Time Machine Requires an Entire Hard Drive?

[anirban]

Hello all!

I was wondering does Time Machine require me to dedicate an entire external Hard Disk to it?

Or can I assign it to a particular hard disk, and still use the Hard Disk to store my other data, and use it with my Windows machine?

Thanks a lot!

 

[wakerider017]

can u just set up a partition on your internal drive?

 

[saxman]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/223065/

The macrumors Time Machine FAQ should answer your questions.

You can use a second partition on your single drive, but if the hard drive fails then your data and the backup will fail with it. However, if you edit a lot of things and then wish you could get back a version of a document a week or so ago before you changed things, then you could use Time Machine that way. Not a real backup solution, but good in those times when you save and overwrite a document and wanted to save as

 

[anirban]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/223065/

The macrumors Time Machine FAQ should answer your questions.

You can use a second partition on your single drive, but if the hard drive fails then your data and the backup will fail with it. However, if you edit a lot of things and then wish you could get back a version of a document a week or so ago before you changed things, then you could use Time Machine that way. Not a real backup solution, but good in those times when you save and overwrite a document and wanted to save as

So that means I can create a partition in my external drive, and assign one partition to Time Machine, and use the rest as usual?

Thanks.

 

[/dev/toaster]

So that means I can create a partition in my external drive, and assign one partition to Time Machine, and use the rest as usual?

Thanks.

You don't need to create a separate partition on your external drive ... just don't touch the Backups.backupdb directory or the .files

 

[theBB]

You may need a second partition if you want to use the hard disk with Windows. I am pretty sure Time Machine will ask for HFS+ format, but Windows cannot really use that.

 

[anirban]

You don't need to create a separate partition on your external drive ... just don't touch the Backups.backupdb directory or the .files

Pardon me if this is obvious, but based on what you said, it seems as if Time Machine will just create a seperate folder in the Hard drive, and allow me to use the harddrive to do store whatever I want- as long as I don't mess around with the TM folder- right?

Thanks for your response.

 

[rmh]

Pardon me if this is obvious, but based on what you said, it seems as if Time Machine will just create a seperate folder in the Hard drive, and allow me to use the harddrive to do store whatever I want- as long as I don't mess around with the TM folder- right?

Thanks for your response.

From what I've read I do believe you are correct, just don't mess with the backup files and you're fine.

 

[/dev/toaster]

Pardon me if this is obvious, but based on what you said, it seems as if Time Machine will just create a seperate folder in the Hard drive, and allow me to use the harddrive to do store whatever I want- as long as I don't mess around with the TM folder- right?

Thanks for your response.

Yes that is correct. I have been doing this and it works without problems.

 

[projectle]

One can also use TimeMachine without using a secondary drive or partition if you really were so inclined, and felt like setting up some MAJOR tweaks to your TimeMachine configuration...

There are a few guides online that outline this setup, and revolve directly around creating a ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file on your main partition and modify a few plists from the TimeMachine application.

I will not go into those modifications until the official release as per the request of the person on a certain IRC server that let me in on it...

I am sure that if you were so inclined, you could pop in and find out for yourself.

 

[ChrisA]

... and still use the Hard Disk to store my other data, and use it with my Windows machine?

Thanks a lot!

The Time machine drive will need to be HFS+ formatted. Windows can't read HFS+ formated drives.

 

[ChrisA]

can u just set up a partition on your internal drive?

The Time machine partition would need to be larger then the partition to be backed up. Quite a bit larger. So if your Mac had a 320GB internal drive you would want to make a 200GB Time machine partition leaving only 100GB for general use.

The first thing TM does is make a full backup after that it starts to keep history. After the first our of use the TM drive will hold more data than your main boot drive.

I think TM will sell a lot of multi-drive RAID boxes. I'm shopping for a box that can hold four drives right now. I'll put in two 500GB drives on day one and over time, in a few years I expect to have four 1TB drives installed and configured as RAID5.

 

[/dev/toaster]

The Time machine drive will need to be HFS+ formatted. Windows can't read HFS+ formated drives.

It will create a sparse image and put the files in there.