MacBook HD icon looks like backup drive?

[Mike Aimer]

I'm not very smart with Time Machine.
I have a 150G drive in my MacBook. I've got a 150G partition on an external drive dedicated to Time Machine. I've been trying to back up today but it's telling me I don't have enough space on the partition. Now after messing with it to try and get it to back up (unsuccessfully) I've given up and ejected the external drive. Now my MacBook's HD icon is turquoise with the Time Machine logo. What the hell did I do?

1. Should I really be using a bigger drive to dedicate to T.M.?
2. Why doesn't T.M. just wipe the old backup and use the space for the new one?

 

[rs13]

ok first of all go to time machine and turn it off, time machine suggests a external hard drive double the size of your internal hard drive so it can create multiple back ups. so if were you i wood create a patron on my external hard drive of around 300GB if you can then goto time machine in preferences then select your external 300GB partition and that should be problem solved.

 

[Mike Aimer]

Ok thanks. That's pretty obvious, but I wasn't aware of it.

I guess once I hook up a bigger dedicated drive for T.M. the icon for the main HD will go back to normal.