New Partition On External HDD w/ Time Machine

[Sparhawk_16]

Hi!

I'm finally making the jump from 10.5 Leopard to 10.6 Snow Leopard. Yay! My issue: I have an external HDD which I use for Time Machine and I want to use Carbon Copy Cloner. I didn't think to make a separate partition on my external so I could use both TM and CCC. Will I have to erase?

P.S. I tried finding a relevant thread before I posted, although I'm sure they exist.

[bobtomay]

Well, you can always start over with a new TM backup. I start a fresh one about every 6 months or mine get too big. So that's not a worry, unless you have some personal need to have previous and/or deleted versions of files on hand.

Disk Utility can non-destructively resize a partition - although, have never done it myself except when using BootCamp Assistant.

Open up DU, highlight the disk on the left side - not the partition - then head for the Partition tab. There you'll be able to grab the corner of your existing partition and resize it - and then click Apply.




Then you can go ahead and create a partition and format the rest of the space.

One thing I like to recommend is making sure all of your software is up to date prior to upgrading to SL. The easiest way I've found to do that is grab the free Bodega software. Once installed, select Applications in the side bar - it will find all your apps, go out and check for any updates. This can take a little time depending on how many apps you have. It will download, install and auto delete the download when done. (Have only seen a couple of exceptions where you may need to run an installer and then manually delete the download.




NOTE: There is always the possibility of something going awry when playing with partitions. So, if you have some reason that you cannot afford to possibly lose that TM backup and create another - I wouldn't even suggest you start until you backup your backup.