Time machine and file storage?

[clarasdk]

Hi

I am new to the Mac OS world and I am just trying to learn a few things.

I want to use a 500 giga external drive to backup my macbook pro 350 giga harddrive. But as I will not need to backup movies files and so forth I will probably be no where near using all the 500 gigs, not even with multiple delta backups each day.

So the question is will using a harddrive with time machine make it a dedicated backup harddrive or can I still use it for files an other things that I copy myself?

 

[miles01110]

TM will eat up as much space as you give it after a period of time, it might be better to partition your drive and use one of the partitions for TM, the other for general storage.

 

[clarasdk]

TM will eat up as much space as you give it after a period of time, it might be better to partition your drive and use one of the partitions for TM, the other for general storage.

Thank you that seems to be the way to go.

What file system should I use for the TM partition?