Questions about External Hard Drives & Time Machine

[JAVK]

Hey folks,

So I brought a 1.5 TB external hard drive for backing up with time machine, and also for storing my files.

I have a MBP with 250GB of storage, so I will partition my hard drive using disk utility to 250GB (is that right? and will this work?)

What I was wondering is, what format should the remaining partition be?

Some criteria, I need to store files that are larger than 4.3 GB, I should be able to read write the files on my mac, and hopefully even on my PC.

Thanks

 

[ARF900]

I have a MBP with 250GB of storage, so I will partition my hard drive using disk utility to 250GB (is that right? and will this work?)

You mean parition the external drive? Just plug the mac in, time machine will format the drive for you. You shouldnt even need to open disk utility.

 

[JAVK]

You mean parition the external drive? Just plug the mac in, time machine will format the drive for you. You shouldnt even need to open disk utility.

But I want to use my external drive for both time machine, and storing my files, like my music and movies.

So dont I have to partition it?

 

[patrick0brien]

But I want to use my external drive for both time machine, and storing my files, like my music and movies.

So dont I have to partition it?

-JAVK

Yes. The TimeMachine backup file will grow and grow (as it is designed to) eventually filling the entire partition it is hosted on. If you want to prevent it from encroaching on your file storage, a partition for each would work well.

Warning though - You will age your drive quickly by splitting the tasks you'd be asking of the drive's slider. IMHO, you want to have your backup volume be used only for that - in fact, it would be best if it were RAID.