Backing up Different Drives to Multiple Time Machines?

[rick3000]

I would like to know if it is possible for Time Machine to manage multiple different backups. I know that you can backup Drive A to both Drive B & Drive C. However, due to the size of the hard drives I have, I am wondering if I can setup Time Machine so that it backs up Drive A to Drive B, and Drive C to Drive D?

I am asking because I have outgrown my existing 8TB Time Machine Drive (I now have more than 8TB to backup), so I want to get another 8TB drive to backup files going forward. Perhaps there is a better solution than Time Machine for dealing with such large amounts of data?

Thanks!

 

[HDFan]

I would like to know if it is possible for Time Machine to manage multiple different backups.

I'm not aware of any way other than manually changing TM preferences.

Perhaps there is a better solution than Time Machine for dealing with such large amounts of data?

You could, of course, get a larger disk. Camelcamel just notified me that the 10 TB Seagate's ST10000VN0004 price has dropped to $250, the best price ever. You could also go to a 14 TB, but those are still very expensive.

If you have 8 TB of data that has to be backed up I would be extremely nervous using TM as my only backup location due to its unreliability. You might want to consider a multi disk strategy. For things that don't change (such as pictures), back them up separately to a different disk using something like Carbon Copy cloner. Hopefully removing "static" items from your TM backup will free enough space to TM can backup dynamic items.

Don't depend on TM as the only backup. It is too unreliable. Have another non-TM backup available in case there are problems when you try to restore from TM.

 

[Fishrrman]

Better choice:
Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.