Time Machine and external hdd pairings

[odej98]

After shopping for external hard drives to accompany my 320gb in my imac, I noticed for $10 more, I can get 3x the storage. (320 for $90 or 1tb for $100), so how does time machine work, if I hook up an external, is anything beyond 320 wasted? do I need to partition that much off to use the rest of the drive?

Any thoughts on the subject?

 

[MacDawg]

After shopping for external hard drives to accompany my 320gb in my imac, I noticed for $10 more, I can get 3x the storage. (320 for $90 or 1tb for $100), so how does time machine work, if I hook up an external, is anything beyond 320 wasted? do I need to partition that much off to use the rest of the drive?

Any thoughts on the subject?

No, it is not wasted
You can partition (and I would recommend it), but you don't have to

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[-tWv-]

After shopping for external hard drives to accompany my 320gb in my imac, I noticed for $10 more, I can get 3x the storage. (320 for $90 or 1tb for $100), so how does time machine work, if I hook up an external, is anything beyond 320 wasted? do I need to partition that much off to use the rest of the drive?

Any thoughts on the subject?

No it is not wasted, it is recommended to have 1.5 to 2x the amount of space on your backup drive than the drive you are backing up. I would go with the 1TB drive. Time machine doesn't write over the one backup, it makes multiple backups and keeps track of things that change over time. The bigger drive you have, more backups are made and you can see farther back over the life of your drive.

 

[odej98]

No it is not wasted, it is recommended to have 1.5 to 2x the amount of space on your backup drive than the drive you are backing up. I would go with the 1TB drive. Time machine doesn't write over the one backup, it makes multiple backups and keeps track of things that change over time. The bigger drive you have, more backups are made and you can see farther back over the life of your drive.

That explains other questions that I haven't been able to formulate into words. thanks.

BTW, I hate giving up perfectly good drives to backup software. Backups are duplicates and duplicates are a waste of space. But it is a price we must pay.

I think I will go for the 1tb.

 

[-tWv-]

That explains other questions that I haven't been able to formulate into words. thanks.

BTW, I hate giving up perfectly good drives to backup software. Backups are duplicates and duplicates are a waste of space. But it is a price we must pay.

I think I will go for the 1tb.

You can partition the drive so the backups will not use as much space if you want. If you do this you will have to do it with disk utility and before you start backing up. Partitioning an external drive erases all data on it so do it right when you first get the drive if you want to.