Hi-
New to mac. Just purchased an external hard drive.
Having seen and read copious amount of threads regarding backing up and time machine just want to make sure I am understanding them. I apologize for posting yet another thread on this topic.
What I want to do
1. Back up my macbook with all my settings (basically a clone)
2. Back up important files to use in a windows platform (in case I don't have access to a mac or decide to go back to a PC in the future).
I am planning to partition my external drive into two using disk utility. One will be formatted to HFS+ Journaled (not really sure what the journalling does but seems that is what the majority does) and the second will be formatted to Fat32.
As I understand the Fat32 is limited in the size of files to less than 4GB but is compatible to both windows and mac to write and read.
The HFS+(journaled) will allow me to use Time Machine to backup.
As I understand, Time Machine is not bootable (I don't fully understand the meaning of this...I am thinking bootable means that I don't need to find a mac with the same operating system/version and everything is self contained. So for Time Machine to restore all my settings I need to find a mac running on the same operating system and version as when I made the backup? so i should never ever lose my disk with the operating system on it then it'll be ok.)
For Fat32 I can simply drag my files (including my itunes songs?) that I want to backup from any environment and open in any environment.
Am I correctly understanding all this?
Also I just bought a toshiba external hard drive which was preformatted for a pc. So do I want to first erase everything on that drive and format it into HFS+ then partition into two parts (one for HFS+ journaled and the other for Fat32)? Or does the ordering not matter at all after I erase the original?
never partitioned before...kinda nervous...kinda fun.
Alex
New to mac. Just purchased an external hard drive.
Having seen and read copious amount of threads regarding backing up and time machine just want to make sure I am understanding them. I apologize for posting yet another thread on this topic.
What I want to do
1. Back up my macbook with all my settings (basically a clone)
2. Back up important files to use in a windows platform (in case I don't have access to a mac or decide to go back to a PC in the future).
I am planning to partition my external drive into two using disk utility. One will be formatted to HFS+ Journaled (not really sure what the journalling does but seems that is what the majority does) and the second will be formatted to Fat32.
As I understand the Fat32 is limited in the size of files to less than 4GB but is compatible to both windows and mac to write and read.
The HFS+(journaled) will allow me to use Time Machine to backup.
As I understand, Time Machine is not bootable (I don't fully understand the meaning of this...I am thinking bootable means that I don't need to find a mac with the same operating system/version and everything is self contained. So for Time Machine to restore all my settings I need to find a mac running on the same operating system and version as when I made the backup? so i should never ever lose my disk with the operating system on it then it'll be ok.)
For Fat32 I can simply drag my files (including my itunes songs?) that I want to backup from any environment and open in any environment.
Am I correctly understanding all this?
Also I just bought a toshiba external hard drive which was preformatted for a pc. So do I want to first erase everything on that drive and format it into HFS+ then partition into two parts (one for HFS+ journaled and the other for Fat32)? Or does the ordering not matter at all after I erase the original?
never partitioned before...kinda nervous...kinda fun.
Alex