Time Machine

Hello folks!

I have finally purchased an external hard drive so that I can use Time Machine (yey).

It's all working fine but I was just wondering, do I have to have the drive connected to my Mac all the time from now on for Time machine to function as I'm aware it backs up the system every hour.

Or, can I unplug the drive when I want and will Time machine sync things back up when its plugged back in?

The reason I ask is because I have bought a Western Digital My Book Premium 500GB drive, but my iMac's hard drive is 250GB. So, I have partitioned the external drive into two drives, one for Time Machine and one simply as an extra dumping drive if you will lol.

Cheers

Chris

It will still work if you don't have it plugged in all the time. The backups will just be less frequent. I have a macbook so needless to say, I don't want to have it tethered to the external all the time.

That is how I deal with mine. I leave it turned off all day. At the end of the night I turn it on and let it run. Hourly backups are superfluous for me.

i just let it back up to my 3rd hdd. works really well so far.