Help with creating a Backup of a Backup (making a copy of theExternal USB drive used for Time Machin

Hi,

I want to make a second backup of my GF's mac backup. She's using an external 500GB drive with Time Machine. All her files are backed up on there.

I would like to make a "backup" (or copy) of this external USB drive, and put it on a NAS with drives that are in a RAID.

What is the best way of doing this? Can I create an "image" of this USB drive, can I just simply copy these files over to the NAS?

Thanks in advance!

 

Doing a image of TM disk might be weird. It changes every hour unless
you turn off TM while you back it up. If all you want is a snapshot of
her disk, you can do a clone with Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper. The
paid version of Superduper does a disk image. It's not bootable, but it
depends on what you're after.

What is your purpose in making a copy of the TM disk? It would be
better to start a 2nd TM instance on your NAS. I think you can do that
by disconnecting the USB disk, plugging in the NAS, and telling TM to do
a backup to it.

 

one reason is in case the time machine archive is corrupted or the disk
it's on crashes, and you don't want to lose the backup history.

you can never have too many backups.

 

Cristianterek-

The easy way would be to make a copy of the original Mac HD.

You do not want to make a copy of the 500GB HD, just the Time Machine's
sparsebundle file stored on it. What you then have is a sparsebundle
file, not an .img file of her original Mac HD.

You might try dragging the sparsebundle file into the left-hand window
of Disk Utility, and see what it can do for you. I have not tried it,
but Disk Utility might be able to "restore" the sparsebundle to an .img
file or another HD.

Fred

 

I use a 2TB disk for Time Machine backups, not a Time Capsule. Which is
similar to the OP's method of backups. In that configuration, there's
no sparse bundle, just a directory of backup files starting with the
first backup. Unchanged files that are persistent between backups are a
hard link to the first instance of when the file appeared.

Hence my suggestion of doing a clone of the laptop hard drive or
stopping TM and cloning that drive to the NAS. Copying the files over
would be a Bad Idea(tm) and take DAYS.

If you want a duplicate of the backup, get another 500GB drive and
create a mirror.

 

But a backup of a backup may include the problems that backup had (not
uncommon - I've encountered several Time Machine backups that will not
restore a certain file or two). Better to create an entirely new second
backup, and better yet - use different backup software (e.g. CrashPlan
or SuperDuper) so the same problems are not replicated.

 

that's exactly why you make a backup of the time machine archive every
so often.

should the archive get corrupted (which happens sometimes), you can
restore an older version of the entire archive before that problem
occurred. that way, you still have *some* history of your files, rather
than start from scratch and lose everything.

superduper and time machine work in different ways and using both is a
very good idea.

 

No kidding, but I'd still rather have another backup including my
changed and deleted files that is done using a differebt app, e.g.
CrashPlan. What if the TM backup is already FUBARed in part before you
backup the backup?

 

You can make an exact copy of a volume with Disk Utility > Restore tab (in the
right pane). Source is the volume to be copied, Destination the volume to be
copied over. You can also make a dmg by selecting the source volume and clicking
File > New > New Disk Image From [name of volume]