03-23-2009, 12:26 PM

I have a 320GD wd portable hd that i have setup for time machine to back up to and so it is filling up quite quickly but i also want to use this hd for storing other things like films, music, photos etc but am finding that time machine is using alot of the space so my question is:

can you state how much space time machine can use?

can the hd be portioned into two parts one for time machine, the other for any other storage? How could i do this?



How have other people dealt with this?

thanks

03-24-2009, 03:18 AM

I have a Seagate 1TB external HD and have partitioned it into four with one partition dedicated to Time Machine. The other partitions are for data back up like photos and movies or for just simply for data storage that can't fit in my internal HD. My internal HD is 120GB so I dedicated 125GB in my external HD for Time Machine.

03-24-2009, 03:20 AM

BTW, to partition an external HD, go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

03-24-2009, 07:36 AM

Thanks for explaining that, now i have found one more problem, i'm guessing that when i want to partition my hd it should be empty right? I can delete my backups on there now but i have found i dont have enough space to move my films from the external hd on to my mac. Anyone have any suggestions?

thanks

03-28-2009, 12:22 PM

You can partition it without it being empty. When you use the disk utility to partition it it will offer you the chance to save what's on there. I've just done this with a 500GB drive which I've been using for TM for over a year - it retained all TM backups on a new 250GB partition.

You can't set the amount of space for TM but clearly it needs to be at least equal or preferably slightly more than the space you are using on the MAC's HD - and ideally the same capacity! Once the back up drive is full TM should start to delete the oldest backups.