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External hard drive for Time machine and for other storage

S

spitfyre

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 18, 2008
24
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So I just bought an external drive to back off my stuff on my new Macbook (250 GB). I understand that I can partition the external drive (500 GB) so that I can use it for Time machine and to store other files. Okay, so my questions are:

1. With my 250 GB Macbook, anyone have any recommendations on how much space should be alotted to Time Machine? I assume it should be more than 250, but I don't really want to use a lot of space for this.

2. If I decide to use a certain amount, let's say 300GB for Time Machine ,is there some way to change that in the future? Or is it set permanently?

Thanks!
 
spitfyre said:
1. With my 250 GB Macbook, anyone have any recommendations on how much space should be alotted to Time Machine? I assume it should be more than 250, but I don't really want to use a lot of space for this.
Click to expand...

Well, it would be based not on the size of the drive but the amount of data on the drive. My main partition has 77 GB used, and the backup drive is 90 GB used at the moment. Bear in mind that Time Machine makes incremental backups, so two backups will only take slightly more room than one. If you change a lot of large files, the incremental backups will take more space than they would otherwise, so it's a little hard for me to give you an accurate picture. I'd say you probably want at least half again as much space on the backup drive as you plan to use on your main drive.

You can exclude certain directories from backing up, which saves space. I have my main drive partitioned, so I only need to back up one of my partitions.

spitfyre said:
2. If I decide to use a certain amount, let's say 300GB for Time Machine ,is there some way to change that in the future? Or is it set permanently?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. Disk Utility in Leopard allows you to resize partitions to your heart's content. It'll even resize partitions on the boot drive without complaint or restarting! It's very cool.

But yes, you need to create a partition to dedicate to Time Machine. I can walk you through doing that if you don't know how.

spitfyre said:
Thanks!
Click to expand...

No problem. :)
 
BlueRevolution said:
Well, it would be based not on the size of the drive but the amount of data on the drive. My main partition has 77 GB used, and the backup drive is 90 GB used at the moment. Bear in mind that Time Machine makes incremental backups, so two backups will only take slightly more room than one. If you change a lot of large files, the incremental backups will take more space than they would otherwise, so it's a little hard for me to give you an accurate picture. I'd say you probably want at least half again as much space on the backup drive as you plan to use on your main drive.

You can exclude certain directories from backing up, which saves space. I have my main drive partitioned, so I only need to back up one of my partitions.



Absolutely. Disk Utility in Leopard allows you to resize partitions to your heart's content. It'll even resize partitions on the boot drive without complaint or restarting! It's very cool.

But yes, you need to create a partition to dedicate to Time Machine. I can walk you through doing that if you don't know how.



No problem. :)
Click to expand...

I am interested how to partition and external HD if you care to explain. I would like to use most of a 1TB HD for time machine but use about 100Gb for permanet storage of certain items that won't ever be overridden.
 
Sure. Open Disk Utility and select the drive in the list on the left-hand side. Go to the Partition tab, set the volume scheme to 2 Partitions, and adjust the size to taste. Apply, and you're done. Pretty straightforward.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 Sprint:MotoQ (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; Smartphone; 176x220))

Thanks! I did figure it out this morning after a lot of playing around.

A note to people who use time machine. disable any antivirus programs if u have them running or scanning before running time machine intial backups.
 
Is there any way to have 2 partitions with one set up for time machine and the other for mac and pc access(FAT-32)?
 
BlueRevolution said:
Sure. Open Disk Utility and select the drive in the list on the left-hand side. Go to the Partition tab, set the volume scheme to 2 Partitions, and adjust the size to taste. Apply, and you're done. Pretty straightforward.
Click to expand...

Hi. I am trying to to this exact same thing, but I can't find the disk utility you are referring to. I am very new to the mac, and it shows when I try this type of thing. I've tried right clicking on the external disk icon, but i don't see anything like what you describe. I've also looked in the " system preferences" but found nothing in there either. Can you please explain to this newbie where to find it?
TYVM.
Dale.
 
Dale124 said:
Hi. I am trying to to this exact same thing, but I can't find the disk utility you are referring to. I am very new to the mac, and it shows when I try this type of thing. I've tried right clicking on the external disk icon, but i don't see anything like what you describe. I've also looked in the " system preferences" but found nothing in there either. Can you please explain to this newbie where to find it?
TYVM.
Dale.
Click to expand...
Disk Utility is found in the Applications/Utilities folder. Don't forget if you're trying to find something, you can use Spotlight to search for it.
 
Is there any point to "partitioning"

Hi again. Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I was wondering, (after having successfully partitioned this external Hd) if there is any point to it.
I had planned to partition about 120GB for my video/ imovie stuff, and leave the rest for "time machine". I was thinking, if I import video, and edit it, will I benefit from having it in it's own partition, as I'm sure time machine would have backed up the video when I import it anyway.
Does this sound accurate?
dale.
 
Well, the benefit of partitioning in this case is that Time Machine will be limited to whatever size you assign to it, rather than when you use a single partition where it will expand to fill the partition entirely, preventing you from saving more data on the drive. You can use the partition for Time Machine and other stuff at the same time, but I wouldn't recommend it for that reason.

Bear in mind that you can manually exempt particular drives and directories from backing up with Time Machine.
 
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