partition time machine drive?

[stealthsniper96]

I set up time machine to use my whole external drive, but now I'd like to get 100 or so gigs back. Can I partition it without erasing any of the time machine data?

 

[Nermal]

I haven't tried it myself, but you should be able to use the Partition tab in Disk Utility to do this. Drag the resize handle on your existing partition to make it smaller, then read the message that appears to ensure that you are indeed resizing instead of erasing the volume.

Just to check: Are you aware that you can store other files on the same volume as a TM backup? The drive doesn't become "Time Machine only"; all of the TM stuff sits in its own directory. However, I am not sure whether you can set a maximum size for the TM directory itself.

 

[stealthsniper96]

Just to check: Are you aware that you can store other files on the same volume as a TM backup? The drive doesn't become "Time Machine only"; all of the TM stuff sits in its own directory. However, I am not sure whether you can set a maximum size for the TM directory itself.

It didn't give me the resize thing, but yea i forgot about that. Thanks.

 

[Le Big Mac]

I can't find it, but I read an article/blog/post somewhere that says time capsule cannot be partitioned except through some sort of hack. It may have involved removing the hard drive, mounting it directly, partitioning, and then reinstalling it. But I looked more than a month ago, so someone may hae gotten a better answer since then.

ETA: Never mind--you're asking about a normal external, not time capsule. Apple should have named time capsule "time machine", since it's a machine (of sorts). They could have named time machine something else (flux capacitor?)