Can I do a time machine backup on more than one external HDD?

[palmerc2]

I bought an external HDD a couple of years ago for time machine backups, and all has worked very well. My HD crashed 6 months ago, had it not been for my backup I would've been SCREWED. However, lately I can't help but think that my backup may fail. So what I want to know is, if I got another external HDD, could I do a backup every once in a while (approx every month) and just keep it in a safe place? While still doing the daily backups on the one I have now?

On the one I have now, there are certain folders I exclude from being backed up. But on the new one I would get, I would do a complete system backup. Would this work? I'm curious if this would confuse my computer / time machine system.

Thanks in advance

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could continue using TM on the older HDD and use CarbonCopyCloner on the newer HDD.
Time Machine FAQ

 

[Jagardn]

If that's what you want, you can go into the Disk Utility and create a mirrored RAID array using two USB disks. That way your Time Machine backup will be on both disks.

 

[Bear]

...On the one I have now, there are certain folders I exclude from being backed up. But on the new one I would get, I would do a complete system backup. Would this work? I'm curious if this would confuse my computer / time machine system.

While you could do what you want, and even write scripts to help automatic the config changes, it's not the optimal way to do what you want.

You are best just using software to clone the drive. CCC as mentioned will do it. Believe it or not, you can just do it with Disk Utility (which I have done a few times). As far as I can see, all CCC does is have a nicer easier to use interface. But I haven't looked at CCC that closely so I could be missing some really useful feature that it has.

 

[Modernape]

CCC can subsequently do incremental backups, that's the difference with using Disk Utility.