External HD Noob needs help.

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I ordered a LaCie Big Disk Extreme (500 Gb), which is to arrive later this week.

I'm still new to Mac and its workings, so I would like your opinion on the following:

I'd want to partition this drive into 3 segments:

1) Backup (I'm slowly running out of space on my iDisk)
2) Time-Machine (when ever Leopard plans on being released)
3) Storing my files: Docs, music, movies, etc.

And here are the Questions:

1) What do I use to partition my drive?
2) How much space should I allocate for Time-Machine?
3) What is this Journaled business? Should my drive be journaled or whatever?
4)Am I forgetting anything else?

Thanks
 
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1. You can use the built in Disk Utility to format and partition it.
2. Depends on your hard drive size, and how much data you want to back up.
3. I use journaled, but I can't remember what the difference is, someone else should know.
4. if you think of any, ask
 
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1) See StretchR's post
2) See StrechR's post... but without TimeMachine even being out it's all guesses at this point.
3) Use Mac OS extended Journaling.... Journaling helps prevent data loss/corruption from file-system errors. Would be helpful because the drive is external and may get disconnected unexpectedly (If this happens, the journal keeps a record of the last transactions that occurred and it can replay them if there are inconsistencies in the file-system).
4) See StretchR's post...
 
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1) Thanks Guys
2) I think I will allocate 75 Gb
3) Thanks Guys


4) if I partition the drive into 3, let's say 50 -50 - 400 (total 500 Gb), and I put some files into all three partitions.

Now, let's say for reasons unknown (like time machine wants a 1 Tb drive, or something equally ridiculous) I need to modify some partitions, can I wipe and combine partitions 1 and 2, WITHOUT losing any data on partition 3 ?

Thanks again.
 
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No, to change the partitions, you'll need to wipe the drive, unless you buy some software that is supposed to be able to re-partition on the fly, but not sure how well it works.
 
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Someone suggested in another thread a software called "DriveGenius", that's supposed to change partition's size on the fly, without loosing your data.
 
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how do you partition a drive into ms-dos (250 gb) and ntfs (250 gb)? not sure how to do it in a mac...
 
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mac cannot create a ntfs partition. this protocol is microsoft only. check the options in disk utility.
 

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