(possibly) unique time machine question...

[divinemercy]

Greetings.

I say 'possibly' unique because there are lots of time machine threads but i couldnt find one where the questioner has the same limited TM needs as me...

Anyways. I have a 160g hardrive (of which i have only around 30-35g used at a time). I have a 320g external hard drive which i would like to use mainly as a simple drive to store ripped DVD's and things on (thereby leaving my comp free-er)....

Ok. So thats fine and dandy but now i read all about time machine and i think to myself "that would be nice"... So I would like to partition my drive and use it for both my basic drag-and-drop backups AS WELL as my time machine backup. That being said, i only want to use time machine for the possibility of re-loading all of my settings and apps in the event of hardrive failure or theft or something. Maybe just one or two days of 'going back' possibilities in case i remember something from the day before that i accidentally deleted. NO WAY do i need weeks of backup.

That all being said i finally get to my question: HOW MUCH of my 320 drive should be partitioned for timemachine? Again, i'm only using like 35 gigs right now, and I only want it to have enough backups to 1. Reload my OS with all the same things in case of failure. 2. Be able to go back a day or two.

Thanks SO much for your help,

Ryan Shanabarger

 

[Dimwhit]

Don't partition. Set Time Machine with the prefs you want and do the first back up. From there, you can still copy anything you want to that drive. Time Machine will live fine with other files.

 

[divinemercy]

If i dont partition wont the time machine continue to create backups until the drive is full, as opposed to only keeping 2 or three like i want? And if you can just tell time machine how much memory to use instead of partitioning, i still need to know how much memory to tell time machine to give itself....

thanks.

 

[Dimwhit]

You are correct. It will keep filling the drive until it's full. But there's no way to limit how much Time Machine uses. Sounds like what you need more than Time Machine is to just do a disk clone every night or something. If you don't want to let TM do much backup, then it probably doesn't fit your need. Cloning the drive will backup your data and give you more control over your disk space.

 

[gentlegiantcrai]

It really depends on how much you would use the External as Drag and Drop. I would say 100gbs would do you good for your situation in Time Machine, as long as you exclude the partition with your movies.

 

[divinemercy]

exclude the partition? The partion wouldnt be backuped anyways right? I mean its on the backup drive, not the hard drive so would time machine even be aware of it?

 

[gentlegiantcrai]

Time machine will see it as long as it is plugged in. I have two externals and let time machine backup one onto the other.