time machine backup multiple drives at once?

[shecky]

have not yet played with time machine, and i cannot quite find the answer to this: can i use time machine on my mac pro to backup 2 separate drives at once?

by this i mean i have 3 drives:

drive1: boot disk, with library, emails, iCal calendars, applications, itunes music, etc. (320GB)
drive2: documents and archive of work (750GB)
drive3: intended to be used as time machine drive (750GB)

so how can i back up BOTH drive2 with all the documents, and drive1 with all my emails, calendar items, etc. with time machine? i assume TM will not allow me to do both drives at once, so would i need to make drive3 into 2 partitions, one for drive2 backup and one for drive3 backup? can i make TM do two backups like that?

any ideas? thanks!

 

[sandman42]

I'm doing this with my computer -- I have a Mini with three external drives connected, one of which is for Time Machine. When I set up Time Machine it asked me which drive I wanted to use for back-up, and listed all the drives that were connected, so I selected the back-up drive. Then there's another window in the Time Machine preferences (in System Preferences) where you can specify any drives or folders you don't want backed up (kind of like the Spotlight 'privacy' panel), but anything else gets backed up by default. One of my external drives is for 'scratch' storage, so I don't back it up, but I do back up the other remaining external. Once I got this all configured Time Machine did its thing and backed up the Mini's internal drive and the one external. It's pretty simple once you start working with it.

 

[sandman42]

Having re-read your post, I guess I can simplify my answer and say that Time Machine will back up multiple drives at once. It really is a nice feature.

One thing that you may have trouble with is capacity. It looks like you'll be trying to back up (320Gb + 750Gb) onto a 750Gb drive. This will work ok as long as the total content you're backing up isn't close to 750Gb, but if it is, you might have to exclude some of your content from being backed up or Time Machine will refuse to play, saying that your target drive doesn't have enough capacity.

 

[jsalicru]

It works with no problem. It will also work with multiple computers. I back up my MBP, MB and iMac into one 1Tb drive.