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External Back Up on a Dual-Booted MacBook Pro.

Dark Void

Dark Void

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 1, 2011
2,614
479
Hello,

I have had my Mac for a while now and my files are not backed up. I will be making a purchase on Newegg soon and will be installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit via Boot Camp and plan to use a Western Digital Elements SE 500GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive (most likely, but I am open to suggestions) as an external back up. I will be installing Windows 7 on my Mac for gaming portability on a low-end level (while leaving high-end gaming to an eventual gaming desktop, hopefully) and I want to mainly back up my Mac partition using the Western Digital external hard drive, but wouldn't mind backing up the Windows 7 partition either.

1) First of all, it's fairly simple to format an external hard drive to work with Mac OS X and Time Machine, yes? I have researched the topic a bit and found that with a few simple clicks in Disk Utility, I will have a properly functioning external drive. I just want to confirm its ease (in your opinion) as the prices of those "external mac hard drives" are so much higher than a regular external hard drive that it makes me think that it isn't so simple. Also, 2) When I was formatting my Mac, I chose "1 partition" in order to name it and then install Mac OS X on it. Am I going to run into problems here? I just want to be able to slide my Mac partition to 380 GB down from 500 GB, and devote 120 GB of it to a Windows 7 Partition, put the disc in, and have it begin installing. (hopefully without any problems)

I have a 500 GB internal Hard Drive and that is plenty of space for me. I do not need a separate external for media or anything, I simply have everything on my internal and just want it backed up. I will also not let this drive get too full. I plan on having a 380 GB Mac OS X partition and a 120 GB Windows 7 partition, allowing me to have the comfort of not letting either partition get more than 80% full, roughly. 3) Would it be possible to back up both my Mac OS X partition and my Windows 7 partition on the same external hard drive? I have looked this up as well and there are a lot of different answers as to go about this. I want to be able to use Time Machine to back up my full 380 GB Mac partition, but then what would I do with the 120 GB Windows 7 partition? Do you partition an external hard drive? I have never had a need for external back up before so I would appreciate any and all responses.

Thank you.
 
Last edited:
Archlord said:
1) First of all, it's fairly simple to format an external hard drive to work with Mac OS X and Time Machine, yes? I have researched the topic a bit and found that with a few simple clicks in Disk Utility, I will have a properly functioning external drive. I just want to confirm its ease (in your opinion) as the prices of those "external mac hard drives" are so much higher than a regular external hard drive that it makes me think that it isn't so simple.
Click to expand...
It is fairly simple, a monkey could do it, though that doesn't include some people I guess.

Also, 2) When I was formatting my Mac, I chose "1 partition" in order to name it and then install Mac OS X on it. Am I going to run into problems here? I just want to be able to slide my Mac partition to 380 GB down from 500 GB, and devote 120 GB of it to a Windows 7 Partition, put the disc in, and have it begin installing. (hopefully without any problems)
Click to expand...
That's what Boot Camp Assistant is there for. No need for Disk Utility to format the HDD prior to the Mac OS X installation, as BCA does that quite well.

 
@simsaladimbamba: thanks for your reply, and especially the guides. so i set it up with boot camp assistant and hopefully it goes well, but any info on backing it up? is it bad to use the same external to back up both partitions? i won't really be pressed for space, as i said i will leave both the 380gb and 120gb partitions with room to breathe, so that's why i am only getting a 500gb external to match my 500gb internal.
 
Archlord said:
@simsaladimbamba: thanks for your reply, and especially the guides. so i set it up with boot camp assistant and hopefully it goes well, but any info on backing it up? is it bad to use the same external to back up both partitions? i won't really be pressed for space, as i said i will leave both the 380gb and 120gb partitions with room to breathe, so that's why i am only getting a 500gb external to match my 500gb internal.
Click to expand...

If you value your data and some of it is important, you back it up twice, as HDDs will fail eventually. I have all my important data backed up twice, thus I have three copies of it.

There was a software called Winclone to backup your BC partition, but is no longer developed and still has some kinks, but many use it successfully.

And there is no problem to use one external HDD for multiple backups, but backup your important data (which can't be recovered via some download or repurchase) twice.

Time Machine FAQ
 
does one partition an external drive? i.e, could i simply partition a 500gb external to with a 380 GB mac os x extended/hfs+ for time machine as partition 1 and a 120gb ntfs partition to be used with some sort of windows back up as partition 2? thanks for the continued replies.

edit: nice, one of the guides you posted has pics, exactly what i was looking for. it looks like you do/can partition the external, but do you think i will run into problems using the same external with two different files formats? how will that even work if i need to restore my data on mac os x? will it automatically recognize the 380gb time machine partition or will it try to do something with the windows backup partition as well and possibly mess up?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There will be no problems using one external HDD with to file systems, but if the HDD needs to be read easily by Windows, the partition map scheme needs to be set to Master Boot Record.
If you use WinClone, there is no need for a second partition , but if you want to use Windows tools, then there is a need. But I am not proficient in Windows anymore, maybe you oughta look for some guides on how to backup Windows. I used XXClone (free) to clone a Windows partition to another partition, but that happened solely on Windows only PCs.

PS: The following guide shows you how to set partition map schemes in Disk Utility, though it focuses on GUID.


PS: I don't know if Time Machine will work on an external HDD using MBR as partition map scheme.
 
@simsaladimbamba: the cloning thing has me a bit puzzled, not really sure what that means exactly but i will look into it if it's something that will help me out. if all of this turns out to be a hassle, i don't really need to back up the windows partition. i will just be using it to install games by disc mainly, so if i have to reformat it for some reason then i could just reinstall them manually. i just want to be able to have an external hdd that can store both simply. a file format partition for mac os x, and another file format partition for windows 7. i'm going to look into this even more before i go ahead and do it, and hopefully come to a easing decision on how exactly i want to sort it all out.

your responses were much appreciated and very helpful, thanks very much. :]
 
Sorry to bump this, but I forgot that I had even created this thread an I am recently getting into this now.

I believe that I want to use WinClone. I think I understand it, but I just want to make sure.

I have a 500GB internal hard drive (320GB OS X / 180GB Win7) and currently the OS partition is the only one backed up by a 1 TB external hard drive via Time Machine. The windows partition is about half full of game installs and I want to back them up via WinClone.

I just run WinClone on OS X to image my Windows partition in a 90GB file and place it in a folder or wherever and then run Time Machine to back up OS X and it will back up the WinClone file as if it were any other file, correct? Time Machine will then have the entire Mac OS X partition backed up, including the Windows partition in file form?

Thanks.
 
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