question about time machine

[kayleee]

my mac air is 250 gb

can i use it to backup automatically when i plug it in using 500 gb external hdd?


if so,will i get 25 gb more on the extranal hdd or will it go in vain since i'll setup automatic time machine backup?



can i use the remaining space as any other hdd?


thanks

 

[kayleee]

any help here please?

 

[Weaselboy]

my mac air is 250 gb

can i use it to backup automatically when i plug it in using 500 gb external hdd?

if so,will i get 25 gb more on the extranal hdd or will it go in vain since i'll setup automatic time machine backup?

can i use the remaining space as any other hdd?

Yes, you can certainly use an external 500GB drive for Time Machine with a 250GB Air. The first backup will be whatever the current space used on your machine is. So for example, if the total drive space used on your machine now is 116GB, the first backup will be about 116GB. Then subsequent backups will be just the size of new or changed files and that will be mush smaller and faster.

You can use the same drive to store other files, but it will of course reduce the space available for Time Machine backups.

 

[blueroom]

If you want to use Time Machine the drive must be formatted to HFS+

 

[kayleee]

thanks for the responses everyone...can anyone elablrate what he just said?
can that hdd not be used with windows then?
can i not use the remaining space on the HDD?

 

[Weaselboy]

thanks for the responses everyone...can anyone elablrate what he just said?
can that hdd not be used with windows then?
can i not use the remaining space on the HDD?

The drive need to be in Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format to use Time Machine. You can use the remaining space to store other files from a Mac.

If you want to use the same drive with Windows, you would need to format it to FAT32 or ExFAT in disk utility.

If using the drive in Windows is important to you, you can partition a portion of the drive in HFS+ for the Time Machine Backup, the a second portion (partition) in ExFAT for moving files back and forth between Mac and Windows.