Using Time machine on a mac, i want to back up one external hard disk using another?

May 31, 2010 in external hard disk | Comments (1)

I’ve got two external hard disks and a macbook pro, i want to backup the files on one external hard disk on the other but not the files on my laptop. Please help!

I’m not sure that can be done.

Your Time Machine drive doesn’t work like a regular hard drive. Time Machine does automatic backups on your computer (either scheduled ones, or just when you tell it to.) You can’t use your TimeMachine drive as a regular HD – the whole drive needs to be devoted to the TimeMachine software and backups. Also, eventually your oldest backups will start to disappear to make room for new ones.

What you should do is go through the older drive and copy what you need to your computer. You could also burn CDs or whatever if you want to. But you can’t simply copy them to the other drive.


One Response to “Using Time machine on a mac, i want to back up one external hard disk using another?”

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  1. Comment by Heidi — May 31, 2010 at 11:12 pm  

    I’m not sure that can be done.

    Your Time Machine drive doesn’t work like a regular hard drive. Time Machine does automatic backups on your computer (either scheduled ones, or just when you tell it to.) You can’t use your TimeMachine drive as a regular HD – the whole drive needs to be devoted to the TimeMachine software and backups. Also, eventually your oldest backups will start to disappear to make room for new ones.

    What you should do is go through the older drive and copy what you need to your computer. You could also burn CDs or whatever if you want to. But you can’t simply copy them to the other drive.
    References :

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