Time machine using 2 drives

Hi,
I've got a friend with a new Mac Pro, he's doing very heavy stuff with photoshop, very heavy images. He's book writer, including a lots of very high quality images.
About once a year he publishes a new book.
OS X, including apps and his current work, remain all in the internal flash drive. The other books, and less frequently used documents, resides in an external TB HD.
Today, he uses TM for backing up the OS X, apps and his current work.
Besides, he wants weekly backup of the other stuff (other books, and less frequently used documents).
Is there a way for doing this with TM?
I thought maybe using the option in TM that allows you to make backspin 2 drives, as when you select a drive for TM, you can choose an additional drive, besides the first one. So he could use an HD for the backup of the internal flash (current work) and connect another TM external drive once a week, for the less frequently used documents.
Is there a way fo configuring this kind of backup in TM?
Any suggestion, please?
When i define 2 HD for TM backups, what happens when i connect the second drive? Will he copy anything to the "new" drive or append to the first one?
I'd appreciate a prompt reply, as he's invited me to come and solve this later today:)
Thanks a lot.
Joel.

Thanks for your prompt reply.
Do you to change the backup settings all the time? This is quite a pain:)
Thanks.

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Time Machine Hard Drive for other uses other than backups

I use a WD My Studio II, 2 TB Hard Drive.
Time machine uses the drive as its backup drive, but since the the drive is so big I would like to use it as a general hard drive too. In other words, on a single hard drive, can I have Time Machine backing up my Macbook, as well as use the remaining space to store general stuff that is to big for my mackbook.
The may seem a little illogical, but bare in mind I have the RAID 1 setting, so the one drive is automatically backed up onto the 2nd 1TB drive.
I hope this makes sense, and I hope someone has an answer.
Regards
H

you might want to consider partitioning your drive, one for TM backups and one for other stuff.
see these user tips: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/3.html and http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/6.html
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

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?

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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/

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Download the supplemental fix to 10.7.5
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Why not connect both drives to the computer, turn off the wi-fi, and then copy the files over. Or you can use Disk Utility/Restore to move the files. See the note - it will erase the WD drive.
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Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
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Clone - SuperDuper
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I am trying to install Snow Leopard so I can then upgrade to Lion on my MacBook Pro. (It's now running an older version of OS X. I went through this whole process successfully on my desktop.)
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The Apple store may use or have these...
You must repair the HD, your best bet is likely DiskWarrior.
Your best bet is DiskWarrior, you need the CD/DVD though.
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
But others that may work…
Drive Genius…
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
TechTool Pro…
http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=83
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Has anyone enabled time machine using a link sys router and external hard drive? And if so how? I have a Linksys E4200 wireless router with a usb port on it. I also have a Western Digital Elements 1TB external hard drive. I would like to be able to use this hard drive with time machine. Has anyone done so and if so how can I do so?

You might get some responses, but we don't see many Linksys users on an Apple forum so it may be awhile before you see an answer.
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I'm using Time Machine to back up my OpSys hard drive to an external USB connected hard drive.
It will run without a problem for a week, or two weeks, maybe even a month before I get a message telling me the backup failed because (a) could not read from the external drive (b) could not write to the external drive. I'm told to run disk repair and when I do I am told it cannot be repaired. It is always an invalid node value. Something like the node should be 4067 but is 125429461.
Erasing the USB connected disk and starting over seems to work better if I first erase the disk using data protection (write 0s across the entire drive). I've never seen an error when performing the protected erase.
*Is the partition / format / erase utility capable of producing an error message if the hard drive has problems?*
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While I could buy a new hard drive and see if that solves the problem, I thought I would see if anyone here has any useful feedback.
Another possibility is the USB enclosure is the source of the problem. An intermittent failure of some kind within the enclosure could easily make solving this very challenging.
I'm very interested to read any and all feedback,
Thank you,
~ Allen

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
It's unlikely a Time Machine problem; Time Machine uses the normal OSX facilities to read & write, they're the ones that actually manage the +file structure.+ Time Machine does use a complex and somewhat unusual file structure, though, including a huge number of hard links (sort of like aliases).
You're probably right that it's somewhere in the chain of port, cable, enclosure, and drive. So try different ports, cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another). If that doesn't help, it's probably the enclosure or drive.

Hello I bought my wife a new MacBook Pro, in setting it up for her, I took her Time Machine external drive to migrate onto the new machine but her old MBP not only was on 10.6, it was my old machine which I was still Administrator for. i plugged in the

Hello
I bought my wife a new MacBook Pro, in setting it up for her, I took her Time Machine external drive to migrate onto the new machine but her old MBP not only was on 10.6, it was my old machine which I was still Administrator for.
i plugged in the external drive to start the migration process after entering her name and username from the old machine which gave me the options on transferring the old data over.
I also unchecked the Administrative end that had my info hoping that ONLY her data, files, etc., would be the ones sent over to her new machine which I wanted her to be the ONLY Administrator for. All went like clockwork until the restart.
Normally the screen should show the username and only need the password but both entries were blank, as in ‘Other’ sign in option available only. I entered her name and password, nothing….used her username and password, nothing. Used my old Administrator name and password, NOTHING!
I tried defaulting to factory settings from the Restore feature but it directs me to notify Apple. I tried in Terminal to change the password, nothing. I tried to boot from MY external drive and it doesn’t recognize it. I tried to even use my external drive which actually has the Mavericks upgrade, nothing!
Basically I can only get the startup screen which isn’t accepting the username/password or the Restore feature which doesn’t offer any options helpful!
Please, how do I start from scratch and start over here? Or simply change the Administrator name and password so I can proceed with everything thats already on there? I wish I could even boot from another drive but no luck on anything!

First, on the old machine, make your wife's account an admin one. Log into it and delete yours. Then, update the TM backup. Finally, use Internet recovery mode, ⌘⌥R, erase the HD, and restore the OS. One first boot, follow the steps outlined in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide.

Can I clone my Time Machine hard drive, to another HD, and store Off Site?

Good day All, I love my new Macbook, but am trying to come up with a foolproof method of backing up all my data, documents, and business.
I have become very nervous about BACKUPS, and want to have an OFF-SITE week old backup done on a external Hard Drive?
I presently have a 200 gig Time Machine backup/archive, and have a daily clone with Super Duper & Carbon Copy Clone. However these hard drives are at home, so should the building burn down, or should we get broken into, there goes my business and digital life.
My thought is to buy an external hard drive and clone my current Time Machine hard drive to the external on a weekly basis, and store it off-site or at a friends house.
Would I be able to do a clone of my TM HD archive, and have it still useable / bootable / recoverable should a tragedy happen?
I would like to upload it all up to Mozy, or BackBlaze, or similar offering, but 200 gig is way too big.
Is anybody cloning a Time Machine hard drive and able to restore from it?
Thanks for reading my post, and am lookin forward to all of your comments, IAN...

Hi Ian,
Sorry I missed the discussion last night. I'll tell you how I'm accomplishing the backup task and you can let me know if this is what you're trying to do.
I now have 2 external HDs. A 1TB Seagate and a 250 GB LaCie. The LaCie used to be my TM backup drive, but it was the same size as my internal iMac drive. I knew I'd eventually need a bigger drive so I bought the 1TB Seagate yesterday and cloned the LaCie drive onto it using SuperDuper. The only thing on the LaCie drive was TM backups. Now the TM backup are on the Seagate. I unmounted the old TM drive and changed the name of the new drive to "Time Machine". I activated TM and it picked right up where it left off. I did test it by restoring an old file. I also changed a current file and made sure TM was still operating as advertised. Everything worked as expected.
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If you're very lucky, you might be able to salvage the drive mechanism, and the data, by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

Erasing Time Machine hard drive after formatting for both PPC and Intel

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Jasonmo,
First, let's talk about the various partition schemes. A partition scheme applies to the entire drive. Specifically, these are different maps written to the drive, within which volumes are created. As such, this is an either/or thing; your drive is partitioned using either the GUID Scheme, or the Apple Scheme, not both.
"Live" partitioning or re-sizing of existing volumes is supported only under the GUID Partition Scheme. If the drive wasn't using this scheme, you would not be able to re-size as you were attempting to do. Even re-sizing under the GUID scheme requires that the drive's maps and directory structures be in very good shape, if it is to work without hitch.
Are you absolutely certain that there isn't some physical problem with the drive, or with its interface (cables and such)? If it is operating normally, you should be able to re-partition it without problems. In DIsk Utility, select the drive (not a named volume that will appear indented underneath), then click the "Partition" tab. If you wish to be able to re-size volumes later, you must choose the GUID scheme from the "Options..." dialogue sheet. Set appropriate sizes for the volumes, then click "Apply." Doing so will destroy all current volumes and data on the drive.
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Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
Reset the System Management Controller
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HT204350 USB Time Machine backup drive not visble in Mavericks Migration Assistant

Hi all,
Yesterday I updated my dad's iMac from Snow Leopard (SL) to Mavericks. Seemed to work ok apart from the fact that turning on iCloud wiped out the calendars. In order to get the calendars back I restored from the most recent SL Time Machine backup. This turned out to be a big mistake! It did get the calendars back but stopped all programs not included in the OS X install to stop working!
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Thanksin advance!

If you synchronize any of your calendars with a server such as iCloud, disable that synchronization. Quit Calendar.
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~/Library/Calendars
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File ▹ Export ▹ Export…
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File ▹ New Calendar
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*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Time machine using 2 drives

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