Time Machine eating away my extrnal HD space

[spyker3292]

Hmm... I have an internal 320, timemachine 465 usable, now 349, since launch.

 

[stellarceltic]

I'd like to start using Time Machine, but I'm curious how it would affect my external drive that I also use for media.

The first pic attached is how the drive is set up now (in Disk Utility). Note that it says "This volume will not be erased".

Second pic is after I select "2 Partitions". That is what I want, correct? One for Time Machine and one for my other crap?

If I do this, will it move everything currently on the HD to one of the new partitions? Or will it erase everything?

Here's another question...

If I format the drive and then create the partitions, what format do I want?

And when I click Options, I have the choice of GUID Partition Table, Apple Partition Map, and Master Boot Record. Any help?

 

[timmillwood]

I have a 160gb drive in my laptop and 99gb is used.

My external drive is 250gb with a 200gb and a 50gb partition.

Time machine has used 97gb of my 200gb partition, so what has it missed from the 99gb off my laptop drive???

the extra 50gb is just for manual backups, install files, and other stuff i wanna keep safe.

 

[dranakin]

the on-the-fly partitioning and partition resizing only works with apple-formatted drives to begin with.

I'm running Leopard and my external is GUID and in HFS+...but when I go to create two partitions, it says that my external will be erased before creating the partitions? I thought it wouldn't do that in Leopard?


EDIT: Never mind, I found that if you click the + sign, you can add another partition easily.

 

[jtt]

So you can tell TM not to look at certain folder(s) for back up?

 

[GfulDedFan]

Hey d wade -

Are you using a virtual drive program like Parallels Desktop? If yoy are, you may want to exclude it from TM. It will eat up an external used for TM in a short time. If you other operating system in the virtual is say 20 GB tall..your TM is making a copy of it every hour if you even open Parallels. 20+20+20....

Just an idea.

 

[Avatar74]

I'd like to start using Time Machine, but I'm curious how it would affect my external drive that I also use for media.

The first pic attached is how the drive is set up now (in Disk Utility). Note that it says "This volume will not be erased".

Second pic is after I select "2 Partitions". That is what I want, correct? One for Time Machine and one for my other crap?

If I do this, will it move everything currently on the HD to one of the new partitions? Or will it erase everything?

I think that the first time you partition a drive it will erase and format it. But once partitioned, the partitions can be resized on the fly. I haven't tried it but based on my observation of Disk Utility's behavior (that you can resize partitions on the fly, not that you can add them), I think that adding or subtracting a partition is a destructive activity though.

 

[Mal]

As noted a few posts up, if you simply click the + button on the partition screen (instead of using the drop down), it will add a partition and leave your existing data intact.

jW