Time machine questions

[Serban]

So i want to buy an G-Drive 500GB usb 3.0
Can i use it to restore for my imac and macbook separately?
Even so can i still using my hdd for the remaining space just for some info data beside the backups ? I mean to travel with this external hdd to another computers and copy files for my macs?

 

[justperry]

Short answer, yes you can.

 

[lamerica80]

Shorter answer: Yes.

 

[justperry]

Shorter answer: Yes.

Yes

 

[Shrink]

Yes

+

 

[justperry]

+

.

 

[Shrink]

.

Too short!!

 

[Bear]

So i want to buy an G-Drive 500GB usb 3.0
Can i use it to restore for my imac and macbook separately?
Even so can i still using my hdd for the remaining space just for some info data beside the backups ? I mean to travel with this external hdd to another computers and copy files for my macs?

Short answer: Yes

Longer answer: Data store don the remaining space won't be backed up. When you do buy a disk for Time Machine use, remember you need to allow for all your current data, data growth and some amount of space for your data changes over time. I have 1 TB disk, about 550 GB in us in my system and my TM Drive is using about 750GB in under a years use. Because of the minimal price difference I went with a 2TB drive to allow for growth of the backups.

 

[benwiggy]

So i want to buy an G-Drive 500GB usb 3.0
Can i use it to restore for my imac and macbook separately?
Even so can i still using my hdd for the remaining space just for some info data beside the backups ? I mean to travel with this external hdd to another computers and copy files for my macs?

You will need to create two partitions for each backup -- and possibly a third for "other stuff". TM will fill the space available to it, so you won't have much room for other files after a while.
200-250Gb for each computer is not much. I generally recommend 2 or 3 times your hard drive/data size.

As pointed out, any other data on that disk needs to be backed up to a different physical device.

 

[Badrottie]

Long answer is YES I put personal data and Time Machine backup on Seagate Ultraportable hard drive.

 

[justperry]

You will need to create two partitions for each backup -- and possibly a third for "other stuff". TM will fill the space available to it, so you won't have much room for other files after a while.
200-250Gb for each computer is not much. I generally recommend 2 or 3 times your hard drive/data size.

As pointed out, any other data on that disk needs to be backed up to a different physical device.

AFAIK he doesn't need to make any partitions, TM will work for multiple backups without partitioning.
Time machine create sparsebundle's for each backup with different identifiers, so if he backs up 2 Macs he gets two images and still can create folders or whatever to safe data to, hell he could even create a bootable backup before and still use TM on both machines.

This is better than partitioning the disk, reason, partition have a set size, 1 partition is only limited by the size of the HD.

 

[benwiggy]

AFAIK he doesn't need to make any partitions, TM will work for multiple backups without partitioning.

You're right, "need" was perhaps too strong. However, if you stick two backups and some data on one volume, then they are all going to "splurge" onto the same space, and eventually, you won't be able to save more data, and the two TM backups will be vying for the last drop of space.

I'm of the opinion that TM can be a bit temperamental when it fills a disk, so I always avoid that, moving the backup to a larger volume as required.