Cloning multiple volumes with time machine?

Time Machine is not a clone maker. The best clone maker is the Restore option of Disk Utility. CCC can be configured to backups at any desired interval you wish. It is the second best cloner.

Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility

1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.

2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.

3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.

4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag

it to the Destination entry field.

5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to

the Source entry field.

6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the clone's target drive. Source means the drive you are cloning.

You mentioned you needed to clone these drives hence the Disk Utility suggestion. I did state that CCC is quite capable of doing incremental or full backups as well as cloning drives. I use it to to incrementally update backups for four different drives to four different partitions on a single backup drive. They are scheduled to backup at a time of day on a daily basis in my setup. Why don't you download the trial version of CCC and examine it yourself. You can get it here: Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.3 or at Mac Backup Software | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software. But it is not like Time Machine. I've come across one or two backup utilities that claim to work like Time Machine, but I have never used them, so I can't comment on them.

It is possible to configure CCC to work somewhat like Time Machine in that it can be configured to maintain archives of changed files. But it does not use a mechanism like Time Machine's. It simply makes a series of saved changes archives.

Time Machine is not going to work for you, if you want to fragment your backup to separate backup devices. While Time Machine can use multiple disks, rotating the incremental backups through all the disks you give to Time Machine as output devices, but EACH backup disk must be large enough to hold all that is specified to be backed up by Time Machine.

You cannot configure Time Machine to backup a directory tree to this disk, and another directory tree to a different disk, etc... You get to configure 1 list of stuff to backup and it is global to all backup disks you give Time Machine, where each backup disk gets the same set up files.

As Kappy has said, you "Can" configure Carbon Copy Cloner to do what you want, sort-of. The backups will not look like Time Machine backups. They will basically be 1-for-1 copies of the data specified. The archive option puts deleted files from the source in an archive tree which you have to know to look at and you do not get that nice Time Machine GUI.

CCC can have multiple backup configurations, specifying the directory trees and files with a desitination for those files. Each configuration can be scheduled individually. By default CCC incrementally updates the files on the destination.

As Kappy has mentioned CCC has a demo. It is for 1 month and is fully functional, so you can really see what it does before you would need to buy.

NOTE: I do not think CCC uses the Spotlight information to discover files to be backed up. This is a huge win for Time Machine as it basically knows when it starts just which files need to be backed up. I think CCC has to re-scan all the files in the source tree and make decisions on whether to back it up.

Another approach is to use a more user friendly RAID solution such as Drobo or Synology which does not require identical sized drives, allows hot swapping out broken drives, offers up 2 to drive failures before you loose access. NOTE: Hot swap is great, but it does time for the devices to re-spread the RAID data across a newly inserted replacement drive.

I've used a Drobo for years (a few of them actually), and yes, I've had to replace drives, but generally I had time to order a replacement drive, plug it in, and then allow the Drobo to distribute the data before another failure occurs. That is my RAID solution to backups. But, but but, I also use CCC and CrashPlan because a bootable clone is extremely handy, and CrashPlan to a Mac mini with a Drobo gives me network backups for my laptops that are difficult to keep in one place for plugging in a backup device. Also I like having more than 1 backup format so that bugs in 1 program are unlikely to affect a different backup utility.