Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Time Machine and lacie question

K

krissvl86

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hello,

i need some help!

i have several lacie external hardrives daisy chained through firewire and brought a new one for OSX Time Machine feature.

can anyone tell me if this can be added to the daisy chain or does it need to be connected seperatly?

many thanks in advance
:apple:for life.....
 
I've not actually tried using TM on FW daisy-chained hard drives, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. It may be a slower than using a direct connection - but TM probably won't care.

SL
 
Firewire daisy chaining is (basically) the same as plugging it in directly to the computer. It doesn't look any different to the Mac no matter how you connect it. The only difference might be in speed, but for time machine speed is not a factor.
 
motulist said:
Firewire daisy chaining is (basically) the same as plugging it in directly to the computer. It doesn't look any different to the Mac no matter how you connect it. The only difference might be in speed, but for time machine speed is not a factor.
Click to expand...

that is true, but when you format a HD to a Time Machine HD, it does look different - so was just wondering if this will make a difference?
 
krissvl86 said:
that is true, but when you format a HD to a Time Machine HD, it does look different - so was just wondering if this will make a difference?
Click to expand...

By look different I didn't mean the hard drive icon has a different color on your desktop, I meant that for almost all intents and purposes a Mac considers daisy chained firewire drives as if they were directly connected to your Mac's firewire port. To answer your question explicitly, I'm almost 100% certain that a daisy chined drive will work perfectly as a time machine drive.
 
great sounds good.

also 1 more thing!
can i use the harddrive for other things or will it be strictly for the TM?
 
superleccy said:
I think TM at least needs its own partition. You can partition your Lacie in Disk Utility.

SL
Click to expand...

correct me if im wrong but when you partition a drive you are re-formatting it? correct? or can you partition without a re-formatting?

TM wont work unless it reformats the HD when you plug it in so i dont think you can partition it can you?
 
Time machine does not need its own partition. Any space not being used for time machine will be available like normal hard drive space. Just plug in a hard drive (with or without regular files already on it) and OS X will ask you if you want to use it as a TM drive. Click yes and then it will store your TM backup data in addition to whatever regular files and folder stuff you choose to put on the drive.
 
motulist said:
Time machine does not need its own partition. Any space not being used for time machine will be available like normal hard drive space.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected. 🙂

Personally I prefer to give TM it's own partition anyway... but that's just because I like to keep things tidy.

krissvl86 said:
correct me if im wrong but when you partition a drive you are re-formatting it? correct? or can you partition without a re-formatting?

TM wont work unless it reformats the HD when you plug it in so i dont think you can partition it can you?
Click to expand...
I'm not going to say anything else at the risk of getting anything else wrong in this thread. 😱 But I run TM on a partition on my LaCie and it always works fine.

SL
 
krissvl86 said:
correct me if im wrong but when you partition a drive you are re-formatting it? correct? or can you partition without a re-formatting?
Click to expand...
You can only put partitions on a drive (without re-formating) on a HFS+ formatted volume
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back