Time machine backup

matty1 · Jan 20, 2013

I want to backup my 1TB NTFS formatted external hard drive using Time Machine. First I'll need to make a copy of the data and format it to HFS+ then copy the data back and then use Time Machine to backup. When I make the copy of the data, if I create a subfolder in my Time Machine backup folder, give it the same name as the volume label of my external hard drive and copy the data to that folder then backup using Time Machine, will Time Machine get confused because there is manually copied data present or will it just sync the data?

Alternatively, I can make a copy to another external hard drive and copy it back then run a Time Machine backup.

cwa107 · Jan 20, 2013

matty1 said:
I want to backup my 1TB NTFS formatted external hard drive using Time Machine. First I'll need to make a copy of the data and format it to HFS+ then copy the data back and then use Time Machine to backup. When I make the copy of the data, if I create a subfolder in my Time Machine backup folder, give it the same name as the volume label of my external hard drive and copy the data to that folder then backup using Time Machine, will Time Machine get confused because there is manually copied data present or will it just sync the data?

Alternatively, I can make a copy to another external hard drive and copy it back then run a Time Machine backup.

Time Machine wants its own volume. You can't specify a particular folder.

What you could do is simply partition the external hard drive. Split it into 2 volumes, one dedicated to Time Machine and the other for whatever data you need to store externally.

Slydude · Jan 20, 2013

Just to clarify. Time Machine will let other folders coexist on the same drive it is using for backup. You can put the folders anywhere on the drive EXCEPT in folders created by Time machine.

Although this can be done CWA107 is correct it is probably better to have the Time Machine backup on a separate partition.

cwa107 · Jan 20, 2013

But unless I'm mistaken - you can't direct TM to route backups to a folder. It expects a specific volume (though you can put other folders in its volume, which is not recommended)

Slydude · Jan 20, 2013

You are quite right. I did not make that clear enough. Too early in the morning for me to be answering questions.

matty1 · Jan 20, 2013

Slydude said:
Just to clarify. Time Machine will let other folders coexist on the same drive it is using for backup. You can put the folders anywhere on the drive EXCEPT in folders created by Time machine.

Although this can be done CWA107 is correct it is probably better to have the Time Machine backup on a separate partition.

That answers my question. I wanted to manually copy my data into the TM backup folder as my first backup. I'll copy the data to another folder on my TM drive, format my external drive, copy the data back to my external, delete the backup from my TM drive and run TM to create the backup. Thanks for the help.

Slydude · Jan 20, 2013

Glad to help. I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to manually copy the data into TM folders. I don't think I have read of anyone doing that.

The initial backup can be quite time consuming. The best suggestion I can think of for speeding things up would be to exclude files created as part of virtual machines (Parallels, Fusion, etc). These files cab be quite large and get modified any time the virtual machine is run even if no real changes are made. Time Machine reads this as a change and backs up the entire file each time it is opened.

Time machine backup

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