Will Time Machine eat up all my external HDD space??

[maczod]

I have a 500 GB hard drive and I'm currently using it as a Time Machine back up drive + spare drive (I store some unimportant pics and mp3s there).

Just wondering if over time (say, a year) will Time Machine consume all my empty space? I'd like to have it keep only XX period of data without eating all my precious 500 GB of space.

Also, is there a way to partition my HDD while keeping the files intact without deleting them? Thx in advance.

 

[DaveF]

Yes, TimeMachine will fill all available space as its backup grows over time.

Yes, you should be able to use Disk Utility to partition your drive without losing your TM data, then move your misc files to the other partition. You can also copy TimeMachine backups with SuperDuper!.