Reapportioning my external hard drive

[Tulani]

I have a WD my passport 1TB that I have been using straight from new as a backup for my MacBook Air time machine. How can I proceed to still use this as such but also as storage for other files I may need to put on there?

 

[LeicaM8]

I have a WD my passport 1TB that I have been using straight from new as a backup for my MacBook Air time machine. How can I proceed to still use this as such but also as storage for other files I may need to put on there?

A) Doing so is quite easy, at least it was for me.

B) Do you really want to?
- every file you're storing on the drive subtracts from the potential benefit of Time Machine if you need it's help.
- the fuller a hard drive is, the slower it gets. You will slow up time machine backups and retrievals and the files you're looking to add to the drive are going to have slow reads/writes, too.

C) Get more storage if you can.
- Absent extenuating circumstances like weight or cost it's your best bet.
- If you need long term storage or lotsa space a 500gig WD Elements is like fifty some bucks at TigerDirect.
- If you just need a place to park tens of gigs worth of files temporarily you can get 32gig thumb drive at TD for like $20 - 64gig for like $40.

Sooo if you want to start saving files on your Time Machine Drive, I used to do that just by making a folder on the drive (for easy organization) and just started dropping files in that folder.

If you were asking a different question than I heard being asked, please speak up so someone can help.

Richard in Michigan

 

[Tulani]

Ok thanks. I am now thinking of formatting it completely as new and moving it to my iMac. And getting new external drives for my MacBook Air. What is the proper way of wiping it?