External Hard Drive and Time Machine

[joesenior91]

Hi there,

I recently read in an article the Time Machine takes up a whole drive when it backs up.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/08/firstlooks/leotimemac/index.php

If this is the case what advice would you give on external hard drive purchases. i already have a 320gb hard drive from my old PC, but i need to get it a case (with firewire 800) but i can't find anywhere in the UK that sells just cases! Would this be big enough to back up the iMac (also with 320gb hard drive) i'm going to get? I was planning to get another hard drive (probably my book) for general media storage (the 320gb one in the iMac might not be enough, i rip a lot of DVD's)

What are your thoughts?

Cheers, Joe

[mrfrosty]

www.scan.co.uk
www.overclockers.co.uk

Are two examples of places that sell just cases. I like the Icy Box ones....

[joesenior91]

lol, maybe i'm just being incredibly stupid, but i can't find a single sata to Firewire 800 case in those two links.

[Heb1228]

You're just as well off to buy an external drive as putting together your own enclosure. As far as how large of a drive... the answer to that question is 'as big as you can afford.' Decide how much you want to spend on it then shop around some and see what you can get for that price. Check newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, macmall.com and jr.com

Time machine will use as much as you let it, though not at first, of course. Your backup will grow larger and larger as time goes on. You will be able to choose how long to keep backup files and which ones to get rid of when you start running out of space.

[joesenior91]

My point was that the article pointed out that time machine used a whole volume for backing up, no matter how much space it uses, the volume can't be used for anything else. Does volume mean the whole hard drive, or can i Partition my 320gb one to store other files on it. If i do partition it, would the 200 or so Gb's left be enough to back up a 320gb hard drive? I was thinking that i should by a 500gb one for time machine, and use the 320gb one for media storage. What are your thoughts.

And i still can't find a Firewire 800 enclosure for my SATA drive thats in the UK

[wallaby]

My point was that the article pointed out that time machine used a whole volume for backing up, no matter how much space it uses, the volume can't be used for anything else. Does volume mean the whole hard drive, or can i Partition my 320gb one to store other files on it. If i do partition it, would the 200 or so Gb's left be enough to back up a 320gb hard drive? I was thinking that i should by a 500gb one for time machine, and use the 320gb one for media storage. What are your thoughts.

And i still can't find a Firewire 800 enclosure for my SATA drive thats in the UK
Time Machine uses a whole volume, but a partition counts as a volume. So you could partition your external and set one of the partitions to Time Machine and the other to media storage.

Only you can know whether you'll have enough space. Time Machine can be scaled up or down to what it backs up, but personally I'd use a bigger external than the drive you're backing up.

The only Firewire 800 enclosures I know of are the OWC Mercury Elite (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7500GB16/
) and IcyDocks. Not sure if either of those are available in the UK.