OS X :: Can Time Machine Be Used For Extra Drives
Dec 28, 2010
I have a Mac Pro and currently have two drives in it, a system drive that's using as the startup disc and for most of my use. The 2nd drive is more like a server drive which is used on that system but also shared with all computers on my home network. i use it for things like clipart, backups of itunes from the laptops, media files, etc.
I just installed a 3rd hard drive and have been planning to set it up as a Time Machine drive for my Mac Pro. I have several questions though.
I assume when I do this it will just work as a Time Machine drive for my main system/startup drive, correct?
Is there a way I can use Time Machine for the 2nd drive in my system? In a sense setting up two Time Machine backups, one from the main drive to this new backup drive and the 2nd from the server drive to a 4th drive I can add in the future?
If the 2nd question is a No, is there a way I can set it up so that Time Machine simply backs up both the main drive and that 2nd, server drive, to the Time Machine drive? I really prefer not to use this option since both drives are 1TB and the hard drive I have just gotten as the time machine drive is 1.5TB. I think that should be okay for my main drive since it is only 30% used or so but with backing both onto it I don't think I have enough space to do it well.
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Sep 27, 2010
I have a question regarding Time Machine functionality. Here's my situation. I have two hard drives in my Pro: one that operates as a Boot drive, and one for storage. Right now I have Time Machine set up to backup my storage drive, but I was wondering if it was possible to have plug in a second external drive and use it to back up the Boot drive. I searched for a similar thread, but couldn't really find anything. Has anybody successfully done this?
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Dec 29, 2008
I've been using my external hard drive for Time Machine for a while now (a Western Digital My Book) and have only used up about 100 of its 500 GB capacity. However, I'd like to temporarily use the remaining space on the drive as extra storage, since my other hard drive just died. Is there any way to do this without erasing everything that I've backed up with Time Machine already?
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Sep 17, 2010
My iMac is currently using 192GB of the 1TB drive. I currently have a 250GB drive I'm using as a backup. My Time machine backups are starting to fail as it's telling me I only have about 60GB free, but it needs 85GB to do the backup. Any idea why it needs all the extra space?
Also, I know TM keeps several copies of the files based on the date - is there a way to purge older files (e.g. delete anything > 1 month old)?
I'm going to eventually get a larger drive for backups, but thought I had plenty of time since I'm only at 75% capacity on the backup drive
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Apr 20, 2009
I've been having a few problems with my TM backups since I got my new iMac (my MBA is working fine).
Something strange that I've noticed is when I enter into Time Machine (the program). Sometimes I see a bunch of my backups with times and dates where I can scroll through the different saves and restore if I want to. Other times though when I go into TM I only see the current save point. I can't scroll back and it only says Today on the right without any other save points. It is almost like I've only done one TM backup.
The other strange thing that I see is if I look at iStat. Sometimes it shows two Time Capsule hard drives and other times it shows only one. If I choose to change disk in Time Machine preferences the Time Capsule is listed twice. I don't think it has anything to do with a partition (which I never did) because both drives show the same used and free info (something like 377 free of 461) and I only have a 500GB drive.
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Dec 21, 2010
I've looked up a few threads on the subject but found no definite answer...
I'm wondering if using two separate external Firewire hard drives for backing up an iMac with the aid of Time Machine will work and be safe (not messing up things etc.)?
One external drive is now attached to the iMac, backing things up every 3 hours (I found the default hourly backup a bit too much so I installed Time Machine editor in order to change this). It works just the way it should.
But in case of theft, fire etc. it would be nice to have yet another backup drive as well. Naturally that drive would be stored in an off-site location and thus not backed up to that often, but at least I wouldn't lose absolutely all my files if my computer + regular backup drive was to be stolen or damaged in a fire, just the very latest files.
So let's say I pull out that drive every 2 weeks or so, disconnect the regular Time Machine drive, attach the "off-site stored drive" and tell Time Machine to do a backup right away. Would my computer be able to tell the two drives apart (I'd give them different names of course), understanding that the "regular" backup drive should just continue backing up as it left off last time, or will it get confused?
I like Time Machine because it's maintenance-free, so I'd rather not use some other, separate and complicated backup software for the "off-site" drive if I can avoid it.
By the way: my backup drive is a 2.5" external Firewire drive which means that it takes its power from the Firewire 800 cable totally eliminating any additional power supply and cables. Just one cable and a small enclosure.
Neat and tidy and very much recommended!
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Aug 15, 2009
is it possible to get two hard drives, (lets just say FW400 750gb for the sake of the discussion).
Put one of them at home and set up time machine, then put the second at work and 'change disk' in time machine prefs to the new one, and everytime you change locations just tell it to change disks to the one matching your location - and have both disks being full Time Machine backups without having to 'do a full from scratch backup' every time?
Then it seems like you could use something like MarcoPolo to have it automatically change those preferences based on which networks it sees or something, so that it is just time machining automatically and properly no matter which location you are at.....would this work?
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Sep 18, 2009
Been trying to figure this one out, but can't seem to find a clearcut answer. Here's the dilemma: My 2 1/2 year old MP got replaced under AppleCare by my local Apple store with a new Nehalem MP when they couldn't fix it. The 3 user installed drives in my old MP were good, so they moved them from my old MP to my new one. One of those was the boot drive in my old MP, so the Apple store tech made it the boot drive in my new one. I had the drives arranged in order on my old MP (being the anal engineer that I am), however now my old boot drive is in bay 4, the newer MP boot drive is in bay 2, etc., i.e. all mixed up. Being that the old drives were almost 3 years old I decided to clone my old boot drive to the newer one and make it the startup drive, assuming that it being newer it would be more reliable long term. That all went fine.
Now I know that the OS doesn't care in which bay what drive is but does Time Machine? If I swap around the bays to put my boot drive into bay 1 from bay 2 will that confuse Time Machine and make it backup everything again, i.e. wasting backup space??? I.e., does TM go off of physical name and location or does it go off of logical name?? I know it doesn't matter which drive is where, but I just like having things in a certain order to troubleshooting purposes just in case.
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Apr 9, 2012
I have 2 drives on my iMac but only one is showing up..how can I get them both to back up? The one that is getting backed up is from my old laptop, and I really don't need it as most of the data is in my newer iMac drive. If necessary, I would like to switch the back up to the newer system.
Info:
iMac (24-inch Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Dec 14, 2010
I searched and couldn't find an answer on this.
Can time machine work on multiple drives?
Currently, I have time machine backing up my iMac on to an external drive.
I also have a third drive filled with movies and music. I would like to set iTunes to play directly off of that drive but I don't want to risk losing that stuff.
Can I set time machine to back up my iMac on HD2 AND ALSO back up HD3 to HD4?
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Mar 10, 2008
I'm sure this is answered somewhere, but does Time Machine backup any mounted drive when it does a backup, or only the internal drives, or only the boot?
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Dec 8, 2008
I have a 500 gb external that I've been backing up Time Machine onto--I also use the drive to store my movies (about 100 gb and increasing) but I'm getting to the point where time machine is taking over. Apple suggested partitioning my drive--does anyone else think that this will work or is there some other option that I have? I've thought about manually deleting certain Time Machine back ups but hate to have to do that constantly.
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Jan 11, 2009
I would like to maintain an off-site backup, and plan to rotate a hard drive on a monthly basis. I'm running 10.5.5 with Time Machine. I understand that I may need to initialize a new backup drive every time I switch drives? Any thoughts? Is Time Machine really the best way to go here?
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Mar 10, 2009
So right now I have 2 external hard drives, a 2TB MyBook Mirror edition, set at RAID 0 so its a full 2TB, and a 1TB MyBook Home Edition. I also have three LaCie 1TB drives to back up the MyBook drives.
How I back up is basically copy the contents over to the backups once a month. The problem is, using USB (my only option) takes about 24 hours per TB. Backing up 3 days a month? Not fun.
Can Time Machine do this better? I still have Tiger, so can't test it yet but it seems tedious to do things my way. I would rather be able to plug them in and sync every few weeks and not have to replace every file, just the ones that changed or were added. Can this be done?
I don't keep the drives connected 24/7 so it would have to be manual, and also can Time Machine back up a 2TB drive to 2 1TB drives? The are stuck in enclosures so i have to connect the 2 separately through USB, can't use RAID.
If Time Machine is not the answer, is there some third party program the would not require me to re-copy every file? It would be great if I could save some time doing this.
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Jul 18, 2009
Just a quick question, if I add a second drive in an Optibay, will TM back up both of my drives?
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Aug 4, 2009
How can TM take backups of external drives that are connected?
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Nov 2, 2009
have all of my music/videos on an external Maxtor 750 GB USB drive. I have all of my photos on the 750 GB internal drive of my iMac.
I want to get a 2 TB external for BU purposes.
Can I set time machine to BU both 750 GB drives on the 2 TB drive?
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Apr 6, 2010
Currently I keep my time machine backup on an external usb hard drive which is a seagate hd in an enclosure I bought a while ago. I want to maintain a second copy of the time machine back up.
Is it better to buy an external RAID enclosure, put the current drive in there, get another drive, and then just have time machine backup to that drive?
Or should I just get another enclosure and another drive? If I do it this way, can I automate the time machine backups across two drives in any way, or I have to manually run it twice?
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Mar 20, 2012
I have a larger external harddrive that I purchased to use as a Time Machine backup drive, and I want it to back up not only the harddrive of my MacBook, but also a small external harddrive that I use as a "media drive" to hold all my iTunes and iPhoto content. If the small media drive is plugged into the MacBook while the Time Machine back up is ocurring on the larger external drive, will it back up both the MacBook harddrive and the media drive, or do I have to manually select this somewhere?Â
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Mar 26, 2012
I have two Western Digital drives for backup, one with pictures and one with other files. When I select the disc for backup on Time Machine how do I select both?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 26, 2014
I'm running OS X 10.9.3 and now that Time Machine supports it, I have two external drives set up for Time Machine backups. One (the one I've been using all along) is 750GB and has not very much space left. The second, which I recently installed, is 1TB and has approx 625 GB of space left. The reason I installed the second drive is because my first was running out of space and I would regularly get the message saying that the drive is full and older backups were getting deleted. So I'm curious, why isn't Time Machine using the space on my newly installed, second, Time Machine drive? Why is it still clearing out old backups on my original drive? Is there any way I can stop this? Or are the old backups going to continue to get deleted from my original drive until some sort of parity is achieved between the backups on the two drives?Â
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Sep 7, 2010
I have an portable external hard drive that I'd like Time Machine to back up at the same time it backs up my laptop hard drive. How do I set Time Machine to do both drives at once?
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Mar 6, 2009
I have a 500Gb internal drive in my iMac, another 500Gb external drive (USB) and a 1Tb Firewire800 drive. Can I set up Time Machine to back up both my internal 500Gb drive and my external 500Gb drive to my external 1Tb drive?
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Nov 19, 2009
Here is what I want to achieve: I have my MBP with a 500GB hard drive that I want backed up to an external 750GB drive (A). Then I have an external 1TB drive (B) that I also wanted backed up to an external 1TB drive (C).
Or:
Internal -> drive A
Drive B -> drive C
Can Time Machine do this all for me or am I going to need a 3rd-party app to help. I know I can easily use TM for doing one of the backups, but will it handle both? If not, what's a good 3rd-party app that will help me accomplish this?
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Apr 4, 2012
In my Mac Pro I've OSX 10.6 on my boot drive in Bay 1. Bay 2-4 do also contain hd's with loads of data. When putting a new drive in bay 1 and restoring from Time Machine - is it possible to only restore data from hd at bay 1? If yes, how?Â
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Jun 18, 2012
I have an old MBP that I am replacing with a new Retina Display MBP. Last night I did a full backup of my entire MBP (there are actually 2 hard drives in it, I took out the optical drive and used an OWC kit). Today, I restore that backup to my new MBP. I set it to restore everything. However, it only restore the one drive as my new MBP does not have 2 hard drives. I know the 2nd drive is in the Time Machine backup. So how do I manually go in and retrieve those items?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)
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Jun 27, 2012
I have three Macs backing up via Time Machine. They are using an external hard drive connected to one of the machines. These back-ups take place on site every day, but I also want to use the same back-up system to back-up to a second hard drive which can then be stored off-site.I have initiated first back-ups OK using this system, but now when I look to change the back-up drive once a week the machines don’t seem to recognise the earlier back-up files on the external drive and start to make a new back-up each time. The back-ups are all large and I can’t afford the time this is taking. How can I make my drives recognize the earlier back-up files and just perform an incremental back-up rather than a complete new back-up each time.Â
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Sep 10, 2014
I have a time machine backup on an old firewire drive. My new laptop does not have a firewire port so I was wondering if I can just copy the time machine files onto a new thunderbolt drive and use it to migrate data to my new computer.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Aug 28, 2014
I'm running OS X 10.9.4 on a MacBook Air (2 GB memory, 64 GB SSD storage).Â
I'm using an AirPort Time Capsule (with Time Machine) as my router and backup. I have an additional hard drive connected to the USB port on my AirPort Time Capsule.Â
For over a year the entire configuration has worked well:Â Backups are done, and I can access both the AirPort Time Capsule internal hard drive and the external hard drive from my MacBook Air, and from any other device on the network.Â
For the past few weeks, Finder (on my MacBook Air) sometimes cannot see either drive (internal or external) on the AirPort Time Capsule. Backups are still okay, and PCs are still able to access and use both drives on the AirPort Time Capsule. Also, software on my MacBook Air CAN see and use the drives. For example, if I have a photo on one of those drives that I want to post on Facebook, the "finder" window that appears when I click "Upload Photos/Video" (on Facebook) sees the drives, and can upload the photo from the drives. The ONLY time I cannot see the drives is when I try to access them with Finder. (See photos.)Â
At first, Finder occasionally could not see the drives, or sometimes it took a minute or two to see the drives. Now, Finder generally cannot see the drives, no matter how long I wait. My PCs, and ALL SOFTWARE on the MacBook Air CAN ALWAYS see the drives. Also, Finder can ALWAYS see ALL THE OTHER shared drives on the network (on the PCs, for example), even when it cannot see the drives on the AirPort Time Capsule.Â
Using Finder:Â
Using Facebook:
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), AirPort Time Capsule
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Dec 27, 2008
I have an external hard drive that I use with my MBP at work. I'd like to buy another external hard drive to keep at home an also use with Time Machine to backup when at home. Will this work with 10.5.6? What I mean is, will Time Machine work if I plug in another hard drive at home, and still work when I plug in my other drive at work?
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