Time Machine questions

Discussion in 'OS X Mavericks (10.9)' started by Silon, Feb 19, 2014.

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  1. Silon, Feb 19, 2014

    Silon macrumors member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2013
    #1
    I just bought a WD My Passport Ultra 2 TB and I have two questions about it regarding Time Machine.

    Question1
    In my household there is only one Apple computer. If i use Time Machine as backup software, will the backup be accessible by a windows computer. The reason I aks this is incase the scenario occurs where the only Apple computer in the house suddenly becomes unusable (for instance water damage).

    Question 2
    My computer has an SSD of 256 GB. My external drive has 2 TB. I'd like to partition the external drive to 2 partitions, 1 HFS+J for Time Machine, one ExFAT for movies, games and whatnot. Question is how big should the HFS+J partition be for Time Machine to work properly.

    Also i'd like to hear any experiences using WD backup software on a mac.
     
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  2. Dark Dragoon, Feb 19, 2014

    Dark Dragoon macrumors 6502a

    Dark Dragoon

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2006
    Location:
    UK
    #2
    You would need extra software such as MacDrive or HFSExplorer to be able to read the HFS+ volume under Windows.

    It depends on how far back you want your backups to go, and whether in the future you would want to backup any additional drives to it, and how often you change/add/remove files. I wouldn't give it less than 500GB in this case.

    Note that any data on the other partition should be considered at risk, as it is not being backed up to a separate drive. It is best practice to keep one drive for backups and another separate drive for other files, if at all possible. Otherwise a failure of the drive results in both the backups and your movies, games etc... being lost.

    No idea, I've never used the WD backup software with my WD drives. I'm not sure I would trust WD's software to work correctly, especially after the issues they had with Mavericks.
     
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  3. Silon, Feb 20, 2014

    Silon thread starter macrumors member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2013
    #3
    Allright, thanks a lot for answering my questions!
     
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  4. Drgnldy1, Feb 23, 2014

    Drgnldy1 macrumors newbie

    Drgnldy1

    Joined:
    Feb 15, 2014
    #4
    I just saw your questions and wanted to confirm that the WD software isn't necessary. I've been using WD external hard drives for over 6 years on my Macs and have never used the software. Now I delete it from the drive.
     
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