backing up via time machine

[Ruffian829]

I've been using time machine to back up to my WD hard drive but I am looking for a way that I can store photos and movies on my hard drive instead of leaving them on my laptop as well as backing up the whole laptop - when I back up with time machine if I then delete photos off my laptop can I simply pull them up from time machine at a later date and look at them from there? So I dont need to keep them stored on my laptop, or do I need to use another program to do this?

thanks

 

[uberamd]

Well technically you can delete the contents of the folder locally, then when needed open up time machine to that folder and browse back to the contents, however that would require restoration. I don't recommend browsing the time machine backup by hand.

Your best bet is to just create a new folder on your external hard drive and keep what you want time machine to ignore in that folder.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I've been using time machine to back up to my WD hard drive but I am looking for a way that I can store photos and movies on my hard drive instead of leaving them on my laptop as well as backing up the whole laptop - when I back up with time machine if I then delete photos off my laptop can I simply pull them up from time machine at a later date and look at them from there?

Terrible idea. TM is a backup solution, not a different storage mechanism, and if you are using iPhoto you certainly couldn't simply do it in any case.

As per other reply, partition the external HD, use one partition for TM and the other for archived photos/videos.
If you set up iPhoto so it uses your folder structure rather than its own one (difficult to do if you didn't start like that), then you could have a folder called 'archive' that resided on the HD, containing videos, and pictures you didnt want.

Another approach, seeing as you may be running out of space so this might be just a stop-gap solution, is to get a bigger internal disk, or move your entire iPhoto library to an external (rather than just some) - if you do this, don't backup it up to a TM partition on the same disk though !

 

[JefferyShin]

Apologies, but I must have to disagree with the others.

Browsing TM backups are very safe, as long as you don't delete them.

I upgraded to SL from Leopard. I did a time machine backup beforehand.
I restored from that backup, but some programs that didn't like the upgrade decided to crash my whole laptop.

So I reinstalled, but this time, I manually browsed the backup and chose the files I wanted.

You can do it 2 ways.

1) Under finder, browse your TM backup. Find the file, and just move it to your desktop or whatever.

2) Open TM, (the app), browse to the backup you want, find the folder(s) and/or file(s) and click restore.

Hope that helps.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Apologies, but I must have to disagree with the others.
<snip>

1) Under finder, browse your TM backup. Find the file, and just move it to your desktop or whatever.

2) Open TM, (the app), browse to the backup you want, find the folder(s) and/or file(s) and click restore.

And just try doing that with iPhoto !

Restore some photos (good luck finding them, play hunt-the-folder-they-are-in) , and they wont be in the current iPhoto library (as you didn't restore that), so you wont see them in iPhoto.
OR, restore the library as it was before you deleted the photos, hey presto you just wound back all the new photos you added since that date.
OR, drag the photos out of the folders (again, good luck finding them), put them on the desktop. Look at them in something other than iPhoto. Or, import them to iPhoto to look at them again - when done, then what, use TM to restore back to before you did that?

As I said, terrible idea.

 

[Ruffian829]

Sorry for the late reply, I forgot to subscribe to the thread...
Can someone explain to me how I portion off
my hard drive so that I can store movies / music / photos in an accessible location? And any instructions on how I can get the movies/music/photos onto the hard drive so I can access them afterwards??
thanks for all the help.