I have an intel MBP, partitioned it with Boot Camp to get a Windows partition to be able to play a few games. Depends on your particular needs.I'm in the same kind of boat. It may be a better choice over Time Machine as well. The latest version of CCC was recently updated and one of the main features was increased performance with a new multi-threaded file-copier. But using software such as CarbonCop圜loner is far easier, less error prone, and worth every penny if you do this all the time. This is ONLY AN EXAMPLE, you need to determine what the correct disk identifiers are for your particular setup as they will likely vary.įor the technical people, cloning a drive from the command line for free allows for scripting and a DIY attitude. The destination is /dev/disk2/disk2s1 creating a clone of /dev/disk1/disk1s2 on the first partition on the second disk /dev/disk2/disk2s1. The photos partition is likely the second partition /dev/disk1/disk1s2. dev/disk1 would be the first Time Machine drive with the Photos volume (partition). sudo dd if=/dev/disk1/disk1s2 of=/dev/disk2/disk2s1 bs=100MĪssuming you have 3 disks attached, /dev/disk0 would be your macOS Macintosh HD drive and supporting volumes (partitions). This is very powerful, rather straightforward but it is very unforgiving if you make a tragic mistake. Use the command diskutil list to list all the drives and volumes (partitions) and be absolutely sure you understand which disk is which and that you make zero typos or you could clone the wrong thing or worse clone in the wrong direction effectively wiping out your data. If you wish to do it from the command line in Terminal you need to first determine the drives identification.

This will effectively clone the partition. In Disk Utility, attach both external drives, select the 2nd external drive where you will be copying the Photos partition to and click on Restore and then select the Photos partition on the first drive. If this is something you need to regularly run as a backup, I would recommend the commercial software such as CarbonCop圜loner to make it point and click easy. Some of which depends on the version of macOS you are running as the 3rd party software may only support Catalina or Big Sur on their latest versions. You can clone the Photos partition to the second external drive using Disk Utility (restore function), command line dd tool, or a 3rd party tool such as SuperDuper! or CarbonCop圜loner.

There's a variety of ways to deal with this scenario. This really has nothing to do with Time Machine.

Sounds like you have an external SSD drive that is partitioned for Time Machine and a different partition for Photos and you want to backup the Photos partition to a second external drive.

Partition hard drive for time machine