Uses for External HD

[Josephkyles]

For Christmas I got a 750 GB Western Digital Hard drive. (Acually is only 688GBs) My iMac has a 500 GB internal hard drive. I was debating getting two smaller HDs. one for Time Machine and one to use for my itunes library, but instead I partitioned the Hard drive. 500 GBs for TM and the rest for iTunes. So, does this sound like a good idea? What are the chances I could loose my iTunes Library?

 

[tersono]

Sounds like a sensible approach, although personally I'd want my iTunes library backed up separately (actually my own is backed up on both an external HD and on DVDs). Partitioning the drive won't cause any problems with TM and also won't affect the security of the contents of the other partition.

 

[Moof1904]

Why not keep your iTunes library on the startup drive, give TimeMachine use of the entire external drive, and let TimeMachine back up your iTunes library as well?

 

[jsw]

Why not keep your iTunes library on the startup drive, give TimeMachine use of the entire external drive, and let TimeMachine back up your iTunes library as well?

I like that idea as well. iTunes should be backed up, but if you only store it on the external, and the external dies (a dead drive takes out all partitions), then you're out of luck. If it's on the internal, it'll be backed up automagically, as mentioned.

 

[robanga]

Good thread - This was my strategy as well for iTunes, I figured that better to store the library on local drive and then TM it, because external drives do fail as well. For videos and pics, I have them separately backed up on two external drives (one of which stays at the office most of the time, hows that for paranoia?) Some video is also backed up on to DVD.

 

[Karpfish]

You will need more than 500GB for your time machine partition. Unless you haven't filled much of your internal drive, your backups won't be kept for very long.