Backing up photos... can I delete them now?

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Hi Everyone, this is my first post so please go easy as I couldn't find the answer to my question already!

I just purchased an external hard drive and partitioned it into 2 x 250GB partitions.

I set one partition to Time Machine and it backed everything up OK, about 100GB worth.

The thing is, can I delete my photos on my Macbook Pro now? Or is Time Machine just as a backup... in case anything happens...?

I have a ton of RAW images (10MB each) that I want to simply transfer to the external HD and delete off my comp to make more room, but do I need to do this onto the other partition or will Time Machine throw a hissy-fit and try to restore the photos that I deleted (and backed up on another drive)???

Thanks, just a bit confused.
 
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it is just as you say, Time Machine is a back up just in case anything happens.
 
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The thing is, can I delete my photos on my Macbook Pro now? Or is Time Machine just as a backup... in case anything happens...?
Time Machine is a backup not a storage for your data. What I mean by this is that a backup is suppose to be a copy of your data so if something happened then you can restore them back to your computer. If you want to permanently move your data to another hard drive then it becomes storage rather than a backup because you no longer have a second copy of your files. It's the only copy.

Time Machine doesn't permanently keep all the files you have deleted on your computer. It takes "snapshots" of all the data that is currently on your computer and it keeps several days worth of previous snapshots hence the name Time Machine. The problem is that once is starts to fill up the hard drive it will start deleting old snapshots in the timeline to make room for new ones so your photos that are no longer on your computer will be deleted.

Time Machine is better used for restoring your computer back to its current state or a previous one and not used as a storage hard drive.

I have a ton of RAW images (10MB each) that I want to simply transfer to the external HD and delete off my comp to make more room, but do I need to do this onto the other partition or will Time Machine throw a hissy-fit and try to restore the photos that I deleted (and backed up on another drive)???
If you want a storage hard drive to transfer your data to so that your computer's hard drive doesn't become full then don't use Time Machine for that purpose. For example, you can have two hard drives. One for Time Machine and one for usage as a storage hard drive and then backup that storage data on DVDs or another hard drive.

Since your external hard drive is partitioned then one side can be used for Time Machine while the other is used as a storage area. Make sure to backup your storage data because if your external hard drive dies then you will most likely lose both partitions.

You should always have a backup of your computer so having Time Machine is good. Your problem is that you also want a storage hard drive so just do what I said above and you should be good also. :)
 
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My suggestion is, back up all your RAW files to dvd's as well as the external. A friend of mine has her files on a Ext as well as on dvd's just in case for some ungodly reason hte Mac HD and her external both kick the bucket.
She just backs up all her RAW on a ext and then burns them to DVD's as well then trashes all on her Mac.
You just cant be too careful as nothing id failsafe. Yes you might end up with a few DVD's but the price of buying a hundred bulk is chicken feed compared to paying someone for Data Recovery.
Oh and she uses TM to do the backups and for her thats her STORAGE

cheers
 
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She just backs up all her RAW on a ext and then burns them to DVD's as well then trashes all on her Mac.
Oh and she uses TM to do the backups and for her thats her STORAGE
If she is deleting files on your computer then it's good that she's making DVD backups as well because once TM deletes its older timeline recovery dates basically the day that she deleted her images on her computer then her DVD backups becomes her only copy of her images.

I agree that redundant backup is a good idea since no backup system is perfect. People just need to realize that if they only have one copy of their data then they don't have a backup system. TM is considered a backup because it makes a copy of your computer's hard drive. In other words whenever a person deletes or makes changes to their computer then TM will eventually copy those changes for better or worst even if their files become corrupted. The nice thing about TM is that it will allow a person to restore or recover data from a previous date up to a point though.
 

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