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Partition External 1 TB HD

G

grimreaper1377

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi,

I have a 1 TB Western Digital My Book Edition. I'm not sure what format it's partitioned in right now, but ideally I would like to dedicate 500 GB for Time Machine and the other 500 GB free for storing files and so on. Is this possible?

Thanks!
 
Yes it is. Partition the drive with Disk Utility (might want to name the volumes too), then use the Time Machine system preference to choose which partition to use... if a message doesn't pop up asking you before you can get there.

Also... if you have any other external drives that you want backed up too, you can setup Time Machine to back those up also by removing them from the "do not backup" list in the Time Machine options.

Enjoy.
 
Yes. You can reformat the drive in "Disk Utility". After you open the program you should see a list of all connected drives. You can choose your western digital book and repartition in for OS X. It's super easy.

Edit: ^^ beat me to it.
 
Thanks for the quick response.

One more question: Will the 500 GB that is free work with both Windows and Macs?

Thanks!
 
I believe the partition used for Time Machine is required to be formated as Mac OS Extended, and therefore, cannot be used with a Windows machine.

However, you could make the secondary partition a FAT32 format, and use that with a windows machine. Though, keep in mind, that FAT32 has some rather disabling limitations at times.

Also, if the windows machine is on the same network, you could simply setup file sharing, and it won't matter what format the hard drive is.
 
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