Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

yalag

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
1,448
81
1 Tb isn't enough for the three macs that we have in the house. Can you add in a usb drive and combine the external and internal drives into one backup volume?
 
No. You can add external hard drives for network access but Time Machine will only backup to one single drive and will not combo drives for storage space.
 
If one is backing up multiple computers, can one back up one computer to the TC drive and one to the external?
Yes, been doing that for ~ 6 months.

Setup:
  • 500GB Time Capsule with USB attached 1GB hard drive.
  • Macbook backs up to Time Capsule.
  • iMac backs up to 1GB hard drive.

No hacking required, btw.
 
Well, you can backup to the internat drive and external drive from different macs. That's not a surprise you just choose the target drive when you turn on time machine. What I want is to combine the two drives into one central time machine volume. Guess not.
 
Well, you can backup to the internat drive and external drive from different macs. That's not a surprise you just choose the target drive when you turn on time machine. What I want is to combine the two drives into one central time machine volume. Guess not.

Sorry yalag. I misread your original question. You're right in your conclusion - I don't think there's a way to combine internal and external drives.

I prefer keeping each Mac on a separate backup drive. Making sure the Macbook (work) is backed up to the hour is CRITICAL for me - so it gets the 500GB TC internal drive all to itself and its backups run flawlessly. The iMac (fun) is not so critical - so it gets a cheap 1TB external which does occasionally hiccup and often goes for days without a backup (not a big deal).

So even if I could merge the 500GB and 1TB, I doubt I would.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.