Time Machine

Sorry im no help here and dont know the answer but you can always look on youtube. There is alot of vids for mac stuff. Just type it in and see what you find.

 

Sorry I don't have the answer but have a similar issue !

I also have an external 500GB WD Hard Drive (elements) which I use for backing up files from my works Dell and the Wife's HP - formatted as NTFS

I'm waiting for prices to come down a little more then will buy another external WD drive and use this for backups

 

Your best way would probably be to move those files and repartition the drive. Software could be bought to handle the partition without moving the files, but you still run the risk of losing the data.

You also don't have to partition the drive if you don't plan on adding to the 200GB of existing data. TimeMachine would, apparently, just use whatever free space is available. A Google search of the forums shows that people are reporting that Time Machine will not do anything to other data on the partition. I, myself, don't have any experience with testing this out, so here is my Google Search for "site:forums.macrumors.com time machine other files".

 

You don't have to have an exclusive partition for a time machine backup. you can even backup multiple macs to the same external hard drive no problem and also keep any other files on there as well.

 

I don't have any experience on this (my backup drive does just that; that's what i bought it for) but it seems like it hasn't been a problem for people

 

That's the worst way to set up a Time Machine Backup, IMO.
If your hard drive fails, your backup is gone, too.
If you want to upgrade your hard drive, you'll need an external enclosure for restoring data.
It'll limit your hard drive space to a tiny amount (at least from my point of view).
Your computer will become slower while backup is running (because the OS and the backup use the same hard drive).

I would highly discourage you from doing this. But if you must, partition your hard drive for best performance.