I currently use a Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. I want to get a second external HD and also put a backup on that in case the TC dies. Is this as simple as selecting the new disk in TM preferences and doing a backup? After this is done i'd like to go back to using the TC for regular backups. Has anyone used Time Machine to back up the same computer to multiple external hard drives? Any drawbacks or things I should know or worry about?
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second Time Machine backup
- Thread starter Matt-Man-Plus
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Yes, you are gaining an illusory additional amount of protection by cloning the TM drive, maybe just an extra 1% rather than the 100% you probably think you are getting. You should use an entirely different backup method, such as CCC, to backup to the second drive.
Reason being, if there is a TM software issue affecting restore, it wont help you having an identical copy of the TM disk as you'll have the identical problem
This actually happened to me a few weeks back which I posted about here, I wanted to recover a file which I had accidentally overwritten, and for whatever reason, it wasn't on my TM backup, though it certainly should have been. I was able to go to an online backup service I use and get it from there. Had I merely had a duplicate of my TM drive, (or even 100 of them), that would have done me no good at all.
I use TM to an external HD, weekly backups to an online service, and monthly clones (CCC) from the internal to a second HD,