Time Machine - Set Up Help

[HelixOmnimedia]

Hey,

Can someone help me set up Time Machine...

I've run into a problems and I don't know what to do, only fear of loosing all my media files are stopping me from clicking continue.

I click Time Machine, it asks if I want to set up - I click 'Set Up Time Machine' it takes me to 'System Preferences' I click "Choose Backup Disk..."
By this point my Western Digital 500GB 'My Book' is plugged in.

I click Backup Disk... and it shows: "My Book (reformat required) 387.3 GB"
with the option to 'Cancel' or "Use For Backup".

What should I do?
I don't want to do anything that is going to loose/delete all my iTunes Movies/TV Shows (and other files) on the external drive, and I don't have enough room on my PowerBook to move the files off the drive and then let it do its thing.

HELP
Thanks

 

[xBerserker]

I've had the same issue and sadly there isn't a easy answer. You do need to re-format the hard drive. I deleted enough off my external hard drive until I could move it to my iMac. Then I formated the external HD and then moved it all back.

One thing that I do NOT like about time machine is not being able to delete stuff from the time machine back up file on the external hard drive. Very stupid I think. I can see the reason for it, but give us a option to delete if we really want to. I use that hard drive to put a lot of videos on. Man good thing you can exclude folders from time machine.

I download videos and then convert them, so I would have all these videos left over if I let time machine back up that folder.

 

[xBerserker]

I found something that might allow you to delete stuff off the external hard drive.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4408240&postcount=5

found it

here's the link

sudo chmod -R u+rwX /Volumes/External

I thinks thats the command I entered but I used my external harddisc name inplace if external and use quotations such as

sudo chmod -R u+rwX /Volumes/"myexternaldrivename"

try it
give it time about 5 minutes then you will see the drive come back on line

it took me twice

enjoy

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-54617.html

 

[MrMoore]

Hey,

What should I do?
I don't want to do anything that is going to loose/delete all my iTunes Movies/TV Shows (and other files) on the external drive, and I don't have enough room on my PowerBook to move the files off the drive and then let it do its thing.

HELP
Thanks

What is the format of the external drive? Time Machine will ask to format the drive if it is not in HFS+ format. Normally, external drives are formatted in FAT format to allow both Windows and Macs to read them . When I connected my MyBook (320MB), Leopard asked if I wanted to use the drive for TimeMachine and then requested to reformat the device. HFS+ format is required for the way TimeMachine tracks changes through hard links which are not capable through FAT.

If you want to use the drive as a TimeMachine drive, you would have to back up you data to another source, convert the drive to HFS+, then copy the files back. Of course, you mentioned you do not have the space, so I am not sure how you could do this unless you could copy it to another Mac with space. Sorry