Do I need 2 external hard drives for an imac?

[aa521490]

HELP. As the title states.

Do I need 2 separate hard drives. One for time machine, the other for backing up family photos and home videos, documents, etc..

Or is there an all in one solution. Thanks.

 

[bigjnyc]

If you get one external hard drive that's big enough you should be able to use it for both purposes. I use time capsule and i have the time machine file on it but then i have 3 folders for movies, pictures and other misc stuff on the same hard drive and it works perfectly.

 

[techound1]

Partition one large hard drive into two - use one for TM, the other for archives or storage. You will want to partition the drive because TM will keep eating up space until it runs out. If you limit the amount of space it can use, you can keep more space on the HD for your family photos archive to grow. The danger in one HD, however, is that if you are backing up the family archive to the same drive as TM, if the drive goes to hell, so do your archives.