05-05-2008, 12:09 PM

Hi guys,

I just ordered Leopard from apple's website about an hour ago and cant wait until it arrives!! I just have a quick question...

I have another PC that i use for media storage, is it possible to use this PC for Time Machine back-ups via my wireless network, much like a time capsule drive? This PC runs XP Pro. Obviously i dont want to use the entire HDD for time machine, so can the drive just be partitioned and used like this?

Thanks in advance

Luke

05-05-2008, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by lukenn77

Hi guys,

I just ordered Leopard from apple's website about an hour ago and cant wait until it arrives!! I just have a quick question...

I have another PC that i use for media storage, is it possible to use this PC for Time Machine back-ups via my wireless network, much like a time capsule drive? This PC runs XP Pro. Obviously i dont want to use the entire HDD for time machine, so can the drive just be partitioned and used like this?

Thanks in advance

Luke

As I understand it, the destination partition must be formatted in HFS+ (Mac OS X native filesystem), although I have read of some "hacks" that work around this limitation. Even still, I wouldn't trust a hacked solution for something as important as a backup. I would do yourself a big favor and pick up a dedicated, external hard drive to use for Time Machine.

05-05-2008, 01:43 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

As I understand it, the destination partition must be formatted in HFS+ (Mac OS X native filesystem), although I have read of some "hacks" that work around this limitation. Even still, I wouldn't trust a hacked solution for something as important as a backup. I would do yourself a big favor and pick up a dedicated, external hard drive to use for Time Machine.

thanks for the reply.

Is there no way to partition my hard drive and format it as HFS+?
Also, because it needs to be formatted as HFS+, does that mean time machine will take up my entire external HDD if i were to go out and buy one? or can i give time machine control of a certain portion or my external hdd and use the other half as a normal external hdd that i can use to transfer large files between computers (windows and OSX)?

thanks again,

Luke

05-05-2008, 01:49 PM

Well, I assume that the disk is installed in the other machine - and if so, you'd have no way of formatting it on the Windows box since Windows doesn't use HFS+.

As to your second question, you could partition the disk so that only one part of the disk is used for Time Machine.

05-05-2008, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by lukenn77

thanks for the reply.

Is there no way to partition my hard drive and format it as HFS+?
Also, because it needs to be formatted as HFS+, does that mean time machine will take up my entire external HDD if i were to go out and buy one? or can i give time machine control of a certain portion or my external hdd and use the other half as a normal external hdd that i can use to transfer large files between computers (windows and OSX)?

thanks again,

Luke

Yes. You can partition your hard drive to for use with Time Machine and use another partition for whatever you want. I currently have two partitions set up, one for TM and the other for miscellaneous storage. I can't tell you right now if both are formatted as HFS+, as I am currently away from my Mac. I do know for sure the TM backup partition is se for HFS+ though.

05-05-2008, 01:57 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Well, I assume that the disk is installed in the other machine - and if so, you'd have no way of formatting it on the Windows box since Windows doesn't use HFS+.

As to your second question, you could partition the disk so that only one part of the disk is used for Time Machine.

yeah it is installing in the machine. a part of me was hoping it was possible to partition it so that windows simply didnt use the HFS+ section, and that only time machine accessed it.

Thank you for you help!
Luke

05-05-2008, 02:11 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Well, I assume that the disk is installed in the other machine - and if so, you'd have no way of formatting it on the Windows box since Windows doesn't use HFS+.

You can actually use a Windows program called Partition Magic to create and format HFS+ partitions, so technically it is possible to do on a Windows machine. You could also use a Linux Live CD to do it. However, the Windows OS wouldn't recognize it and wouldn't be able to mount it to share across the network... unless you used an HFS+ driver (would MacDrive let you do that?).

In any case it would be a huge mess and a lot of pain when the external disk is a much better/simpler option!!

05-05-2008, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by rob.h

You can actually use a Windows program called Partition Magic to create and format HFS+ partitions, so technically it is possible to do on a Windows machine. You could also use a Linux Live CD to do it. However, the Windows OS wouldn't recognize it and wouldn't be able to mount it to share across the network... unless you used an HFS+ driver (would MacDrive let you do that?).

In any case it would be a huge mess and a lot of pain when the external disk is a much better/simpler option!!

While there are plenty of hacks and workarounds to do the things the OP wants to do, the simple fact of the matter is that you want your backup to be easy to use and as simple to restore from as possible. When you start throwing hacks and workarounds to the equation, it turns into a very undesirable situation.

We could sit here and pontificate about every possible combination of technology to achieve a particular result - but often when I try to help people, I think to myself "do the ends justify the means?". In the end, keeping it simple is almost always the best course of action.

05-05-2008, 02:31 PM

yeah definitely, i guess i'll just buy an external. Was only curious because of course it would save me the cost of buying an external, but not to worry.

thank you for your help everyone. Leopard should be here by friday morning :-D !!

05-05-2008, 06:19 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

We could sit here and pontificate about every possible combination of technology to achieve a particular result - but often when I try to help people, I think to myself "do the ends justify the means?". In the end, keeping it simple is almost always the best course of action.

Think that's what I was trying to point out - a lot of arcane hacks, while 'possible', just aren't worth it in many cases