Time Machine: Two different drives, two different backups

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Level 1

30 points

Time Machine: Two different drives, two different backups

Here's my dilema.

I have my iMac with all my personal stuff. I have an external hard drive that I have designated to Time Machine as the drive to backup my iMac's HD.

That works fine.

But I also have an external HD for Work documents, and I want to use another HD (Work Backup) to backup the Work Hard Drive to.

So I plugged my Work Hard Drive into my computer, and then plugged in my Work Backup Hard Drive into the computer, and went to Time Machine to try and make it just backup my Work Hard Drive onto my Work Backup Hard Drive. But it didn't give me an option. All it wanted to do was still backup my iMac onto the Work Backup Hard Drive.

Is it possible to set it up so...

1. iMac backups up to External iMac Backup Hard Drive via Time Machine

2. Work External Hard Drive backs up to Work Backup External Hard Drive via Time Machine

OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Mar 10, 2014 7:27 AM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Mar 10, 2014 10:55 AM in response to bradhotdog

No. You'll need some other backup tool to do that.

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Answer 2

Mar 10, 2014 11:45 AM in response to bradhotdog

You could have them both backup to one big drive via Time Machine, but TM doesn't support multiple backup drives. Try SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

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Answer 3

bradhotdog Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 10, 2014 11:59 AM in response to Jesse Stern

at that point would i just simply be better of formatting the Backup drive each time and just copy and paste everything from my Work External Hard Drive to my Work Backup External Hard Drive?

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2014 12:09 PM in response to bradhotdog

OS X Mavericks Use multiple backup disks:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14382

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Answer 5

Mar 10, 2014 1:10 PM in response to leroydouglas

Leroy, I think the OP is specifically trying to back up *some* data to one disk, and some data to another. The situation described in your link seems to be more about backing up *all* data to separate disks, i.e. having two complete backups at various locations. Time Machine won't let you choose which data gets backed up onto which disk (afaik).

Brad, check out SuperDuper. The advantage is you wouldn't have to reformat every time, because it uses "smart update", basically picking up where you left off. The disadvantage is it doesn't save various instances of a backup the way Time Machine does.

Hope that helps!

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Mar 10, 2014 1:43 PM in response to bradhotdog

Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)

Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

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