How much space for Time Machine?

I have a 500Gb Hard drive that I want to partition into 3 parts: NTFS, FAT32, and Extended Journal. I will be using NTFS for pc files, FAT32 For Mac, and journal for time machine. How much should space should i give Journal so time machine can do its thing??

Also, what format is the free space option? and instead of partition 3 parts can i just use Journal to store mac files like music, pictures, and videos along with using it with time machine?

If you couldn't tell I just made the switch to mac last week so im very new at this!

Thank you!

The rule of thumb is generally twice the size of your internal hard drive. With an 80GB drive, a 160GB Time Machine partition should suffice.

Yes, you can store Mac files on the Journaled Time Machine partition, there's no need to make a separate partition for that. However, I question why you need an NTFS partition. Windows can read and write from FAT32 just as easily, but you face the problem of not being able to write to the NTFS partition from within OS X (OS X can only read from an NTFS partition).

I think the best way to go about it is to only have two partitions, the Journaled partition at 160GB with a FAT32 partition covering the rest. This way you can save files to the FAT32 partition from both Windows and OS X while leaving the Journaled partition just for Time Machine.

Perfect! thank you!

That, or if you wanted the Win and OS X on 2 different partitions, do 2 FAT32 partitions. Just a though, otherwise just do 2 partitions total like Kash said.
And rule of thumb is twice the internal drive, though more won't hurt, it'll just mean you can back up more/longer.

Kash said:

Yes, you can store Mac files on the Journaled Time Machine partition, there's no need to make a separate partition for that. However, I question why you need an NTFS partition. Windows can read and write from FAT32 just as easily, but you face the problem of not being able to write to the NTFS partition from within OS X (OS X can only read from an NTFS partition).

Click to expand...

Unless you install Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X driver, which makes OSX to read and write on the the NTFS partition.