Time machine and saving internal memory

Ok so I'm still relatively new to my mac, I've only just gotten round to doing the whole time machine thing.

I only have a relatively small external HD (319GB) because I just can't afford a larger one at the minute. My issue is that I have next to no space on my macbook pro left, and after doing an inventory I've realised that it's because I have over 70GB worth of photographs and related lightroom paraphernalia.

But now I'm caught in a bit of a catch-22, I can't save my pictures onto my external hard drive and delete them from my macbook to save space, because they're already taking up all the room on my external hard-drive via the time machine! Other than buying a new hard drive, can anyone advise me as what I should do?

Thanks!

You could clear your external hard drive (reformat) and do a new Time Machine backup that excludes the photos and excludes the MBP's system and applications files (assuming you have the original disks you could manually reinstall these if necessary in the event you need to restore everything).

This *should* leave you enough ext. HD space to move the 70g worth of photos, while backing up *most* of the stuff from your MPB. I'd create 2 partitions on the drive -- one for Time Machine and one for general storage.

Not a perfect solution, but avoids buying another drive.

Or you could buy another cheap ext. HD (TigerDirect has a 250g drive for $40). Money is always tight, but losing 70g worth of photos would seem to be disastrous, and probably worth $40 to protect.

palermo rock

Thank you! That seems like a good thing to do, how do I re-do the time machine and exclude the Pictures folder? I'd imagine that the space that would save would be enough to create a separate section for my photos... how do you create the separate section? I can't seem to find any preferences!

Open Time Machine Preferences (from System Preferences or from the icon in the top menu bar if you have it there) and choose Options. Click the little "+" sign at the bottom to add the folders you want to exclude.

You don't really create a separate section for things you want to save permanently. The external drive still acts like a normal drive, so just double click on the desktop icon or open it from the Finder and create a new folder on the drive that's separate from the Backups folder.