Can I back up multiple drives ?

[hempomatic]

Is it possible to back up 2 different drives to the same back-up drive? I have a WD 4TB drive for Time Machine, and another 4TB drive for Super Duper. They are totally redundant. I also have a 2TB remote drive that I will be moving my Photos library to, so I can free up space on my main computer. I was wondering if it was possible to simply move the library to either one (or both) of the back up drives without making any changes to it when I back my computer up.

 

[IWT]

Is it possible to back up 2 different drives to the same back-up drive?

Possible, but not advisable. (Personal opinion)

Drive fails. All BUs lost from two different sources.

I totally understand your need to divest your Mac's HD of data to free up space. Certainly move your Photos Library or your Music library to separate EHDs. (One for each).

And my personal view is that Time Machine and Cloned BUs should be on separate EHDs.

But; there are many on this Forum who have different BUs on the same EHD.

See what others think

Ian

 

[Jimmysb]

Possible, but not advisable. (Personal opinion)

Drive fails. All BUs lost from two different sources.

I totally understand your need to divest your Mac's HD of data to free up space. Certainly move your Photos Library or your Music library to separate EHDs. (One for each).

And my personal view is that Time Machine and Cloned BUs should be on separate EHDs.

But; there are many on this Forum who have different BUs on the same EHD.

See what others think

Ian

Have to agree, if you are have separate back-ups using different systems as a redundancy policy, then using the same drive defeats the objective of redundancy.

 

[pm-r]

I was wondering if it was possible to simply move the library to either one (or Bothe) of the back up drives without making any changes to it when I back my computer up.

Not as far as cloning as far as Carbon Copy Cloner goes anyway. At least as far as I know and the way it works. I wouldn't take the chance of messing or confusing it even though your data would probably stay complete and intact. The subsequent backups by carbon copy cloner would probably be goofed up and it could become unreliable I would think,

CCC uses a unique identifier for the volume it is told to use:

By default, CCC uses the name and Universally Unique Identifier (UUID(link is external)) of your source and destination to positively identify those volumes.

Advanced Settings - Bombich Software

bombich.com

Patrick
=======

 

[ferrarr]

Yes, you can backup two drives onto the same drive. You just lose more data when the drive fails. As long as the main drives are functioning, you can start new backups when any of the drives fail.

 

[newbutter]

I agree with the consensus: it's technically possible to back up two different drives to the same backup drive, but not necessarily the best practice. Redundancy is key in backups, and if your one backup drive fails, you could lose all your backups.

That being said, if you're comfortable with the risk and have a good system for monitoring the health of your drives, it could work for you. Just make sure you have a plan for what to do if your backup drive does fail.

Good luck with your decision!

 

[hempomatic]

Advice taken. . Thanks for the responses. A new SSD is scheduled for delivery today. It will ONLY be used for my older Photos library.

 

[hempomatic]

The drive is currently ExFAT, I assume I should format it to APFS ?

 

[IWT]

If you're talking about your new SSD; how you Format it depends on whether that SSD will only be used for Macs - that is, you will not be using it with a Windows or Linux system.

For Mac use only: APFS
For other uses: ExFAT

Ian

 

[Howard Brazee]

Possible, but not advisable. (Personal opinion)

Drive fails. All BUs lost from two different sources.

I totally understand your need to divest your Mac's HD of data to free up space. Certainly move your Photos Library or your Music library to separate EHDs. (One for each).

And my personal view is that Time Machine and Cloned BUs should be on separate EHDs.

But; there are many on this Forum who have different BUs on the same EHD.

See what others think

Ian

My photos library is also on the cloud and on my wife's computer. That said, I have Time Machine, a clone that gets updated daily, and a clone that I update monthly. And I use ChronoSync to copy some data daily to my wife's computer.

 

[hempomatic]

Mac only, so APFS it is. Just one computer, I never use the cloud for anything.

Thanks

 

[IWT]

Thanks

You're welcome, boss.

Ian

 

[hempomatic]

OK, silly (or perhaps not) question. I moved the older Photos Library to the remote drive. I'm really impressed that there is no discernible difference in performance between the local and remote drives. I expected more of a performance hit. That old library is now in the trash (not deleted yet).

Anyway, here's my question. When the remote drive is attached, I have to "force eject" it. Is that a problem? I get a message window that says "The Disk "Photo Library" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it". When I go to force eject I get "Are you sure ...... ejecting the disk might cause problems with the disk or the information on it". This seems to happen whenever I move a photo from the remote drive to the local drive.

 

[ferrarr]

Most likely, the external drive is still being indexed for Spotlight.

 

[MacInWin]

Anyway, here's my question. When the remote drive is attached, I have to "force eject" it. Is that a problem? I get a message window that says "The Disk "Photo Library" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it". When I go to force eject I get "Are you sure ...... ejecting the disk might cause problems with the disk or the information on it". This seems to happen whenever I move a photo from the remote drive to the local drive.

Yes, that is very risky. Just wait until it can be ejected without forcing it. And your last sentence gives a clue. One of the things in the library is a database of all images along with the full history of each image file (original, all edits, changes, exports, etc). So what may well be happening is that the database is being updated after you export a photo to the local drive (I presume you mean export when you said "move."). So, wait.

Another possibility is that Photos is still open when you try to eject the drive. Are you using the "Quit Photos" from the dropdown menu? If you are just clicking on the red "X" then Photos is still open, and using that library.

 

[hempomatic]

Yes, using "Quit".

After trying what I think was every possibility, there is nothing I can do that doesn't require a force eject. I closed every open program except for Finder. I put the library back on the primary drive for now (from the trash, not from the remote drive) and it seems fine, and is working normally.

Perhaps I didn't move the library correctly.

 

[IWT]

Perhaps I didn't move the library correctly.

A possibility. Who can say. I'm pretty certain that with your experience you did it properly, but here are Apple's instructions for Moving Your Photos Library:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

To save storage space on your Mac, you can move your Photos library to a different storage device.

support.apple.com

Ian

 

[hempomatic]

Thanks Ian. I believe that's exactly what I did.

"To save storage space on your Mac, you can move your Photos library to a different storage device".
Make sure your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journalled) format. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device such as an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network"

I have a laptop and remote SSD. That seems a bit contradictory.
I'm going to reformat the SSD and try again being careful to go step by step.

I hoped this would work based on having two completely separate Photos Libraries already that work fine switching back and forth between them, editing or deleting files, simply a function of which Library I click on.

 

[hempomatic]

‍ I tried again, but the same result. I did everything step by step, followed the directions to the letter. I'm obviously doing something wrong.

Make sure your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journalled) format. DONE

Drag the Photos library to a location on your external storage device. DONE

After you've finished moving it, double-click the Photos library in its new location to open it. DONE
It opens fine, editing works perfectly, quits normally after use. ANY changes to the files however prevents the disk from being ejected in Finder, or being un-mounted in Disk Utility.

If I can't eject it, do I need to have the drive hanging from a wire forever or just keep my fingers crossed that I don't corrupt a 600 GB photo library every time I have to force eject? From what I can tell, those seem to be the only 2 possibilities other than just leaving things where they were.

Sometimes, I wish I knew what the heck I was doing.

 

[MacInWin]

Try this. Next time it won't eject, use CMD-Tab to see what apps are running. Quit them all (but Finder, that one won't quit and will immediately restart). Then see if you can unmount the drive.

It also might be Spotlight indexing the drive that has it open.

As for the fingers-crossed situation, I would suggest that if these images are important to you (I know they are) I would have a duplicate of the library on a different drive and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or ChronoSync to keep them in sync. I lost several thousand images when my hard drive died AND my backup drive died the same day, so now I have 4 copies, all on different drives (one is a RAID array) connected different ways (USB, Network, Internal) because I'm paranoid about it.