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Time Machine Hard Drives...

S

swwack91

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 28, 2007
736
23
New Jersey
When using a selected external hard drive for use by Time Machine, is it possible to still use that disc as storage?

For instance, can I store files like any other hard drive while using it for Time Machine, or does using it lock it out from normal use?

This is all assuming the drive still has free space after Time Machine backs everything up...
 
awesome, thanks.

and this may be a silly question...

Does Time Machine use up any large amount of space maintaining the backups with things like indexing and recording the backups? Will it use any space on my startup disc?
 
one more question -

can time machine back up other external hard drives? i do a lot of video work and have another external hard drive that i would like backed up via Time Machine along with my startup disc.
 
swwack91 said:
one more question -

can time machine back up other external hard drives? i do a lot of video work and have another external hard drive that i would like backed up via Time Machine along with my startup disc.
Click to expand...

Yes. However, by default it will exclude them. You have to go into preferences and remove your external(s) from the excluded list if you want them backed up.

system_preferences-20071117-205456.jpg


Also, let me just head off a potential future post here if I can... first off, understand that Time Machine WILL fill your entire external drive if you leave it running long enough. That's not a mistake, that's how it's supposed to work. It will do incremental backups until the drive fills, then the oldest backups will start to "drop off" the other end (delete).

The only real way to control how big Time Machine gets is to give it it's own full drive, or to partition the only external you have. That way, when it fills up it'll just start dropping off the oldest backups.

Keep in mind the best back up to have is as old as you can get, therefore you want the biggest external drive you can afford/find.

Lastly, if you have a lot of large files that change very often, you might want to consider creating some folders and excluding them from the backup.

For example I have a folder where my eMusic downloads go. Now, I drag all that music into iTunes anyway, so I exclude the eMusic downloads folder from Time Machine. If I didn't do that I'd end up with those same files backing up twice... once in the "eMusic Downloads" folder, and again in the iTunes Library folder.
 
wow, thanks a lot.

i feel a lot better going into Leopard now that i understand time machine and feel that i can take advantage of it in the best ways i can use it.

thanks again.
 
From what I understand, TM works with HFS+ formatting, so on a single 500gb hdd, can i have 2 HFS+ formatted partition each of 200gb and than ONE Fat32 of 100gb (to use with my family's windows computer)?

If so, how can i go about partitioning it like this?

Thank You
 
i4k20c said:
From what I understand, TM works with HFS+ formatting, so on a single 500gb hdd, can i have 2 HFS+ formatted partition each of 200gb and than ONE Fat32 of 100gb (to use with my family's windows computer)?

If so, how can i go about partitioning it like this?

Thank You
Click to expand...

Just go into "Disc Utility" in Leopard, click on your external drive shown on the left hand side of the Disc Utility box, then go to the Partition tab.
You can make multiple partitions, including as in your example, making one or more of them in FAT32.
After you've created your partitions open Time Machine. It'll ask which partition you want Time Machine to use. Just specify which one (Obviously an HFS+ partition) and you should be good to go.
 
Possible partition table issues for sharing TM disk with Win32 machine

Cole Slaw said:
Just go into "Disc Utility" in Leopard, click on your external drive shown on the left hand side of the Disc Utility box, then go to the Partition tab.
You can make multiple partitions, including as in your example, making one or more of them in FAT32.
After you've created your partitions open Time Machine. It'll ask which partition you want Time Machine to use. Just specify which one (Obviously an HFS+ partition) and you should be good to go.
Click to expand...

The file formats are not the only issue. Time machine won't work on (at least has problems with) drives with MBR partition table, so it has to be either APM or GUID partition table, which AFAIK can't be seen by the Windows machines (Win64 machines can see GUID partition map). See http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=partitionformatd05xc8.png

I'd like to find out if anyone has anyone had success with this. It appears, at least for now, that the whole of TM drive should be dedicated to live on the Macs with no sharing with MsWindows (32) world.
 
If I connect my Time Machine HD to another Mac, will it prompt the other Mac (if it has Leopard) to start backing up on my drive or will it only mount it as a standard data drive?
 
BobZune said:
The file formats are not the only issue. Time machine won't work on (at least has problems with) drives with MBR partition table, so it has to be either APM or GUID partition table, which AFAIK can't be seen by the Windows machines (Win64 machines can see GUID partition map). See http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=partitionformatd05xc8.png

I'd like to find out if anyone has anyone had success with this. It appears, at least for now, that the whole of TM drive should be dedicated to live on the Macs with no sharing with MsWindows (32) world.
Click to expand...

So i cannot have a partition of Fat32 and HFS+ and have it be comptaible with TM on my G4 PPC Powerbook and my pentium 3 windows XP computer?
 
i4k20c said:
So i cannot have a partition of Fat32 and HFS+ and have it be comptaible with TM on my G4 PPC Powerbook and my pentium 3 windows XP computer?
Click to expand...

Right. If you want to mix it into the MSWin world (esp 32 bit), it has to have MBR partition table - which means no Time Machine (but read and write are possible from the Mac world depending on the file format used).
 
swwack91 said:
If I connect my Time Machine HD to another Mac, will it prompt the other Mac (if it has Leopard) to start backing up on my drive or will it only mount it as a standard data drive?
Click to expand...

In either case, you should be able to set up it up as a TM back up drive on a second Leopard machine. :)

If I remember right, it will ask when the first time you connect the drive, if you answered no, your answer sticks till the next reboot (so if you eject and then plug it in again, you won't be asked again), but as long as the drive is mounted, you can change your answer to a yes and set up the drive anytime.
 
BobZune said:
In either case, you should be able to set up it up as a TM back up drive on a second Leopard machine. :)

If I remember right, it will ask when the first time you connect the drive, if you answered no, your answer sticks till the next reboot (so if you eject and then plug it in again, you won't be asked again), but as long as the drive is mounted, you can change your answer to a yes and set up the drive anytime.
Click to expand...

well the only time i hook up an ext. drive to another mac is when i'm moving files from work to home. i just don't want it to start backing up my work Mac automatically.

thanks, guys.
 
Here's a bit of a strange question:

The Time Machine drive i'm going to use is going to be partitioned so I can use some of the drive for pure storage and so that Time Machine won't consume the entire drive.

I understand that setting Time Machine to back up the same drive's other partition seems silly cuz if the storage partition fails, so will my Time Machine drive... however, I'd like Time Machine to track the changes in the storage partition so that if i accidently delete something, I can restore it.

In Time Machine, is there an option to not copy the entire contents of a selected drive and only back up "trashed" data? Only save changes.
 
swwack91 said:
In Time Machine, is there an option to not copy the entire contents of a selected drive and only back up "trashed" data? Only save changes.
Click to expand...

No such option, fortunately.

To delete a 4GiB file in that scenario, one must first wait for the entire file to be copied to the other drive before the space can be reclaimed. The copying would be even slower from partition to partition on the same drive.

Further, any files removed while the backup drive isn't connected would be lost, and any files deleted when booting another system would be lost too.
 
all good points.

unfortunately, it looks like I'll just need to buy a bigger drive to accommodate backing up the drive itself.
 
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