External Harddrive/Time Machine Question

[meyer0095]

Hey,
I just got a 1TB external hard drive for my mac. I mainly got it because I was running out of space on my computer. So my question is can I use it for Time Machine and use it to store media, and other files? If I click the Time Machine Backups it says I have 800 or gigs of space, so I was wondering if I could drag stuff into that and run it right off there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[thegoldenmackid]

No you would need to use disk utility to partition in it (spilt it up). It makes it two (or more) separate disks, you would use one for Time Machine and one for media, etc.

It also clears the hard drive.

 

[MacDawg]

Personally, I would partition the drive, giving one partition to Time Machine and use the other partition for media/file storage

Simple to do from Disk Utility


Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[meyer0095]

Just did it.

Looks great

Thanks a lot

 

[-tWv-]

It is possible to use the hard drive with just one partition on it but it is a lot better to partition the drive and keep them both seperate.

 

[SaSaSushi]

There is no problem whatsoever with storing files on the partition Time Machine uses. The only issue is, of course, that as you use up more of the space for other files the amount of data that Time Machine can backup decreases.

I partitioned my 1.5TB external into two partitions: a 1.3TB partition for Time Machine and other files (media, etc) and another 250GB partition for a mirror image backup of my Macintosh HD using SuperDuper.

I only did the partitioning because the two concurrent backups can't coexist. Time Machine keeps everything in the Backups.backupd directory leaving you free to use the rest of the partition as you wish for file storage, etc.