Bought WD Portable HDD for MBP, advice on setting it up.

[Jenko]

hi guys.
I received my WD my passport studio 2tb portable external hard drive today. I have a 15" MBP mid-2010 i7 2.66ghz with 8gb memory. I have never used an external HDD before and need help to set it up. I want to use it for time machine and backing up my itunes music, films and photos. Will time machine do all that for me or do I need to find seperate space on the external HDD to save music, photos, films and documents etc... Any help would be appreciated as to how to set it up from the beginning right out of the box, I haven't even un boxed the WD HDD yet. Thanks again from an external portable HDD virgin.

 

[fanchee]

Time machine will do all of that. It will back up your entire user folder (where your music/movies/docs/photos reside) plus your applications, and more. Just let time machine do its work!

 

[Jenko]

Time machine will do all of that. It will back up your entire user folder (where your music/movies/docs/photos reside) plus your applications, and more. Just let time machine do its work!

Thats great so I don't need to partition the HDD at all as I have read on the forums in the past. So if something were to happen to the MBP all my folders etc... would be saved and I could connect it to a new Mac of any sought and down load all the folders, music, itunes, films, photos and software onto there? Sorry if my questions sound a bit dumb or obvious but I really am very new to this. Thanks again

 

[Jenko]

If in the future my MBP internal drive was full and I needed to empty or erase it how would I transfer my folders to the my external WD HDD. Sorry if I am not being clear enough what I am trying to say is there a way to use my WD external HDD so that I can use part of it for time machine back ups and the other part for storing other folders, photos, films, itunes stuff etc... Thanks again.

 

[talmy]

You really should buy another drive at that point, perhaps a larger internal drive. You didn't say what drive you have. If you use the same drive for data storage and backup, then where are you if the drive fails?

One problem with TimeMachine is that it works best when left continuously connected. It's intended to give you versioning. So when you use a wired external drive you basically have a "ball and chain" to deal with. IMHO it is easier to clone the internal drive to an external backup drive on a regular basis using Carbon Copy Cloner or (registered) SuperDuper! which can do this very quickly. Using TimeMachine with a notebook is best with a wireless drive such as a TimeCapsule.

Be aware that with Lion when you enable TimeMachine and no drive is available it makes backups of changes and deletions on your internal drive so you still get the versioning when away from home. These versions are not copied to the TimeMachine drive and accumulate, using up your disk space. They can be deleted by turning TimeMachine off and then on again.