can your Time machine drive be used for other files (data/music/photos)

[TwoBytes]

2 external drives, 1 imac

Drive 1 will be time machine
Drive 2 will be a backup drive

Can drive 1 be my imac's time machine drive AND hold my music/data/photos, etc in another folder which will be backed up onto drive 2?


Thanks!

 

[old-wiz]

split the external drive into 2 partitions, 1 for time machine, 1 for data. This keeps time machine from taking up the whole drive.

 

[TwoBytes]

that's a good idea, thanks.

Is it possible to do this without partitioning? To prevent the space problem, i could delete the backups manually. (i'll be running a drobo so space shouldn't be an issue..)

 

[old-wiz]

AFAIK you can't delete the time machine backups manually.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

that's a good idea, thanks.

Is it possible to do this without partitioning? To prevent the space problem, i could delete the backups manually. (i'll be running a drobo so space shouldn't be an issue..)

I do this. Time machine is pretty good at always letting me have space, but if you need the spare space, you can go into Time Machine and click the gear menu in finder and delete backups until there's enough space.

 

[Enigmafan420]

AFAIK you can't delete the time machine backups manually.

Belive this is correct-I have looked at my TM hard drive and it is just one GIANT file-this makes sense because after the first back-up, TM is much faster, which to me means it is just backing up changes.

I also tried to figure out a way to delete a back-up from the TM screen and if it can be done, I can't figure out how

 

[TwoBytes]

Looks like i'll have to either
1: partition my drobo
2: buy a cheap £60 external drive for my TM and use some type of backup software for cloning one drive to another...i'll post another question asking for some.

Thanks for the help!