External Hard Drive / Time Machine Question

[BlakeBrattina]

Hi Everyone,

Not to sure if this will get moved but I believe this would be the correct place.

My situation is:

I am using a 320GB External Hard Drive to back up my MBP using Time Machine. I essentially put two things on the EHD, my Time Machine back-ups and a seperate folder for Movies - Some of these movies are still on my MBP, and some are not, which is why I wanted to put them on the external to save for later use if I wanted to.

My question is:

I believe I am using space where it is not needed, as I may be duplicating these files? I am not fully understanding of the capabilities of Time Machine perhaps..

Any advice would be much appreciated, as I am out of room on my ExternalHD

 

[belvdr]

In the Time Machine preference pane, under Options, you can exclude folders. Put the duplicate movies in a specific folder and exclude it.

Also, I'd have your movies that exist only on the external hard drive backed up somewhere, if you are concerned about losing them.

 

[davidinva]

I have a portable 500 GB external hard drive partitioned to use for Time Machine and for photos. I also take it with me when I travel with my Macbook.

I also have an 1.5 TB external hard drive with four partitions - 1 for a Hard Drive Copy using SuperDuper, and another for photos and other data including movies (also using SuperDuper). Two partitions are empty. I do a backup of my Macbook hard drive and Photos and Data using SD about every other day. My MB only has a 160 GB hard drive, so I only keep photos (about 3 months) that I am working on there. Older ones are on the backups.

I use both Time Machine and SuperDuper as I have problems with permissions and SD repairs them with each backup.

Hope you are not too confused.

 

[BlakeBrattina]

Thank you both for your help. It's shaping up that I will need an additional HD for simply movies, as the file size can build up quick.