Time Machine + Hard drives

heinz1218 · Mar 19, 2008

I've got a 300GB external with a bunch of pictures (mostly RAW), movies, and documents. I was going to set up Time Machine, but I would like to keep a portion of hard drive for drag+drop. The guy at the apple store said Time Machine was configurable, but I don't really see any configuration options (he might have not used it or something?)

Anyway, do I need to have a separate hard drive for time machine? What would be your suggestions...

Andrew

wcarr3 · Mar 19, 2008

Great questions! I was wandering myself were there more configurable options for Time Machine. I must be missing something simple. For instance, is there a way for you to set TM to update every 2 or 4 hours instead of every hour? Is there an option in TM, for if you wanted TM to not update certain files or folders?

In an effort to help somewhat with your problem, you can do what I did. Just simply set up two different partitions in Time Machine. Use one partition for TM itself and the other for miscellaneous storage.

However, I'm sure there are others here who are a lot more Mac savy than myself who could come up additional or more creative options for you. ;D

Jaygray · Mar 19, 2008

Time Machine will keep filling your external HD until it's full. Then it starts deleting the oldest backups as needed to fit the newest ones on. Thus you can't really store any other data on it besides what Time Machine puts there... unless...

you partition the HD. Use one partition for Time Machine only and the other as a normal external HD. Time Machine will do it's thing inside the partition you assign it. This is done using Disk Utility, not the Time Machine application.

I do not believe there is an option to adjust the timing of the hourly TM backups.

If you open the Time Machine Preferences, under Options, you can enter files and folders you wish to exclude. TM will ignore these and not back them up.

Hope this helps!

heinz1218 · Mar 19, 2008

wcarr3, thanks that makes a lot of sense. I guess the disadvantage with this is that I have to know how much I want to partition for TM, and how much for the hard drive.

Also, which formatting option should I be using if I want a Windows user to be able to use the partition for pictures and stuff?

Mr-Fussy · Mar 19, 2008

I am glad this thread has been raised.

Im using my backup drive as a time machine backup and also opening the backup drive to copy files i.e quick copy of folders etc. I am also copying my windows disk over. So is this a problem. Im not getting any error messages and im obviously not copying into the time machine folder. So do i still need to partition.

The Vindicat3d · Mar 19, 2008

Mr-Fussy said:
I am glad this thread has been raised.

Im using my backup drive as a time machine backup and also opening the backup drive to copy files i.e quick copy of folders etc. I am also copying my windows disk over. So is this a problem. Im not getting any error messages and im obviously not copying into the time machine folder. So do i still need to partition.

You don't need to but it would definitely be safer that way.

MACyMouse · Mar 19, 2008

I"m doing the same thing. My TM is on an external 500 gig HD and I drag and drop other files onto the HD as well, unpartitioned. I've had no problems ... (yet)....

Mr-Fussy · Mar 19, 2008

I have actually gone in to disk utility and it works really well. It really partitons. So perhaps its just as safe partitioning.

Jaygray · Mar 19, 2008

As I understand it, TM keeps adding backups to the HD until it's full. Then it deletes the oldest backups as necessary so that it can keep adding new backups.

There is no reason that you can't add files to the same partition (or HD) that TM is backing up to. However, TM will continue to eat away at whatever free space is on the drive until there is none left. Each day, the drive will have a little less free space on it, until one day it is completely full. At that point, you will no longer be able to add any new files to it.

By partitioning the drive, you limit the maximum amount of space TM can use, thus permanently reserving a portion of the drive for other uses.

There is no option within Time Machine to say "do not use more than 200 gb of my 500 gb HD". You have to use the partition method to fool it into thinking there is only 200 gb available.

MACyMouse · Mar 19, 2008

Jaygray said:
As I understand it, TM keeps adding backups to the HD until it's full. Then it deletes the oldest backups as necessary so that it can keep adding new backups.

There is no reason that you can't add files to the same partition (or HD) that TM is backing up to. However, TM will continue to eat away at whatever free space is on the drive until there is none left. Each day, the drive will have a little less free space on it, until one day it is completely full. At that point, you will no longer be able to add any new files to it.

By partitioning the drive, you limit the maximum amount of space TM can use, thus permanently reserving a portion of the drive for other uses.

There is no option within Time Machine to say "do not use more than 200 gb of my 500 gb HD". You have to use the partition method to fool it into thinking there is only 200 gb available.

Yep... good point and good thing to remember. I don't think I've even used time machine to retrieve anything yet, so I might just do that.
Question tho: Can you partition a drive that's got stuff on it already?

verdejt · Mar 19, 2008

Can you manually go into the backup directory and delete older backups yourself or is there a way throught the TM interface?

theonegod · Mar 20, 2008

You could also avoid partitioning by setting up disk images on the external HD to put your data into. The disk image pre allocates the space it needs. I would also suggest encrypting it if the data is sensitive.

wcarr3 · Mar 20, 2008

theonegod said:
You could also avoid partitioning by setting up disk images on the external HD to put your data into. The disk image pre allocates the space it needs. I would also suggest encrypting it if the data is sensitive.

How do you do that (setting up a disk image)? Do you just simply drop it in there along side your Time Maching backups? If so, isn't that kind of redundant? What happens when Time Machine needs that bit of space for its backups? Not drilling you or anything, just wandering.

heinz1218 · Mar 20, 2008

theonegod said:
You could also avoid partitioning by setting up disk images on the external HD to put your data into. The disk image pre allocates the space it needs. I would also suggest encrypting it if the data is sensitive.

I'm not sure why you would do this as opposed to partitioning?

For those of you who have been running TM with partitioned external, have you tried repartitioning your HDD to make the TM partition bigger or smaller? Is this a bad idea?

wcarr3 · Mar 20, 2008

heinz1218 said:
For those of you who have been running TM with partitioned external, have you tried repartitioning your HDD to make the TM partition bigger or smaller? Is this a bad idea?

I have repartitioned in order to opt for more room for Time Machine. However, before I repartitioned, I copied whatever data I had on the non TM partition back to my Mac's desktop. I believe that when you partition using Disk Utilities provided on the Mac, everything is erased. Which is the reason I copied everything back to my Mac before repartitioning.

Others on the forum may know of other tools that allow you to partition without erasing a drive.