external drive for storage AND time machine?

[K4VKS]

Sorry if this is a silly question. I searched here but I'm still just as confused as when I started...prob since I'm so new to Mac's still.

Anyhow - I have a 500Gig external drive. Is it possible to use this drive for both file storage as well as time machine backups? My Alum iMac is starting to slow down so I need to move some big media files off of the main HD.

Thanks and please speak slowly for this mac newb

 

[Eidorian]

Time Machine creates its own backup folder that is independent of any other data on the hard drive. Data can exist alongside it as well until the drive is filled. Your best bet is to create a partition for data and Time Machine though.

 

[f1]

Yes, you can split your hard drive into several partitions and your iMac will just see it as seperate hard drives.

 

[K4VKS]

wonderful. Could u help me with how do I partition a drive on a Mac? I would allocate 100Gig for data and the rest for time machine.

 

[rynoman]

wonderful. Could u help me with how do I partition a drive on a Mac? I would allocate 100Gig for data and the rest for time machine.

this site helped me when I split my new HD into three partitions.

Welcome to

 

[K4VKS]

perfect!! thank u all very much for the help

 

[Thiol]

Time Machine creates its own backup folder that is independent of any other data on the hard drive. Data can exist alongside it as well until the drive is filled. Your best bet is to create a partition for data and Time Machine though.

Sorry to bring up an old thread... But why is partitioning recommended? I was just planning to not touch the Backups.backupd folder...

 

[Eidorian]

Sorry to bring up an old thread... But why is partitioning recommended? I was just planning to not touch the Backups.backupd folder...

I recommended the partitioning if they wanted to use the drive for storage beyond just Time Machine.

 

[Cliff3]

Sorry to bring up an old thread... But why is partitioning recommended? I was just planning to not touch the Backups.backupd folder...

Time machine will use all available space, and sometimes that can be more than you might expect. For example, I've been ripping DVDs all week to feed to my new AppleTV and neglected to exclude the DVD target folders from Time Machine. It went from using a nice little 200GB or so to using all of a 650GB partition. I hadn't really planned on devoting that much disk space to time machine... Dedicating a partition to time machine keeps it under control.