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New external HD for Time Machine - should I partition?

rediffusion

rediffusion

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 26, 2006
202
38
Fairfield, CT
Hi,

I've got a new 1.5tb which I intend to use for Time Machine back ups. My iMac HD is 750gb so I won't use all of the space. I would like to use the external HD to back up some other files. Should I partition it for this? One for the Time Machine, another for other files?

I've never partitioned a HD before so this is all new to me.

Thanks,
R ;)
 
Keep in mind that time machine keeps older copies of files, so depending on how much data you have and how often big files change, you could easily use more space than the drive that's being backed up. You don't NEED that much, since it'll delete older versions there's no room for, but it might be useful. (Of course, if you only have 50GB of files, you need a lot less.)

That said, if you have separate stuff you want to back up manually, then yes, you probably want to partition your TM drive into one (say, 1TB) for TM, and one (say, the remaining 500GB) for manual drag-and-drop backups.
 
It's pretty simple to partition a hard drive in Disk Utility. Here's a screen shot of what you'll want to do :)
 

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I did this for my external Time Machine drive. Once the allocated time machine space fills up, it replaces the old with the new. Its great.

And then you have another partition for other junk like movies that dont really need to be backed up.
 
Makosuke said:
That said, if you have separate stuff you want to back up manually, then yes, you probably want to partition your TM drive into one (say, 1TB) for TM, and one (say, the remaining 500GB) for manual drag-and-drop backups.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I want to do. I'm currently using DVD backups (which I'll still keep) but your estimation sounds about right for my needs.

Is there anything else I need to know before doing this?
Should I also create a OSX system partition rather than using my Snow Leopard DVD? If so, how do I do this?
 
One other question, should I reformat my HD (Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II) before doing the partition or does partitioning it automatically reformat the HD?
 
that being said ^^ - i always recommend having 2x the amount of HDD space you are backing up, as you never know what will go wrong. depends on how you plan on backing up though (manually v automatically).

rediffusion said:
One other question, should I reformat my HD (Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II) before doing the partition or does partitioning it automatically reformat the HD?
Click to expand...
its probably best to format the drive - just dont use journaled!
 
DoFoT9 said:
that being said ^^ - i always recommend having 2x the amount of HDD space you are backing up, as you never know what will go wrong. depends on how you plan on backing up though (manually v automatically).
Click to expand...

Does Time Machine compress the files it backs up?


DoFoT9 said:
its probably best to format the drive - just dont use journaled!
Click to expand...

So how should it be formatted?
 
I think you're making things more difficult than they need to be. Timemachine will store your backup in a folder. Create another folder for your manual backup collection.

Done.

Creating a partition gives zero benefit and when you discover that you sized them wrong you will have lots of time to waste backing up your backup, repartitioning, and perhaps getting it all working again.

PS: putting "second" backups on the same physical drive is generally stupid.
 
If you need more advanced features (compression, encryption), I'd probably recommend looking at Retrospect 8 for the Mac. It definitely isn't free and not as intuitive as TM, but it offers more functionality.
 
trule said:
I think you're making things more difficult than they need to be. Timemachine will store your backup in a folder. Create another folder for your manual backup collection.

Done.

Creating a partition gives zero benefit and when you discover that you sized them wrong you will have lots of time to waste backing up your backup, repartitioning, and perhaps getting it all working again.

PS: putting "second" backups on the same physical drive is generally stupid.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this advice. I think you're right, I don't want to complicate things so the simpler option might be best for my needs. I thought that Time Machine required its own sanctioned HD partition

Is it possible to put a bootable OSX on the external HD without partitioning it?
 
rediffusion said:
Thanks for this advice. I think you're right, I don't want to complicate things so the simpler option might be best for my needs. I thought that Time Machine required its own sanctioned HD partition

Is it possible to put OSX on the external HD without partitioning it?
Click to expand...
yeh, but you have to install it first. then the rest of the files etc must be sub directories in the root folder. makes it messy.
 
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