Can Time Machine Back Up to Two Separate USB Drives?

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Level 1

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Can Time Machine Back Up to Two Separate USB Drives?

I have a Mac Mini running Mavericks 10.9.5. I have two drives - an internal 120GB drive, which is my system drive and contains all my day to day work; and a larger 3TB drive which I use exclusively to store audio and video content.

I would like to attach TWO external USB drives as Time Machine targets - one for my work data (which changes frequently) and one for my A/V content (which changes infrequently).

Can this be done? If so, how?

Thanks!

Posted on Nov 23, 2015 4:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BobHarris

Level 9

53,117 points

Nov 24, 2015 8:49 AM in response to smallard

As described, no.

You can have 2 (or more) Time Machine backup destinations, but Time Machine will just alternate between the destinations, sending the exact same information to each backup device.

You cannot choose one drive for one set of data, and a different drive for another set of data.

You will have to use another backup utility to backup one of the destinations if you wish to keep work vs A/V content separate.

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Answer 2

smallard Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 24, 2015 8:51 AM in response to BobHarris

Thanks Bob.

Disappointing to hear this but I guess I'm not surprised. For anything beyond the very simplest of backup tasks, TM really doesn't seem to be much use.

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Answer 3

BobHarris

Level 9

53,117 points

Nov 24, 2015 10:01 AM in response to smallard

It is a huge use in that it makes getting the first backup trivially easy for the majority of Mac customers. For that alone Apple is to be complemented.

There are other backup utilities out there that can do what you want to some degree.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a well respected backup utility. It also has an option to save the most recently replaced/deleted files for a limited time. It can be scheduled.

While its claim to fame is full disk bootable clones, it can backup just a folder tree, or set of folder trees.

it can have separate tasks that backup different source to different destinations.

it can backup over your home network to another Mac.

I like it a lot. But but but, I also use Time Machine, as I believe in having more than one backup via more than one backup utility.

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