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Mightee

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 25, 2004
90
8
I want to make a one-time Time Machine backup of my girlfriend's computer. She has about 800GB of data on her drive, and 1TB free on a 2TB external. Can I safely use that remaining space on the external drive for a backup WITHOUT partitioning it? Will Time Machine keep the files that are already present intact?
 
Yes, TM will leave the existing files alone. However, the disk must be formatted to HFS+ (with journaling) in order for TM to use it. If the drive isn't formatted HFS+, TM won't touch it.
 
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