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Time Machine with two internal drives

T

Twaize

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2008
63
1
Hi
If there's a previous thread about this, I'm sorry, I searched around for the answer, but couldn't find anything definitive.

If I have two internal drives on a MBP, SSD and HDD, can I back them both up to a single time machine drive (as long as it's bigger than the SSD and HDD combined)?

Thank you very much
 
Time machine will back up only the drive its currently installed on, which is usually the main drive where the OSX is installed.

Maybe if your drives where in a raid array it would recognize the second drive and let you back it up also.
 
The only thing i could think of is to partition your TM drive so you can set up two time machines and assign one to each internal? not too hard or too much effort. TM won't back up more than one internal drive :)
 
Twaize said:
Hi
If there's a previous thread about this, I'm sorry, I searched around for the answer, but couldn't find anything definitive.

If I have two internal drives on a MBP, SSD and HDD, can I back them both up to a single time machine drive (as long as it's bigger than the SSD and HDD combined)?

Thank you very much
Click to expand...

Yes. I'm currently backing up two drives to a single Time Machine drive on one machine and three drives to a single Time Machine drive on another machine.
 
Last edited:
codymac said:
Yes. I'm currently backing up two drives to a single Time Machine drive on one machine and three drives to a single Time Machine drive on another machine.
Click to expand...

Cool. Did it take any special setting up?
 
Could just be my machine but when i plug in any external drive it never asks to back it up. I can only back up my internal hd.
 
emiljan said:
Could just be my machine but when i plug in any external drive it never asks to back it up. I can only back up my internal hd.
Click to expand...

- Look in Time Machine's settings. There's an option to exclude particular folders or drives. I think, by default, it excludes external drives, but you can just remove the drive from the excluded list if you want.
 
Wow. i must be dumb because i have looked at a way to exclude certain folders and i must have missed that setting all these times.
 
Twaize said:
Cool. Did it take any special setting up?
Click to expand...

Nope.

As others mentioned, go to the Time Machines prefs and hit the Options button. Anything in that list is stuff that *won't* be backed up.

I've got 3 drives in the machine I'm typing this on.
1 - OS & apps drive
2 - files
3 - Time Machine drive

Numbers 1 & 2 back up to number 3, and I can browse either of them in Time Machine.

On the other machine, I've got 7 drives, one of which is the Time Machine drive. I use that drive to back up that machine (that it's in), a Mac mini (over WiFi), and a MacBook Pro (over ethernet). *This* config took some special set-up (creating sparesbundles, etc.) but has been working without issue for a few years now.

Just be sure you're not excluding drives/folders you want to back up and it should pick up anything internal. Open up Time Machine after a backup has run and you can verify you're backing up what you want.
 
I have a problem though.

I also have an SSD + HDD combination in my MBP. SSD for OS and Apps and HDD for the User folder.
They do backup successfully on an external time machine drive.
The idea of this backup is among other things to be able to restore your system after a disk failure.
That is what happened to my HDD a week ago. But until now I haven't been able to restore the complete system, since I can't get time machine to restore the 2 disks correctly.

My first attempt was to enter the recovery partition and restore the system from time machine.

It only transferred the files on the SSD from the backup.

Then I tried to copy the files to the HDD from the backup via Carbon Copy loner. That managed to open the user account and see my desktop and files but none was editable, apps like iphoto, mail, Adobe CS5.5 suite didn't even load since they either didn't find necessary files or didn't have permission on others.

I did name the new HDD the same us the previous one but nothing happened.

To me the only logical way for this to work would be to manage time machine to understand the 2 disc setup and restore accordingly.

Is setting up from scratch the only option? Has anybody found a fix to my problem?
 
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