Time Machine ratio?

[smartalic34]

I'm looking to partition my external hard drive to use time machine. I have an 80GB internal drive, but only 38GB is currently being used. How large should I make the time machine partition? The external is 320GB, but I want a large part of it to store movies and other files. Is 60GB enough? Or should I go closer to 80GB? any help is appreciated... thanks!

 

[KidneyPi]

I'm looking to partition my external hard drive to use time machine. I have an 80GB internal drive, but only 38GB is currently being used. How large should I make the time machine partition? The external is 320GB, but I want a large part of it to store movies and other files. Is 60GB enough? Or should I go closer to 80GB? any help is appreciated... thanks!

Give Time Machine as much space as you can afford. It will use it. The more space you have, the farther back in time you can go when looking through your backup.

 

[richard.mac]

i have a 200 GB external and just use that for Time Machine and then store other files on the top level of the external along with the Backups.backupdb folder.

this works fine but you wont be able to "start" Time Machine again as i requires a re-format so youll have to move the other files.

if you really want to make another partition to keep your movie files safe i would say make a partition 2-3 times the size of your internal drive say 160-240 GB.