to use time machine to backup my Logic Projects. I have a seperate internal drive that I use to keep all my user data on, like my Logic projects. I want to use time machine to back up these projects onto a external firewire drive.
    Can timemachine only backup your systems drive and therefore I would need to have my Logic projects based stored on it?

    Yes - time machine can back up any drive. I am using 3 drives: system drive, a USB2 drive for Time machine backups and a firewire 800 drive for Logic Studio projects, instruments, samples, audio, etc. TM backs up my system and FW drives to the USB drive.
    Time machine options (in system preferences) allow you to exclude/include drives so you just need to set it to include your second internal drive.
    The only thing I'm not sure of is whether this effects the loop browser. Oddly, when I was experimenting with using aliases for Apple loops, Logic actually found the TM backup files when it couldn't locate the original GB loops! After some file moving and index deleting I cleared all loops but now I have duplicate entries again in Logic - possibly due to TM, but I have not verified this.
    -Scott

  • Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

    Hi. I've been working with a lot of family video lately and my internal hard drive has filled up significantly. iMovie doesn't seem to have a good archiving facility like Adobe InDesign which I use at work were all the relevant files are gathered together into one folder. Apple advised me to relocate my movie files to an external hard drive and herein lies my query.
    Is there a way for me to set Time Machine to backup both my iMac's internal drive and the external hard drive that would contain my movie files? I've been using Time Machine for my backups for a few years now, but backing up the external as well has me stumped. If Time Machine could be used then all the necessary file accociations etc would be safely backed up as well - that's why I don't want to have to manually backup the external.
    Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

    7string48 wrote:
    Thanks so much Pondini!!  You just quickly answered a question that none of the Mac people in 3 stores or Apple Care have been able to answer.If you can format it HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work.  If not, it won't.  
    I'm not too surprised about the Apple Stores, as they don't get much training on Time Machine.  But AppleCare sure ought to know. 
    Oh...what about if the external drive is an array...like a Drobo with it's own proprietary formatting...I guess that would not work...??
    I've never used a Drobo.  A number of folks here have used them as their Time Machine drives, but I don't recall seeing anyone try to back one up with TM, so can't say for sure.  But if you can format it as HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work.  If not, it won't.
    At least part of the reason is, Time Machine uses the File System Event Store, a hidden log of changes that OSX keeps on each Mac-formatted disk/partition, to figure out what's changed and needs to be backed-up.  See How Time Machine works its Magic for details.
    See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations of backing-up multiple volumes with Time Machine.
    However, even if it will work, that may not be your best strategy, depending on your circumstances:
    Since Time Machine keeps copies of things you've changed or deleted, the destination needs to be considerably larger than the data being backed-up.  How much larger varies widely depending on how you use your Mac, but a general "rule of thumb" is, it needs at least twice the space to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
    If you have a large internal HD, fairly full, plus a large external HD, and the files on the external don't change frequently, you might want to use Time Machine for the internal, and a different app to a different disk or partition, on a different schedule, for the external.  Especially if space is a consideration, you might not need to keep previous versions of files on the externals.  See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some alternatives.

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