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danyull

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 9, 2013
38
0
I have a 2TB external hard drive that I've used with my PC. I have about 300GB of files that I can't back up anywhere else. I want to start using Time Machine. Is it possible to create a partition for Time Machine without reformatting/erasing my whole drive? If so, how?
 
I have a 2TB external hard drive that I've used with my PC. I have about 300GB of files that I can't back up anywhere else. I want to start using Time Machine. Is it possible to create a partition for Time Machine without reformatting/erasing my whole drive? If so, how?

Yes you can but you should never keep data and backups on the same drive.

Ideally you'd have one drive just for Time Machine and it's size would be 2X larger then al the data you need to back up. 1.5x larger could also work.

Just buy another disk and use it for TM.

Actually if you care about the data you need a redundant backup system, TM is not enough be itself. At least for the data you can't replace.
 
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I have a 2TB external hard drive that I've used with my PC. I have about 300GB of files that I can't back up anywhere else. I want to start using Time Machine. Is it possible to create a partition for Time Machine without reformatting/erasing my whole drive? If so, how?

Sure, that will work. Just follow this to add a Mac OS Extended partition to the disk, then use that for you TM backup. Just be aware that the other files on the disk you mentioned are not being backed up anywhere.
 
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