Time Machine formatting on USB drive

[Jelite]

I've just made some space on a USB passport drive and made a FAT32 partition in windows with partition magic (i already have files on it that i needed to keep). Now should i let time machine reformat, it'll only wipe the partition right? Or should i format it with disk utility?

I'm thinking i can let time machine do it's thing but just double checking as i've managed to wipe a whole hard drive of data before now trying to make new partitions.

 

[flatfoot]

TimeMachine can't backup to FAT32 drives.

 

[aross99]

I've just made some space on a USB passport drive and made a FAT32 partition in windows with partition magic (i already have files on it that i needed to keep). Now should i let time machine reformat, it'll only wipe the partition right? Or should i format it with disk utility?

I'm thinking i can let time machine do it's thing but just double checking as i've managed to wipe a whole hard drive of data before now trying to make new partitions.

I don't think Time machine will use a direct connected FAT32 partition. I think you need to have a HFS+ Journaled partition for it to use it. At least that is what I would try.

I'm sure you know this, but be careful while you are in Disk Utility if you have a partition with data you want to keep that is already on the drive...

 

[Jelite]

It allows me to select the partition i click use for backup and it gives me this.

But im too scared to click it.

 

[Jelite]

I've used disk utility and it's all good, i think that window would have done the same thing (format to HFS) but i'll let someone else confirm it to be sure.

 

[aross99]

Looks like Time Machine may be smart enough to do that for you also. Glad it worked out for you.

Using Disk Utility on a drive that has other good partitions always freaks me out too...

 

[Jelite]

Cheers, i didn't fancy backing up what would of been 30 dvds worth of files, no hot and cold sweats this time.