Can I use Time Machine to host two different drives, each backing up to their own spare drives?

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Hello,

This is sort of a Mac OSX-type thing, but I put it here because I have a Mac Pro which houses multiple internal drives.

These aren't common circumstances, and I know that they are kind of stupid... but, I have both a boot disk and a media drive, and I would like to have each of those drives back up to their own spare HDDs. Why not have the media and boot drives both back up to a SINGLE larger drive? Well, the largest drives I have are two 500GB drives, and the media and boot drives would - together - add up to 500GB, if they were filled. I was wanting one of the drives to back up to its own 500GB disk and the other drive to back up to its own 500GB disk.

I could definitely just buy a larger drive and make things easier, but I would first like to see if it's possible to have two completely separate backups going on. (Also, I could make a 1TB disk in RAID 0, but I don't trust having a RAID 0 array for backups.) If not, would you all recommend that I use some other type of backup software for the second set of disks? Any advice?

Thanks,
MDD

 

[bjar]

Hello,

This is sort of a Mac OSX-type thing, but I put it here because I have a Mac Pro which houses multiple internal drives.

These aren't common circumstances, and I know that they are kind of stupid... but, I have both a boot disk and a media drive, and I would like to have each of those drives back up to their own spare HDDs. Why not have the media and boot drives both back up to a SINGLE larger drive? Well, the largest drives I have are two 500GB drives, and the media and boot drives would - together - add up to 500GB, if they were filled. I was wanting one of the drives to back up to its own 500GB disk and the other drive to back up to its own 500GB disk.

I could definitely just buy a larger drive and make things easier, but I would first like to see if it's possible to have two completely separate backups going on. (Also, I could make a 1TB disk in RAID 0, but I don't trust having a RAID 0 array for backups.) If not, would you all recommend that I use some other type of backup software for the second set of disks? Any advice?

Thanks,
MDD

I don't believe that is possible with time machine. I like carbon copy cloner. You might want to try it out.

 

[JesterJJZ]

Just get a 8TB external and call it a day. I see them on sale for $170 nowadays.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Just get a 8TB external and call it a day. I see them on sale for $170 nowadays.

I'd like to keep the drive internally, though. I think I might settle on a quiet Caviar Green drive, if I can get one that's surely 7200RPM (if that matters).
[doublepost=1498027992][/doublepost]

I don't believe that is possible with time machine. I like carbon copy cloner. You might want to try it out.

I have tried it, but I no longer have the trial and don't wish to purchase it at this time. I think I may just back up both disks to one larger HDD, if that's possible.

 

[Nermal]

I'd like to keep the drive internally, though.

External drives tend to be cheaper, for some reason. Last time I wanted an internal I ended up buying an external and disassembling it.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

External drives tend to be cheaper, for some reason. Last time I wanted an internal I ended up buying an external and disassembling it.

I think that usually applies to the smaller drives, rather than desktop drives. Looking around, I see higher prices for external drives (such as $54 for a typical Seagate external drive of 1TB).

 

[Nermal]

I may have overgeneralised and it may not be the same in your country. I can get a 2 TB external at retail for NZ$120 but an internal from my usual supplier is $128! Go up to 6 TB and I'm seeing the same sort of thing; an external at retail prices is still a few dollars cheaper. But this may not apply where you live

 

[h9826790]

I think that usually applies to the smaller drives, rather than desktop drives. Looking around, I see higher prices for external drives (such as $54 for a typical Seagate external drive of 1TB).

Not really, the WD Mybook USB 3.0 8TB 3.5" HDD is quite a bit cheaper than the internal one.

But if you open up the Mybook to get the HDD, you lost warranty straight away.

 

[wickerstick]

time machine is a pretty amazing tool, one of the best pieces of the Mac eco system, that said there are several tweaks you can do to it. if you have the time check out the manual for Time Machine:

"man tmutil" in Terminal.

some other options for a rock solid all internal backup solution is to setup a Raid 1 Mirror and use that as a backup disk. I would go as big as you can afford. right now in experimenting with WD 8TB drives.

with this you can have time machine backup all disks to the raid. witch is mirrored between to drives so if one dies your still safe and the raid can easily be rebuilt,

Another exellent option is to Backup to a NAS device. this is my preferred method, I like using synology devices so right now I'm backing up all my Macs and PC's as well as any customer PC's and Macs to it. Also have it as a WDS_share for my PXE server. have not tried using it with deploy studio yet but maybe soon. and using tech like R sync or synology replicator I can offsite those backups for additional safety. these are things you think of when you work in a more corporate environment and downtime can be measured in $$ per minute.

back to your original question. we know time machine can backup to 2 different drives. and we know you can make exclusions for each backup. in theory it may be possible but I have not tried it. Its simply easier to make a backup of everything in the same place. for instance I have 3 Drives, a 512GB SM951 (OSX MAIN)
a Sandisk 960 in SATA 2 Bay 1 (home Folder) and another 960 in bay 2 (additional Data) and Time machine backs all disks to my TM Backup nice and easy. There is a lot of data out there but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link the KB Articles here.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

time machine is a pretty amazing tool, one of the best pieces of the Mac eco system, that said there are several tweaks you can do to it. if you have the time check out the manual for Time Machine:

"man tmutil" in Terminal.

some other options for a rock solid all internal backup solution is to setup a Raid 1 Mirror and use that as a backup disk. I would go as big as you can afford. right now in experimenting with WD 8TB drives.

with this you can have time machine backup all disks to the raid. witch is mirrored between to drives so if one dies your still safe and the raid can easily be rebuilt,

Another exellent option is to Backup to a NAS device. this is my preferred method, I like using synology devices so right now I'm backing up all my Macs and PC's as well as any customer PC's and Macs to it. Also have it as a WDS_share for my PXE server. have not tried using it with deploy studio yet but maybe soon. and using tech like R sync or synology replicator I can offsite those backups for additional safety. these are things you think of when you work in a more corporate environment and downtime can be measured in $$ per minute.

back to your original question. we know time machine can backup to 2 different drives. and we know you can make exclusions for each backup. in theory it may be possible but I have not tried it. Its simply easier to make a backup of everything in the same place. for instance I have 3 Drives, a 512GB SM951 (OSX MAIN)
a Sandisk 960 in SATA 2 Bay 1 (home Folder) and another 960 in bay 2 (additional Data) and Time machine backs all disks to my TM Backup nice and easy. There is a lot of data out there but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link the KB Articles here.

Yeah, I think I will simply buy a new 1TB drive (I don't need any more than that, since the two drive I am backing up are 250GB each) and set it as the backup for my boot and media drives. If I want to be cheap, I could RAID 0 my two 500GB drives to make a 1TB-in-total backup, but I don't want to rely on a RAID 0 HDD setup.

 

[orph]

i keep all my backups external (and not plugged in) to try to lower the risk of loosing data, if all the drives are internal then if something bad happens there's more chance of data being lost but i do see the need for it if you need the backups live all the time in case of failure.
i think carbon copy cloner is worth a look but iv not used it for this (rock solid for cloning drives tho)
superduper too http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
found crashplan too which is free for local backups but never used it https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/

or you can do something like time machine for the OS drive and manual backups for the data drive.

 

[JoSch]

some other options for a rock solid all internal backup solution is to setup a Raid 1 Mirror and use that as a backup disk.

Raid 1 is for availability, not for backup. Everything you delete on one drive, also gets deleted on the other one.
There are no generations of files. If a file goes bad, you never get any older version on an mirror.
If one wants backups, Timemachine or CCC is the way to go.

 

[h9826790]

Raid 1 is for availability, not for backup. Everything you delete on one drive, also gets deleted on the other one.
There are no generations of files. If a file goes bad, you never get any older version on an mirror.
If one wants backups, Timemachine or CCC is the way to go.

He mean using the whole RAID 1 array as the backup drive. Not using RAID 1 itself as a backup solution.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

i keep all my backups external (and not plugged in) to try to lower the risk of loosing data, if all the drives are internal then if something bad happens there's more chance of data being lost but i do see the need for it if you need the backups live all the time in case of failure.
i think carbon copy cloner is worth a look but iv not used it for this (rock solid for cloning drives tho)
superduper too http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
found crashplan too which is free for local backups but never used it https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/

or you can do something like time machine for the OS drive and manual backups for the data drive.

I decided to order a new 1TB WDCB internal drive, which will be the combined backup of my boot drive and my media drive. I now have two spare 500GB drives. I suppose I might keep one as an old backup; or, I could make use of the two by wiping them, setting them up in RAID 0, and having them be a combined 1TB backup of the backup.

 

[orph]

you may want to partition the 1TB drive in to 2 partitions if your backing up 2 500GB drives.
the joy of backups need to clean mine up a tad, i do it manually with media.

 

[h9826790]

you may want to partition the 1TB drive in to 2 partitions if your backing up 2 500GB drives.
the joy of backups need to clean mine up a tad, i do it manually with media.

He bought a 1TB HDD because he want to use Time Machine as the backup tool, which only can choose one destination for everything (in fact, can choose more than one, but still only for everything. Cannot dedicate one destination for data, the other one for OS).

Since he only has 2x 500GB HDD but not a single 1TB. That's why he need to buy it.

 

[orph]

ah i must have lost track at some point, was still going by the first post of 1 500GB boot 1 500gb media drive and the idea of backing them up on to a single 1TB drive.
i dont think time machine will do both drives? but if a 1TB drive was split in half then a time machine backup on partition 1 and manual backup of media drive was the idea i was going off.

 

[JoSch]

He mean using the whole RAID 1 array as the backup drive. Not using RAID 1 itself as a backup solution.

Oh, misread that. Sorry.