Time Machine Alternate Drive

[ph03n1x]

Does anyone know if you can make a separate partition on the internal hard drive for Time Machine? Or am I gonna be forced to use an external?

 

[imaketouchtheme]

inb4 alphaod posts.

Ok I'm kidding, but yes you can use a partition from your internal. Not really a point but.....

 

[ph03n1x]

Well is there any guide on how?

 

[cptpower]

I'm not sure on a guide for how to do that, but I just want to throw this out there for you to think about before going ahead and doing this.

If you are using the internal HDD that Mac OS X is running on as the TM drive, then you:
a) may notice big performance decreases as the TM backs up data.
b) will run out of space on the internal HDD really quick
c) are completely hooped if that drive fails. you have nothing to recover from then.

If you're still keen on doing this, then I would first advise that you read through point 'c' a couple more times.. just to let it sink in 🙂

In all seriousness, if you use disk utility to partition the drive, then you should be able to use it for your TM backups.

 

[merl1n]

I'm not sure on a guide for how to do that, but I just want to throw this out there for you to think about before going ahead and doing this.

If you are using the internal HDD that Mac OS X is running on as the TM drive, then you:
a) may notice big performance decreases as the TM backs up data.
b) will run out of space on the internal HDD really quick
c) are completely hooped if that drive fails. you have nothing to recover from then.

If you're still keen on doing this, then I would first advise that you read through point 'c' a couple more times.. just to let it sink in 🙂

In all seriousness, if you use disk utility to partition the drive, then you should be able to use it for your TM backups.

I agree and you should re-read item C!

The purpose of TM is to do backups for restoring files or a complete system restore. If your internal drive fails you will lose everything, and drives do fail (it's just a matter of how long and when).

TM Backups should be done on an external drive. This is by design and for your own safety.

 

[~Shard~]

The purpose of TM is to do backups for restoring files or a complete system restore. If your internal drive fails you will lose everything, and drives do fail (it's just a matter of how long and when).

TM Backups should be done on an external drive. This is by design and for your own safety.

+1 on this - the purpose of a backup is to ultimately backup your data in case of HDD failure. Yes, recovering deleted files on a functioning HDD is a nice feature as well, but in the case of a complete failure, your system backup should reside on a separate external drive for obvious reasons. Some people even take it a step further and store their backup off-site in case of fire, theft, etc.