7. Again!

We have five clients, each backing up to two backup drives, for a total of 10 synchronizer documents.

Repeat Steps 4 through 6 for each unique combination of left target (additional clients) and right target (multiple external hard drives). When you’re done, you will have a folder filled with all of your synchronizer documents. Now it’s time to schedule them.

8. The Container Store

We dragged in all of our synchronizer documents that back up to External Drive 1.

Go back into ChronoSync and choose File > New > Container to create a container document that groups together multiple backup documents as one group for easy scheduling. Click the Documents tab and drag in your synchronizer documents (from the Finder) that you would like to schedule together as one group. Save the container document with a descriptive name, such as “Backup All Computers To Drive 1.”

9. Be Bossy

You can schedule your backups to the minute.

Click the Schedule button and choose the days and times you want this group of synchronizer documents to run. You can select multiple days and times by holding down the Command key when clicking. We set the container shown in the screenshot to back up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 1:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.

10. Back Up Like Nobody's Watching

We recommend these options for your containers.

Click the Options tab. Under Reporting & Error Handling, check the first 3 boxes so that the operation will continue without your interaction. Configure the options under Email Notifications to have ChronoSync notify you of any errors in your backups. When you’re all set, save your container again.

11. Wake Up to Back Up

These settings should set you up right.

In ChronoSync > Preferences, check the boxes for “Use background scheduler” and “Wake system to synchronize.” That way your backups will happen even if ChronoSync isn’t running or your Mac is asleep. We set the “Send emails via” dropdown to Direct Messaging, which lets ChronoSync email us directly without needing to launch an email client. And uncheck the box for “Create new document on activate” since you’ve already created all the documents that you need.

12. Relax

Looks like our next backup happens at 1:00 a.m. onto Backup Drive #2.

You’re finished! If you’d like, you can choose Window > Scheduled Documents Manager to monitor all of the schedules that you’ve created for ChronoSync. Our screenshot shows two schedules, but remember that in Step 8 and 9, we used those scheduled containers to back up five client Macs.