Time Machine HDD

[Vinsanity93]

I'm planning to use my old laptop's 320 GB HDD to backup using Time Machine. Do I have to partition it if I wanted to put other files on the drive or can I just leave it as 1 partition? And if I did have to partition it, how much space would be sufficient for TM? I never had a mac and I want to get a MBP around April/May.

 

[vbman213]

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Nope. TM creates a folder in the external drive. However, you should know that TM will continue to fill the drive until it is full. So creating a separate partition just for TM is the best way to preserve some storage for misc. files