Partitioning a disk?

[Sceneshifter]

Hello,

Tomorrow I'm getting my very first mac (macbook 2.2), and I have purchased an external harddrive to go with it (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP.../RSLID?mco=85A10F4B&fnode=home&nplm=TP946LL/A) for a very nice price.

Now, I want to take about 200GB For Time machine and 300GB for extra storage.

Can someone tell me, first of all, is 200GB a reasonable number for Time machine?

Second, how do I partition a harddrive under a mac? I have absolutely no idea right now!

Thanks!

 

[edesignuk]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8494.html

How big is the drive in your laptop going to be?

Basically the bigger your time machine drive, the further "back in time" you will be able to go.

 

[Sceneshifter]

the standard 120Gig

 

[chas0001]

I generally have my Time Machine partition at least twice the size of the partition its backing up. But thats just me. It really depends on how much history you want Time Machine to hold.

 

[Sceneshifter]

ok, nice.

Well, most of my valuable information will actualy be on the EXTERNAL hd.. But I suppose I can't have time machine back up the data from it's own harddrive (though on a separate parition) ?

On the macbook itself will be mostly Leopard and office tools, the standard surf, mail, write, ... software. On the external harddrive (on a partition) I will be storing my work files from Logic, which is the only important stuff worth backing up for me. Any way to make Time machine back those up?

 

[edesignuk]

If all your important data is going to be on the external drive on another partition then the whole point of backing up your laptops drive is basically redundant. You need to think about this a bit more.

 

[Sceneshifter]

So you can't make timemachine do backups of the data on the external disk? That's indeed almost it, and if it can't do that, almost no point to activate time machine.

 

[edesignuk]

More to the point, there's no sense in backing up to a different partition on the same physical drive. If the drive fails (and that's really why you're taking backups) then you're stuffed anyway because your backup is sitting on the same drive.

 

[Sceneshifter]

hmm, you do have a very valid point
Looks like I'll keep my travelling data on the laptop, and audio data on the external disk. The travelling will be pictures, documents etc... so it definately wouldn't hurt to back these up. Then for the 'work' files on the external I'll do it the old fashioned way and put them on a separate backup drive

I feel a little bit silly now for having asked such a stupid question in the first place.. thanks for your subtle hint

In my defence, I did backup to different partitions on windows, in case a virus ate a partition or something, since that doesn't necessarily affect the other partitions. But I suppose this is no issue for mac at the moment? (no viruses?)

 

[LouisBlack]

Another question (that's kind of linked to this thread) for people with an external hard drive with data on and another external for time machine. Will the time machine drive back up the data external as well as the internal disk?