New Drive and Airport Extreme - Now what?

[blackfx35]

So, I just convinced my wife that we needed to upgrade our old linksys router to a new airport extreme, and that we need an external hard drive to ensure all of our photos and video of our 10 month old daughter are safe....it worked...

Just got home, and I feel like a dumbass....I managed to set up the airport, but I am trying to set up the external HD now. I ultimately want 2 partitions, 1 to use Time Machine on to back up my iMac HD and the other partition to put all of our media.

Question is, do I need two partitions? Or will Time Machine just manage the drive size? Also, my iMac HD is 300GB, if I did do 2 partitions, would I need it larger than 300GB? How do I set up the HD so that I can plug it into the AEBS and access the contents on my iMac and Apple TV?

Thanks

 

[rhyx]

I wouldn't bother with partitioning it. Time Machine will put the backup in a folder and you can create another folder for data. I would use at least a 500GB external drive though.

 

[azdunerat]

I partitioned my 1TB external into three drives. One for the mini, one for the mac book and the last for media. So it is broken down to 100,100, 730. I just figured it would be easier to manage it that way. Really though if it is only one computer I wouldnt worry about it. Also I dont do my back ups over my network. I always plug the computers directly into the HD and go that way. Only do my back ups about once a week, just to keep things happy.

 

[emt1]

If you don't partition, Time Machine will eventually use up all available space. Keep that in mind and consider partitioning.