Time Machine on a Partitioned Ext.Hard Drive?

Hi,

I am not very techy so apologies if my questions are daft!

I purchased a 1TB external hard drive in Feb when my 2011 iMac started making strange noises (the disk drive DOES NOT work at all...when I try it sounds like the whole thing is going to blow up...so decided to leave it alone and try to back it up!!).

My aunt partitioned the ext hard drive into two sections:

'Joanna' - For general storage between devices (I lecture at numerous colleges so need to be able to carry everything with me compatible on apple and windows).

'Time Machine' - To use for Time Machine back-ups on my home iMac.

This has proven very difficult! At the moment, I have just dragged and dropped everything into the 'Time Machine' partition as when I try to use the program and back up my computer it asks a question I am scared to answer:

'Do you want to replace the backup disk "Expansion Drive" or back up to both disks?
If you use both, Time Machine will take turns backing up to "Expansion Drive" and "Time Machine".'

The options are then 'Cancel' 'Replace "Expansion Drive" ' and 'Use Both'.

Firstly I'm confused as no partition is called 'Expansion Drive', the partitions are named 'Joanna' and 'Time Machine' - clearly so I don't confuse them!

I don't want the program to back up to both partitions as I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I won't be able to use the 'Joanna' partition as my general day to day usb stick??

Any help would be amazing...I haven't backed up in so long I am just asking for trouble!!

Thanks,
Joanna

I don't understand anything you've said except that you don't have a current backup.

So get that taken care of first if your data is even worth anything, and it doesn't sound like it is for the amount of time taken to even consider making a backup.

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Time Machine does not work like that 'Drag and Drop' and it backs up according to its programing and not like that. I think what you need is your own external hard drive, formatted NTFS and Paragon's software to make the drive writable on your Mac.


http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

What I think the OP is saying is that there is one external drive that is 1TB. The OP has partitioned it so it has one partition for data and one partition for Time Machine backup - I think?

What is confusing to me is how one partition can be read by both windows and mac and the second partition is for Time Machine.

Time Machine requires a drive that is formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled which means the other partition has to also be formatted the same.

I don't think the OP can do what they want with one external drive. They can format one drive extFAT which would be readable to both Mac and Windows (except for XP) then get a second drive and format it Mac OS Extended Journaled for Time Machine.

Or am I all confused?

Lisa

lclev said:

Or am I all confused?

Lisa

Click to expand...

No, you're not Lisa. This is my take on it too.

@OP, like Harry and Lisa pointed out, you will need to have 2 Ext HHD, to do what you want. If the HD you have now, is large (as in physical size of the HardDrive) keep that one, at home, format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and use that as your TimeMachine backup, and get another smaller travel HD for the Joanna side of things.

TimeMachine when you do your first Backup will by default erase the HD so it can set it up as TimeMachine. This is all done from within the TimeMachine App, and as Harry said, you cannot drag and drop from there or too there.

Just as a point of interest I've seen procedures that create a drive partitioned for PC and Mac with one partition HFS+ and one FAT32. I think I've also seen a procedure which used HFS+ on one partition and NTFS on the other. I tred the HFS+/FAT32 procedure briefly and abandoned it in short order.

In my case I found that I had to keep manually mounting the HFS+ partition while the FAT32 part consistently mounted fine. Other users did not seem to have this problem. I certainly didn't consider the setup stable enough to hold my backups.

Slydude said:

I certainly didn't consider the setup stable enough to hold my backups.

Click to expand...

And thats the biggest issue here, especially for someone that doesn't seem to be computer literate enough to achieve this.
I believe that for the OP, 2 Ext HHD would be the best and easiest way too go, for what they want to achieve.

TattooedMac said:

And thats the biggest issue here, especially for someone that doesn't seem to be computer literate enough to achieve this.
I believe that for the OP, 2 Ext HHD would be the best and easiest way too go, for what they want to achieve.

Click to expand...

I agree. I tried the procedure because I was writing for About This Particular Mac at the time and considered wring about the it. It would also have been cool to have one drive with backups of both our Mac and Windows boxes.

I quickly concluded that it was too big a pain for most users and never wrote the article. I've seen revisions of the procedure that were less reliant on Terminal commands but have never been able to convince myself it's worth the hassle.

OK Jo_JoJo, here is my take on it. You have an iMac with a noisy disk drive. This does not mean your iMac is about to crash but doing a backup is a very good idea.
Leave the other external HD out of the picture for the minute and purchase another external HD that you can use for Time Machine alone. I know this is an added expense but believe me it is the best way and good insurance in the end.
It does not have to be Mac Formatted you will pay more for that. It needs to be roughly twice the size of your Mackintosh HD. Plug it in and if you are running Mavericks or above it will ask if you want to use it for Time Machine Backups. Click yes and the iMac will do the rest. You can then just leave it connected (which is the best idea) and you will always have a current backup. The first backup will take a while i.e. some hours.
As for the other drive I would suggest that once you have a complete Time Machine backup
you can use Disk Utility to erase, partition and reformat the whole thing as FAT 32 and use it as a dedicated transfer device between work and home.
This is not difficult to do and we are happy to provide step by step instructions if you decide to go this way.