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ryanbutterworth

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 6, 2007
25
2
Chicago, IL
Is it possible to set up Time Machine in sets so that in my Mac Pro with 4 hard drives, I can have two drives and two backup drives? I've seen online people backing up to multiple TM drives, but I'd like two separate backups.

I've illustrated in a screen grab.
 

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Have you considered Soft RAID? You could put each pair into a RAID1 set and you're done. Each disk will be mirrored to the other, no backing up required. Would that achieve what you want? You would lose the versioning capability of TM but other than that, your data would be safe.
 
Have you considered Soft RAID? You could put each pair into a RAID1 set and you're done. Each disk will be mirrored to the other, no backing up required. Would that achieve what you want? You would lose the versioning capability of TM but other than that, your data would be safe.

That's a good idea, though I've always read "RAID IS NOT A BACKUP!!" over and over online, so I've always discounted it.
 
well it's not, true. Screwing up data in a mirrored set is certainly a possibility. It does, however, guard against data loss (RAID1 anyway). But that's a good point. TM has nice versioning features and can preserve old data in ways that RAID1 will not.
I don't think TM can back up anything other than the boot disk. I do not think it supports backing up an arbitrary external disk, sadly. Perhaps someone will chime in with good back up software alternatives.
 
I'm not worried about versioning, honestly. I have a 6TB Plex collection that has taken years to build. It just has to be dependable.

Thanks for the RAID 1 suggestion. I think I'll go that route!
 
I have a 6TB Plex collection that has taken years to build. It just has to be dependable.

You need to have some non-TM backups, like from Carbon Copy Cloner. TM backups can get corrupted. A Raid system is just one device in a 3-3-3 or 3-2-3 backup strategy.
 
well it's not, true. Screwing up data in a mirrored set is certainly a possibility. It does, however, guard against data loss (RAID1 anyway). But that's a good point. TM has nice versioning features and can preserve old data in ways that RAID1 will not.
I don't think TM can back up anything other than the boot disk. I do not think it supports backing up an arbitrary external disk, sadly. Perhaps someone will chime in with good back up software alternatives.
TM CAN backup other disks (not just the boot disk).
 
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TM CAN backup other disks (not just the boot disk).

This. What it can't do, however, is discriminate what backs up to where. The destination must be large enough to house EVERYTHING, else it won't work.

If you have disks B (boot) and externals C D E F, then if E and F are going to be your backup drives for B C and D... each E and F must be bigger than the total contents of B + C + D.

You couldn't say B and C backup to E, B and D backup to F.

Other solutions would be needed (like CCC) to fine tune the backups.
 
Other solutions would be needed (like CCC) to fine tune the backups.

As well as CCC, the OP should have a look at Chronsync which is great for creating and scheduling complex backup tasks. Like CCC, CS is primarily a synchronisation tool with versioning as an afterthought.
 
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