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Timemachine: backup to partitioned drive

V

VagabondMuse

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 6, 2008
15
0
I'm thinking of buying a 500Gb or 1Tb drive to use for both Timemachine backup and to store infrequently accessed music/videos/photos on (since my Macbook only has the 160Gb drive).

However, I plugged in another external drive I had lying around with some archived data on it to have a look at how Timemachine works and it wanted to reformat the drive. That suggests I won't be able to use my new drive for both backup and external storage.

What if I partitioned the large drive? Can I tell Timemachine to use one partition then use the other partition for my external storage?
 
Yes, you can partition your drive. Time Machine needs it formatted as HFS+ journaled so that probably was the problem with your old drive.
 
ergdegdeg said:
Yes, you can partition your drive. Time Machine needs it formatted as HFS+ journaled so that probably was the problem with your old drive.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for the replies.
So how does that work? Do I get an opportunity to instruct Timemachine to make the partition when it reformats the new drive or should I do the formatting and partitioning separately before setting up Timemachine?

Also, how much space should I allocate for Timemachine?
 
You should use about 3 times the space of the drive that will be backed up for Time Machine.
 
So when Time Machine does its thing...does it make full copies of your entire drive? ....or does it make a copy and then only make copies of changes to it since your first one?

If you have a 300gb hd it wouldn't take long to fill up a 1tb drive with full copies of it.

I've got a 500gb drive with me and plan on using it to migrate all my files over from one computer to the next. Basically I have a replacement MBP on its way and need to find a way to recreate this machine onto the new one. Would Time Machine be the best way to get abo 90gb of data over to the new notebook?

Any tips?
 
Time Machine only backs up the changes made since the last backup.

As for restoring your original system, it would work pretty good.
 
So what are the steps to do a full restore of another computer?

Obviously format a drive and do the initial Time Machine backup....then once you have the new machine up & running, connect the drive...is there a restore button or something like that?

Is it better than Migration Assistant?
Thanks
 
Insert the install discs and choose to restore from a Time Machine backup.
 
MowingDevil said:
So when Time Machine does its thing...does it make full copies of your entire drive? ....or does it make a copy and then only make copies of changes to it since your first one?

If you have a 300gb hd it wouldn't take long to fill up a 1tb drive with full copies of it.

I've got a 500gb drive with me and plan on using it to migrate all my files over from one computer to the next. Basically I have a replacement MBP on its way and need to find a way to recreate this machine onto the new one. Would Time Machine be the best way to get abo 90gb of data over to the new notebook?

Any tips?
Click to expand...

Just thought I would add one thing about tranferring data to a new drive. One (and I think major) difference between using a program like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and Time Machine to transfer the files as you have described is that if you do it with CCC or SuperDuper, the drive you move the data to is immediately testable (bootable) to insure that all the data got tranferred correctly. It also makes it a simple operation to boot from the external drive and CCC/SD it back over to the internal drive on your new machine.

Time Machine backups cannot be booted from to test the validity of the backup before moving ahead, so for the type of purpose you have in mind I much prefer to do it without TM just for peace of mind. Can save some real troubleshooting headaches down the line if by chance the TM backup is not 100% valid.;)

**And just to back up what has been said above, be sure to format your new drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as soon as you get it (before you put any files at all on it) since it will probably be pre-formatted for PC use out of the box (thus not able to be used with Time Machine).
 
sickmacdoc said:
Just thought I would add one thing about tranferring data to a new drive. One (and I think major) difference between using a program like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and Time Machine to transfer the files as you have described is that if you do it with CCC or SuperDuper, the drive you move the data to is immediately testable (bootable) to insure that all the data got tranferred correctly. It also makes it a simple operation to boot from the external drive and CCC/SD it back over to the internal drive on your new machine.

Time Machine backups cannot be booted from to test the validity of the backup before moving ahead, so for the type of purpose you have in mind I much prefer to do it without TM just for peace of mind. Can save some real troubleshooting headaches down the line if by chance the TM backup is not 100% valid.;)

**And just to back up what has been said above, be sure to format your new drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as soon as you get it (before you put any files at all on it) since it will probably be pre-formatted for PC use out of the box (thus not able to be used with Time Machine).
Click to expand...

So what you are describing is backing up a computer to a HD and not being able to boot from that w/ Time Machine, correct?
What I'm more concerned with here is getting my files from the computer I'm returning to the new replacement computer (which just arrived today).

Kind of lame that Time Machine copies on an external can't be booted from imo (since those other programs allow it). Thanks for all the tips.
 
MowingDevil said:
So what you are describing is backing up a computer to a HD and not being able to boot from that w/ Time Machine, correct?
What I'm more concerned with here is getting my files from the computer I'm returning to the new replacement computer (which just arrived today).

Kind of lame that Time Machine copies on an external can't be booted from imo (since those other programs allow it). Thanks for all the tips.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is what I am describing-- and then using the backup to restore the files to the new computer all at once and be back to operating exactly as you were. All I am saying is that since you can't boot from Time Machine backups you can't be certain that everything was copied successfully until it is too late and you are attempting to restore to the new machine.

And while I understand why a Time Machine can't be booted from (with all the links between versions of files and such) I still think it remains a weak spot when compared with the cloning programs. On the other hand, the cloning programs only have the most recent versions of files on disk too, so win some and lose some! ;) I just feel a verifiable backup in your type of situation is more important than all the versions of a file for the last XXX months Different strokes as always though! :)
 
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