Time machine - back up, few questions

[OpenAreas]

Heya!

Well i noticed the time machine and it looks pretty good for back ups. Now i have a 160GB external USB drive that i use for movies, media, photography work etc.

Now can i still select this hard drive as a back up. I've been told the back up will be 38GB. Which is fine.

Question is, where does it store the backup on the hard drive? Can i use the hard drive for my media or does it wipe it and use it for a 'Time machine'/back up drive only?

Advice and guidance on this is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Hellhammer]

At least when I did the backup first time it wiped it. You can create a new partition with Disk Utility so that it won't be wiped.

 

[OpenAreas]

At least when I did the backup first time it wiped it. You can create a new partition with Disk Utility so that it won't be wiped.

Thank you again for the quick reply and honest advice.

I will get a back up partition created of 50GB or something and that will do the trick yes?

 

[Hellhammer]

Thank you again for the quick reply and honest advice.

I will get a back up partition created of 50GB or something and that will do the trick yes?

Yes, it should. Ih you have space enough, make it like 80GB or something so it won't fill up immediately

 

[ChrisA]

At least when I did the backup first time it wiped it. You can create a new partition with Disk Utility so that it won't be wiped.

What??? TM does NOT erase data on the drive.

When you tell TM to use a drive for backups it makes a folder on the drive. The folder's name is the name you gave to you computer. TM only writes inside this folder and not any other place on the disk. Two computers canuse the same TM backup drive because each computers data will go into it's own folder. These backup folder can grow untill that fill the disk or the partition. The only reason to partition a Tm disk is to contain the size of the backup folder, to prevent it from filling the entire disk.

That said, you should never tell Time Machine to use an external disk that you keep data on. Backing up data to the same disk is not a backup at all, it's just a waste of disk space. The best thing is to buy an external disk that is about twice as large as all the data you have and let TM have exclusive use of that drive. Disks are cheap now a 1TB drive is only $100. Buy several and rotate them

Also, in addition if you care about the data you need to make other backups as well. You need to keep three copies with at least one of those copies off site. TM is a good start but if the data is importent then you need more.

 

[Hellhammer]

What??? TM does NOT erase data on the drive.

It did to me but it was NTFS formatted

Also, in addition if you care about the data you need to make other backups as well. You need to keep three copies with at least one of those copies off site. TM is a good start but if the data is importent then you need more.

That's true. I have my files in 3 externals. TM kinda sucks because you can't access the files in Windows or even really access, you have to transfer them