simonclivehughes
Active member
Does anyone know offhand if you can set up Time Machine (as well as backing up your main HDD) to back up an external (photo library) drive to either the main TM drive or better yet, to another HDD?
Cheers,
Cheers,
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Mac Time Machine Question
- Thread starter simonclivehughes
- Start date
Simon:
TM only backs up to the TM drive (or partition) but you definitely can select any drive and have it part of the back-up routine. In actual use, TM defaults to back up EVERY drive partition connected to the system, and you have to manually select the ones you do not want included.
I have actually considered using it to back my image drives in addition to everything else to my Drobo, however I've had a few weird oddities where my TM drive wiped itself clean and I never figured why. Fortunately I did not lose anything important and did not have my image files backed up to it
TM only backs up to the TM drive (or partition) but you definitely can select any drive and have it part of the back-up routine. In actual use, TM defaults to back up EVERY drive partition connected to the system, and you have to manually select the ones you do not want included.
I have actually considered using it to back my image drives in addition to everything else to my Drobo, however I've had a few weird oddities where my TM drive wiped itself clean and I never figured why. Fortunately I did not lose anything important and did not have my image files backed up to it
simonclivehughes
Active member
Jack,
Thanks, that's what I suspected. I've got a 320GB HDD in my MBP and I backup using TM to a 1TB drive. I keep my image library currently on an external 250GB drive and then I've been backing it up to another 250GB drive using SuperDuper. Just thought it would have been nice if TM could do the whole job, although at present I've got enough room on the 1TB drive for both the MBP and the library I guess.
Thanks for the feedback.
Ciao,
Jan Brittenson
Senior Subscriber Member
It will do this if you change your startup disk, say if you boot from a clone. When I make a clone of the startup drive I try to remember to disable TM first, or later when I boot from the clone TM will fire off and start the backup from an initial (meaning I truly lose backups when I might need them).
Interesting, I did not know that. Sounds like a bug to me...
Jan Brittenson
Senior Subscriber Member
I don't think it is. When you boot from a clone you step back in time, and the TM state on that clone will predate the TM state on the backup set. It doesn't know how to incrementally step the backup set forward to match the system, and stepping backwards trying to undo things to get back to the clone is likely a mathematical impossibility. So it starts over.
Jan Brittenson
Senior Subscriber Member
By the way, it won't blindly overwrite the backup set. What happens is it will tell you this is not its backup drive, and then if you go into TM preferences and reset it to use that drive then it will overwrite. Up to that point though you can use the backup for recovery. But it's still scary that a couple of thoughtless clicks can wipe out my backup... So I disable TM on the clone copy.