Since its original introduction in Leopard, Apple has since improved the Time Machine backup feature drastically. In Mountain Lion, it now supports backup encryption and multiple separate backups to different drives. Now you can have a full backup of your Mac at home and at work, and we'll show you how it's done!
With one Time Machine drive already set up, connect another drive that you would also like to backup to.
Navigate to System Preferences > Time Machine, and then select “Select Disk.” A pop up will prompt you to select the new drive that you wish to use for backup purposes. The drives that are already in use for Time Machine will appear under the “Backup Disks” heading in the list.
After selecting the new drive, a popup will ask whether you wish to Cancel, Replace your current Time Machine drive, or Use Both. If you want to have multiple backups, select the “Use Both” option. Time Machine will then begin backing up to the new drive.
After you add more than one drive to the Time Machine backup list, the System Preference pane will change to show all of the disks in a list view. Whenever you plug in in any of the drives, Time Machine will automatically incrementally backup to the drives.
If you wish to remove one of the backup drives, select the “Add or Remove Backup Disk” from the list of Time Machine drives. From the pop up, select a drive from the “Backup Disk” heading, and then select the “Remove Disk” button.
Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
Molly Campbell
February 15, 2013 at 12:37pm
Is there a way to have Time Machine backup my hard drive to a web server? I have it backing up to an external hard drive right now, but I've had so many problems with external hard drives going junk or corrupting files - I almost lost hundreds of family photos a few weeks ago. I have my own website and have unlimited space on the server, and I would like to have Time Machine do a backup there as well.
simonday
September 26, 2012 at 7:43am
I was working through the above when I discovered I couldn't back up a network device... OK no big deal I'll do something else BUT I cancelled the process (so never got to the "use both" choice) and now I find I've lost my original time machine!
Any idea how to restore it?
Picchu
August 27, 2012 at 9:32am
@JohnNash The reason I would want to follow this procedure is to have an offsite backup, in case my house blew up, burnt down or some other major tragedy. The intention is purely to have a monthly/quarterly backup offsite just in case, not as a regular location to restore from. It is a valid point, one that should be taken into consideration, but for my ease of mind this process works.
JohnNash
August 13, 2012 at 11:54am
While multiple backup locations are great, anyone who's tried a restore will note one problem. Time Machine is not merging your backups into a single list AND only the data source that was used last has the time machine history presented to the user.
Example:
Data Set A has 1/1/12 backed up.
Data Set B doesn't have 1/1/12 backed upData Set B was the last destination volume used.
Entering time machine will not show a backup done on 1/1/12.
Maybe this was set up for someone who used the same device and backed up at 2 or more physically different locations, but for someone who has multiple backup targets at the SAME location, it can become problematic when wanting to restore.
