Time Machine is great but "how to" with multiple drives?

I like time machine, but like to use it to back up 3 or 4 different internal drives to 3 or 4 dedicated external drives of equal size. For example: 250Gb MAC main drive to an external HD 250Gb in size, Video drive 1Tb in size (used for HD video editing) to a 1Tb external drive and a 750Gb Media drive to a 750 external drive. I would like to keep them all separate if possible but open to better ideas.
What I do now, is use a Lacie drive and backup software to BU the main drive once in a while. Timemachine backups the rest except Aperture library (done by Aperture Vaults) and Video drive (which will shortly have its own backup drive).

Sounds like you'd be better off using something like SuperDuper, especially for your video drive which likely sees frequent changes. It also seems like all you need to do is clone your media drive rather than keep revisions. IMO your backup drive for your main drive is a little small. A general rule of thumb that I have seen is that you use a hard drive with at least twice the capacity of your drive to be backed up. That way you would be able to keep a relatively large archive of old backups.
Hope this helps.

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Time Machine working great but now want to back up an NTFS USB HD also

Got my Time Machine working well backing up my whole system onto a 1TB LaCie USB Hard drive formatted: Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
However I regularly use a 500GB LaCie which is formatted NTFS (where all of my MP3s are located on for iTunes) and would like this to be included in the Time Machine Backups.
I installed NTFS-3G to make this data accessable and editable etc.
After a few hours of trying, I still cannot seem to get this drive to backup. I made sure it wasnt an exception in the Options Tab.
Anyone know what it is I am doing wrong?
Cheers
James

This is from CCC's Help section:
+Supported configurations+
HFS formatted partition or hard drive+
+Hard drives in Firewire, eSATA and USB enclosures including Firewire-based iPods*+
+CCC will not backup directly to optical media (e.g. CD-ROM or DVD-ROM)+
+CCC is supported only on machines that officially support Mac OS X Tiger (or higher)+
and:
+Mac OS X is installed on an HFS+ filesystem. The HFS+ filesystem defines many types of metadata that describe non-data attributes of your files. Creation date, access control lists, permissions and ownership, Finder flags, and extended attributes are among the various metadata types defined in the HFS+ standard. To adequately back up all of your files and their associated metadata, CCC requires that your backup volume is also formatted as HFS.
+Additionally, Macintoshes can only boot from hard drives partitioned with either the Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme (PowerPC- or Intel-based Macs) or the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme (Intel-based Macs). The hard drive icons that you see in the Finder are volumes. The partition scheme of a hard drive describes how volumes are physically defined on the hard disk. Every hard drive has exactly one partition scheme and at least one volume. When you "partition" a hard drive, you simply create multiple volumes on that hard drive.+
+See the section of CCC's documentation labeled "Preparing a hard drive for use with Carbon Copy Cloner" (in the "General overview of the features of CCC" section) for step-by-step instructions for partitioning and formatting a new hard drive for use with CCC.+
I use it or SuperDuper to create a bootable clone; however, when I just want to copy certain files, I just use the drag 'n drop method - it just works.

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

The external drive must be connected to the Mac using either USB or FireWire
You must remove the external hard drive from the list of items that are "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Preferences.
Here's how:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click Options
Look for the name of the hard drive in the list of "excluded" items and click on it to highlight it
Click the -- (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the hard drive from the list of "excluded" items....so it will now be backed up
Strongly recommend that you do the first backup using Ethenret from your computer to the Time Capsule since the entire contents of the external drive will be copied on the first pass. Ethernet will be 3-5 faster than wireless.
Once you have the first backup done, you can use wireless for subsequent backups since they will nornally be much smaller....unless you add large files to the external drive.

TS3423 Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not s

Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not start?

sonjadg,
you can purchase a replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for your MacBook Pro from either Apple or iFixit. If Startup Manager is only showing an OS X Installer volume, then it sounds like the Mavericks installer had a problem midway through its installation process. To fix this, you’re going to need to erase your internal disk and reïnstall your original version of OS X from the grey Mac OS X Install DVD, use Software Update to get it back to 10.6.8 (presuming that your MacBook Pro originally came with Snow Leopard), and then restore from Time Machine.

I have just installed a 2TB time capsule on my iMac i7, it see my second 1TB hard drive but the 256 SSD doesn't come up in the list of hard drives I can back up. How can I enable the time machine to see my first SSD 256gb hard drive?

I have just installed a 2TB time capsule on my iMac i7, it see my second 1TB hard drive but the 256 SSD doesn't come up in the list of hard drives I can back up. How can I enable the time machine to see my first SSD 256gb hard drive?

iLife is preinstalled on all the Macs. If you purchased iLife in the App Store or your computer came without DVDs, open App Store > Purchases and download the applications. If your Mac came with discs, insert the Applications DVD and install iLife applications

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

Hi Clarkett99,
To use an external hard drive for your iTunes library, see the steps in this article -
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
iPhoto can be used in a similar way, follow the steps in this previous discussion -
how do I save photos and their albums...: Apple Support Communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3744259
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

HT201250 how do I disable time machine? I want to use my external drive as additional storage. But it mirrors everything I edit. If I remove a document, it removes it from the external drive as well.

how do I disable time machine? I want to use my external drive as additional storage. But it mirrors everything I edit. If I remove a document, it removes it from the external drive as well.
I purchased a 1 TB WD passport drive, formatted for Mac. I set it up originally (mistakenly) to backup time machine. I went back and set it to "do not backup" It still backs up evey document I edit. If I add a document when the drive is disconnected, it automatically adds it to the external drive the next time connect to the passport drive. If I remove a document the same thing happens.
I need additional storage to free up space on my laptop hard drive. This is not working the way I want it to. Help!

Do not backup your startup volume to another partition on the same drive. If the drive fails you have nothing. Always backup to another drive or volume on another drive.
The I/O error usually means there's a problem with the drive. Clone ASAP, then repartition and reformat the main drive. Then restore the clone. Here's the basic process:
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive.
Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the external one.
Boot from the external hard drive.
Erase the internal hard drive.
Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Do not quit Disk Utility.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.

How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
Click Time Machine
Click Options
Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
Everything above assumes that the hard drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Time Machine will only backup drives in that format.

I have the new 2011 macbook pro, with lion preinstalled. I want to change the harddrive. I have backed up everything on time machine. when i put my new blank hard drive in will the lion screen startup.How do i get the lion dmg when i am already using lion

I have the new 2011 macbook pro, with lion preinstalled. I want to change the harddrive. I have backed up everything on time machine. when i put my new blank hard drive in will the lion screen startup.How do i get the lion dmg when i am already using lion

NicholasLiban -
When you use the Lion restore as described, it does a fresh install on the hard drive that you can select at the beginning of the process. This provides a complete install of the very latest version of Lion, including the recovery partition. The drive that you choose for the installation destination winds up like what you would have on a brand new computer from Apple.
- Randy

How do i reset my mac completely? I have parental controls and cant seem to get to time machine cause i bought the computer with parental controls on it and they did not have the password. How do i completely reset my macbook pro?

how do i reset my mac completely? I have parental controls and cant seem to get to time machine cause i bought the computer with parental controls on it and they did not have the password. How do i completely reset my macbook pro?

If you have a rescue email address (which is not the same thing as an alternate email address) on your account then the steps on this page will give you a reset link on your account : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6170
If you don't have a rescue email address (you won't be able to add one until you can answer your questions) then you will need to contact Support in your country to get the questions reset.
Contacting Apple about account security : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5699
When they've been reset (and if you don't already have a rescue email address) you can then use the steps on this page to add a rescue email address for potential future use : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5620
Or, if it's available in your country, you could change to 2-step verification : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5570

Can you share photos between computers on a local time machine network. I have iMac with lots of pictures I would like to view on my MacBook Air. Does anyone know how to do this?

Can you share photos between computers on a local time machine network? I have iMac with lots of pictures I would like to view on my MacBook Air. Does anyone know how to do this?

Can you share photos between computers on a local time machine network? I have iMac with lots of pictures I would like to view on my MacBook Air. Does anyone know how to do this?

I bought a new mac and i migrate with time machine...but the backup was a little bit old and weren't save the latest modify i made in my website.. is it possible take the uploded site in iweb? sorry but i don't speak english very well.

I bought a new mac and i migrate with time machine...but the backup was a little bit old and weren't save the latest modify i made in my website.. is it possible take the uploded site in iweb? sorry but i don't speak english very well

But what can I cut and paste? the html code or image and text directly?
depend on which template you used.
if you use iweb photos page template then you need to search for my photos page solutions in this forum.
@ot: cut and paste from the online version
@rw: You can drag an image from the website to the Desktop
have your try your methods in iweb photos page?

If I already purchased FaceTime for Mac and recently upgraded my HD. How can I retrieve that app again? I found it in my Time Machine back up, but the files won't work. Please help.

If I already purchased FaceTime for Mac and recently upgraded my HD. How can I retrieve that app again? I found it in my Time Machine back up, but the files won't work. Please help.

Nope. I do the same exact thing. If you have DVD's and blu-rays you can't download a free application called Handbrake. You can set it to Apple TV2 automatic format and they will come out as playable m4v's that can play I'm iTunes. All you have to do is turn on Home Sharing in both iTunes and your Apple RV and you'll be good to go!

HT201250 My hard drive failed and I had a new one put in. I am trying to restore from my time machine. When I try to start the computer in recovery mode there is nothing in the time machine. Now I am trying with migration assistant and it is "looking for

HELP!!!

If you are talking about moving your application support files and preference files that are in the home/library folders that won't be a problem. I did it recently for the same reason. I would not move system library files but user library files will move without problems. I did not move the whole folder but I moved the files in the folder that I needed. I moved Mail,Safari, all the files for iPhoto and iTunes, my music libraries, and some others. The only issue I had with it was that for some reason I lost my playlists on iTunes, not the music library, just the playlists. I only had about 12 of them so it was no big deal but if you have a lot, that may be an issue. I don't know what I didn't move that caused that to happen.
If you are going to do backups in the future, using Time Machine is great. I use it. However I go one step further an use a program called Super Duper and actually clone my entire drive onto an external drive, then do incremental backups with it. That way, I have a complete clone of my drive and if something happens, I can get back to work quickly. I don't know if Carbon Copy Cloner, which is a very good program also, supports incremental backups or not but if it does than either one will work.

How to stop Time Machine backing up on a specific external hard drive?

I work on a iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use two external hard drives that are the exact same model, 2 TB WD My Book 1110 Media: one is intended for back-up, the other for storing video editing files. They're both connected through USB 2.0.
I set the "back-up" hard drive as back-up disk for Time Machine, through the Time Machine preferences. Now, everytime I connect the "video" hard drive, Time Machine recognizes it as a back-up disk, and starts backing up on it. I could delete the "Backups.backupdb" file that Time Machine had created by connecting the "video" hard drive to another Mac and moving it to the Trash, but as soon as I reconnect the "video" hard drive to my iMac, Time Machine backs up on it again.
Is there a way to "de-select" a hard drive from Time Machine's list of back-up disks?
Note: I should mention another thing that might indicate a conflict. When both hard drives "back-up" and "video" are connected to my iMac, if I open Final Cut Pro X, I can only see my "back-up" hard drive. To access the files I am working on, I need to eject the "back-up" hard drive, and suddenly the "video" drive appears.
If you have any idea of how to solve this conflict... I am a bit lost.
Thank you!

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Give them unique volume names using Disk Utility.
Then set Time Machine back up to that unique volume name.
For example, I regularly use 4 external drives (though they're not all the same model).
The descriptions quickly tell me which drives I have connected to my MacBook when open Finder:
My Time Machine backup volume is named 'Time Machine 1TB'.
My iPhoto backup volume is named 'iPhoto Backup 320GB'
My iTunes backup volume is named 'iTunes Backup 120GB'
and the last is 'Windows 7 Backup 250Gb' but since it's a Windows volume, it is formatted NTFS.
This likely means that you will have to erase and repartition one of your drives to name it.
You MIGHT be able to rename it using Finder, right-clicking on the volume, and selecting Rename (current volume name).
WARNING: I can't be certain of what just renaming it that way could screw up in the way of permissions and file links.
Within Disk Utility, it seems it is absolutely not possible to change a volume name without clicking the Partition tab, and that involves erasing.
Given the choice, I'd probably choose to rename (erase and repartition) the Time Machine drive. A current backup or two on Time Machine, and I'm good. I don't really need to go 'way back' to recover files, because I really don't ever erase anything. I just keep buying bigger drives!
And I still burn the 'absolutely critical, priceless, can't ever be without this stuff' files to DVD or CD at least monthly or quarterly, in case one of my TM or backup drives fails at the same time as my primary hard drive. Call me paranoid, but I worked in Information Technology for many years: Murphy was an optimist!
Message was edited by: kostby

Time Machine is great but "how to" with multiple drives?

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