Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Which external hard drive for Time Machine?

HD format?

I bought a 2TB Western digital USB EXT drive formatted in NTSF plugged into my time machine.

Since I use the Time Machine wirelessly I thought I could use whatever formatting I wish? But my Macbook pro is not seeing the EXT drive. My Time Capsule is detecting the drive, but not it's size.

I've read old posts which says it should work, but are they lying? am I fooling myself? I don't want to reformat the drive because I have lots of data on it, but I'll buy another one and format it for OSX if that's the only way to get EXT drives to work with Time Capsule.
 
darkrep said:
I bought a 2TB Western digital USB EXT drive formatted in NTSF plugged into my time machine.

Since I use the Time Machine wirelessly I thought I could use whatever formatting I wish? But my Macbook pro is not seeing the EXT drive. My Time Capsule is detecting the drive, but not it's size.

I've read old posts which says it should work, but are they lying? am I fooling myself? I don't want to reformat the drive because I have lots of data on it, but I'll buy another one and format it for OSX if that's the only way to get EXT drives to work with Time Capsule.
Click to expand...

NTSF can't possibly work for Time machine. TM uses links or what Apple calls "aliases" to maintain the archve.

Don't ever use a drive with data on it for Time Machine. How are you going to backup that data? Just buy a drive that is at least twice the size of the data that needs to be backed up

Yu really need a good redundant and off site backup. Buy several drives and rotate them so you aways have a copy of the data in some other building. The main causes of data loss are things like fire or theft of the equipment.
 
photogy said:
i am a photographer (NOT tech savvy) so need to store/back up lots of files. Just got a WD My Book Studio 2tb drive (other size avail) and set up time machine for very first time recently.

TM is great but if you are changing, adding, editing files like me a lot and let WD back up whilst you are working it does slow things down a bit (You can run it when idle) especially if you are also using other apps..I run lightroom 3 etc. (mbp 2.8ghz 4gb)

The great thing about the 2TB drive is that it can make up multiple copies (you chose) of your system so whilst 2TB's sounds a lot..if you back up last 5 copies say it eats into it...

The WD drive features usb, Firewire 400 & 800..FW800 is great as a full back up for me is around 250 GB's..it also looks great in silver...all runs smoothly!
Click to expand...

I am also a photographer using lightroom etc; I would like to backup all my photos to my hard drive, but I would also have movies i'd really like to save on the same external hard drive I intend to back up my Mac on.

Is this OK?
 
I bought a 1TB Seagate GoHome NAS at nearly 120$ bucks.

It works great, plugged in via ethernet through my Airport Extreme.

The cool thing about it is that it's iTunes Server compatible, also DLNA which gives me the possibility of streaming too my XBOX 360.

It's currently backing up my iMac and my GF's Windows 7 laptop.
 
Time Machine & External Hard Drives

Now I am a real Newbie to Macs, having gone from the old apples to 15 years of windows, and now I have a MacBook Pro:cool:. I bought a WD 1T to download everything off the Windows, but today I was told at the Apple store that I would have to wipe it out and format it for Time Machine. Can I partition the external hard drive and use it for both formats (Windows & TimeMachine)?:confused:
Thanks
 
MAC=MOM770 said:
Now I am a real Newbie to Macs, having gone from the old apples to 15 years of windows, and now I have a MacBook Pro:cool:. I bought a WD 1T to download everything off the Windows, but today I was told at the Apple store that I would have to wipe it out and format it for Time Machine. Can I partition the external hard drive and use it for both formats (Windows & TimeMachine)?:confused:
Thanks
Click to expand...

You should be able to create two partitions, yeah.

If you want to make a partition that both OSes can read *and* write to, make sure to make it FAT32. OS X can read NTFS, but not write to it. Depending on which version of Windows you have it might put an arbitrary limit on how big a FAT32 partition it will let you create, I seem to remember that being an issue.
 
hi I've just got my first MBP I've got a 750gb hard drive in it but I've only got like 200gb on it at the moment when time machine backs up does it compress it or will it copy it as the full 200gb. Ive got a 500gb external hard drive should i use a 1tb one for time machine instead? could i partition it and still use it as a portable drive for music etc. also can you reformat any drive or only certain ones?

sorry for all my noob questions
 
Lozza-p said:
hi I've just got my first MBP I've got a 750gb hard drive in it but I've only got like 200gb on it at the moment when time machine backs up does it compress it or will it copy it as the full 200gb. Ive got a 500gb external hard drive should i use a 1tb one for time machine instead? could i partition it and still use it as a portable drive for music etc. also can you reformat any drive or only certain ones?

sorry for all my noob questions
Click to expand...

The time Machiine drive should ideally have at least two times as much space as the data you want to back up. Remember the T makes multiple copies of your files, keeps many old versions. Also, the the future you might have more than 200gb, So I think a 500gb disk would work for now and a 1TB disk later as your data grows. The bigger the TM disk the more versions of files it can hold. TM will fill any size disk you give it eventually


But,.... TM is not enough. You need some kind of redundant backup. Two backups as a minimum with one of them kept in a different building. Disk failure is NOT the most common cause of data loss. It's theft of the equipment, fire flood, lightening strikes the power line a half mile from your house and fries your computer (the the TM disk)

If your business depends on the data then even two is not enough.

So the answer is "Use both disks."

Yes you can partition the disk but there is no need to do that. TM keeps it's data in a folder, you can place other folder on the same disk. But don't. Don't use the backup disks for anything else. Disks are so cheap noes there is no need to conserve space.

I keep a set of about four backup disks. I keep one plugged into the computer and Time Machine uses it. A coupe others are in a small fire safe here at home and another couple are at the office. I rotate the drives between home and office. Every year or so I buy another backup disk, the biggest one I can at the time and then I retire the oldest disk. I spend about $100 per year,not expensive. The key thing here is to retire the drives. Old drives are not reliable. Wipe them clean and sell them on Craig's list for $10 or $20.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back