Possible to have one drive formatted as two partitions, mounting as two network drives (for backups)?

[Lightivity]

I've got an Asus RT-AX58U and contemplating alternative backup options.

Background​

Right now I have two physical USB-drives connected to the router using a USB-splitter. One drive is 2 TB and dedicated to local Time Machine backups of my Mac computer. The other is a 1 TB drive which I use as a regular extended storage network drive for archiving files that won't fit on my Mac local hdd storage.

Additionally, I use iDrive to backup both drives online (for theoretical off-premise security). Also, without iDrive, I would have no backup of my 1 TB network drive at all. But, iDrive has reocurring costs which I would like to avoid (it's also extremely slow when backing up network drives).

I'm therefore thinking of ditching iDrive and finding a way to make only local backups of all assets, inkluding the 1 TB drive. I know this will theoretically be a downgrade security-wise, but that's another discussion.

My plan is to get a 5 TB drive, format it as two 2.5 TB partitions, and have my Mac Time Machine backups on one partition, while the other partition will house backups of the 1 TB archival drive.

My questions:​

1. Will the Asus router be able to read/mount the two partitions as separate networks drives for this purpose?
2. Will Time Machine be able to hook into one of the partitions?
3. Do you know of a backup app that can schedule backups where both the source and the destination is a network mounted drive? (this is for backing up the 1 TB archive network drive over to the 2.5 TB network partition).

Thanks!

 

[bbunge]

Sure. But a NAS would be a better option.

 

[Lightivity]

Sure. But a NAS would be a better option.

Thanks, NAS becomes too complex and expensive for me I think.

As for question 1: I can't find any instructions for how this works. I just format the drive with two partitions and plug in to router ? I'm on Mac so HFS format I guess?

 

[glens]

If HFS is supported on the router that would work and leave the drive natively-supported on your PC of choice. Don't know about HFS support on the router. If not, I'd plug the drive into the router and via an ssh terminal session set the partitions and format them to EXT4, then proceed with the GUI stuff required.

 

[Lightivity]

If HFS is supported on the router that would work and leave the drive natively-supported on your PC of choice. Don't know about HFS support on the router. If not, I'd plug the drive into the router and via an ssh terminal session set the partitions and format them to EXT4, then proceed with the GUI stuff required.

My Asus AX58U router supports HFS+ (Mac OS Extended). I'm already performing Time Machine backups from my Mac to the 2 TB network drive (HFS-formatted and connected to my router.).

As a test I'll try formatting my existing 2 TB drive into HFS+ with two partitions using my Mac disc tool - and see what the router does with it when I connect it. I would like to avoid using the terminal, but if I have to I'll do it

 

[Lightivity]

Yikes, it worked! Thank you @glens and @bbunge!

Will be using Carbon Copy Cloner for the network share to network share backup.

 

[sfx2000]

TimeMachine support - APFS is the present and future... new TimeMachine backups on the sparse bundles are formatted natively as APFS internally - this is something to note if one has older Macs that don't support APFS...

Over the network, AFP has been deprecated now for years, SMB/CIFS is the preferred transport there.

CarbonCopyCloner - big win here...