Time Machine and Seagate External HD

I been trying to come up with a simple way to back-up my photo's from iPhoto, Contacts, Calendar and my Documents folder. I can find and easily back-up my documents folder but the others have proven to be harder. I have a 1TB Seagate external harddrive I thought about using with Time Machine but it not formatted in HFS+ with journaling enabled.
Can I or should I format it so I can use Time Machine or should I use another method. I don't necessarily need a 100% back all the time. To me a 90% of the mentioned files would be good... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Up-date... I found a how too on YouTube... Seems very simple...

I would reformat the Seagate to HFS Journaled and use it for Time Machine or a cloning program. Time Machine is easy to use and it's already included with your Mac. You can also use Carbon Copy Cloner but it's not free.

chscag said:

I would reformat the Seagate to HFS Journaled and use it for Time Machine or a cloning program. Time Machine is easy to use and it's already included with your Mac. You can also use Carbon Copy Cloner but it's not free.

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I did... I partitioned it into 2 500Gigs and dedicated 1 to the Time Machine. I do have one question. If I were to swap to another mac of equal or greater machine would I be able to hook the time machine to it to retrieve my files?

Yes, Time Machine can be used in conjunction with the Migration Assistant. I've done that several times when switching Macs.

chscag said:

Yes, Time Machine can be used in conjunction with the Migration Assistant. I've done that several times when switching Macs.

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Just looked up the Migration Assistant and it looks about as simple as you can get... I appreciate your help...