> On 21 Jan 2015, at 9:00 am, Chris Burton <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Ronni, great to hear from you and thanks for your great pdf on how to set > things up for TM. > > I have a couple of questions: you mention that TM is for backing up the hard > drive of a mac to a connected external drive. > > Can I also use TM to backup from a number of other external drives (3tb WD) > on which I have my previous backups of data/photos/movies/music etc onto one > big drive? What im hoping to do is use a large drive (like the Seagate or WD > 5tb) for the main repository of everything that I can keep offsite (in the > Bank box) and then take it out every 2 weeks to do updates from my other > drives at home? >
I’ll chime in here since Ronni hasn’t time to answer: Time Machine should not really be regarded as backup software per se. Its primary purpose is to provide a safety valve for those files and resources which get accidentally deleted, damaged or or altered in undesirable ways. the time Machine interface makes it incredibly easy to go back to the last known good copy and recover it so you can keep working with a minimum of fuss. It is by nature, therefore, to work with the hard drive of any active computer. You can have multiple computers all using the same TM Drive, and you can set TM up to use multiple drives, but you cannot tell TM to back up one external drive to another. That’s not what it’s for. For more comprehensive options you should be looking at other solutions, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, TriBackup, etc. The ideal backup situation should involve such software anyway. Time Machine is an important and useful utility, but should not be your only backup resource. I have Time Machine running all the time, but also do a Carbon Copy Cloner backup every Sunday. One of the advantages of CCC is that it creates a bootable “clone” of your hard drive so in times of disaster you can start up from it with full access to the resources you’re used to, but that’s just one of its features. It will certainly handle the kind of thing you’re looking to do. Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
