MacBook :: Partition External HD For Time Machine And Data Storage?
Jun 15, 2010
I have a 500GB external HD but a 250HD on my macbook. is it possible to partition the HD 300GB for time machine and 200 for storage of data and files? If so, how would I go about doing that? I just don't want to waste a 500 GB external if my HD is only 250GB.
Bear with me guys, I'm not sure where to put this question. I figured that because my Macbook Air (and it's limited storage space) was the reason for my needing an external HD I thought this would be the best place. My MBA has run out of storage and I bought a Seagate External HD to move my stuff onto. I guess my question is: What's the best way to combine the external HD with the MBA? Here are a few of the things on my mind:Â
-Most of the space is taken up by my user folder right now such as itunes, photos, etc. If I copy that folder to the external drive it would alleviate a large part of my issue, at least for the time being. Eventually I will hit the storage capacity as I add applications over time I guess, so this is a temporary solution (although I free up 27gb of space this way). Can I designate a folder on the external drive as the default for programs like imovie and iphoto like I can with itunes?Â
-I KNOW there is a way to set the external drive as some kind of default drive but is this feasible? It would be a hinderance if I needed to have it connected at all times to access even applications (which I assume to be the case?Â
-I also wondered about partitioning the external HD and using one partition for additional storage and the other for time machine? It's a 1TB hard drive, and I figure I could make a 100GB partition to use with time machine (my MBA only has a 64gb capacity) and use the other 900GB for files. Is this even possible or does time machine need it's very own separate drive? Anyway, this doesn't necessarily ask many specific questions and I apologize if it appears a little disjointed. I'm looking for help and opinions on the best way to use this new piece of equipment to compliment my MBA.
I am trying to organize my external storage for a new iMac with an 500G SSD drive. I have a new thunderbolt G-Raid drive and an aging Airport Time Capsule. I was thinking of storing music and pictures, as well as a Time Machine backup of the SSD, and storing a Time Machine backup of my music and pictures on the Time Capsule. Will I need to partition the G-Raid?Â
I just purchased a 500gb External Hard Drive. I was wondering what is the best way to format and partition it so that I can use 300gb dedicated to Time Machine and then use the ~180gb for external storage. The key part of my situation is that I want to be able to access the ~180 gb from both my Mac and my windows based machines. I know I could go into disk utility and partition it, but what format should I use if I want to do both.
The other part is the hard drive is already setup to use time machine since yesterday, however I am willing to format it completely to partition it to use on windows machines (XP and Vista.)
I have bought a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex. I have perform a check on the external harddisk using Disk Utility. No matter ho many times I tried to backup my file, the Time Machine will refuse to move after it has transferred est 70 MB data.
I have an external hard drive with files from my pc. I want to partition it so that I can use Time Machine on my mac. I tried disk utility but it told me it would erase the drive if it makes the partition. Is there a free application I can use to make a partition without erasing all my files?? I dont care if its for mac or pc
I have a 320 GB Western Digital drive connected to my Macbook Pro 5,1. I have 2 partitions on the WD drive, my Time Machine partition and a FAT32 partition of about 32GB. My Time machine partition is getting pretty close to being full, and although I know that Time Machine will just delete older backups if its partition is full, I don't really have a need for the FAT32 partition anymore.
In Disk Utility, by selecting the external drive and choosing the 'Partition' tab, I am able to erase the FAT32 partition and leave a free space on the drive, but I can't find a way to expand the Time Machine partition to use this space. The TM partition has a slider, but it can only decrease the size of the partition, not expand it.
The free area on the disk shows up in the partition map as a greyed-out area above the TM partition. Any ideas? Is it possible to extend the TM partition to the rest of the disk?
How do you set up, step by step, Time Machine? I want to create a partition on my external HDD (40GB in size, 120GB capacity) and have it back up to that partition. Is it possible? I only use around <30GB so I figure 10GB extra space is more than enough.
Can I use time machine to back up my data without formatting the external hard drive .. If not please let me know if there is a way to back up to hard drive without using time machine.. Thank you
What can be done if Time Machine failed to save certain data to external hard disk, but I do have the old hard drive? I have a new IMac 10.9.2. The old IMac was hit by lightning/surge. Restored data from external LaCie disk but some information is missing. Apparently Time Machine did not save it to the external disk, or we just can't locate it. We do haves the old hard disk and will put it in a box to be able to access it.
Basically I have a 750GB hard drive in my Macbook Pro and over 300GB is taken up with 'BackUp' data. This is more than the total of everything I have on the drive other than that. Time Machine has always been setup on an external drive and when searching all files on the Macbook there is nothing for backup files so don't know where it is coming from.
Is it possible to have my MacBook Pro use Time Machine to backup to shared storage on the Mac Pro? Right now my Mac Pro has close to 6TB of storage and it would be nice to be able to use part of the storage as a fake Time Capsule.
While I would LOVE to get a 1TB Time Capsule and use it with Time Machine on my MBA, that is a whole lot of money when I already have a wireless router that works just fine and I can find 1TB of storage for much cheaper than that... My question is, what are my other options? I have a Mac mini so my first thought was to plug a big ol' USB HD into that and have the MBA backup to that... Well I could access files on the HD from the MBA just fine but Time Machine refused to use it for backups...
I have seen little wireless adapter boxes with USB ports for adding printers and HD's to your home network, would something like this work or would I run into the same issue with Time Machine not wanting to use it as a backup device?
I was trying to set up my Time Machine to an external hard drive. I didn't continue because it asked to "initialize" the hard drive which I had a lot of important things on.
I have another external hard drive I'd like to use but, my Time Machine has this error code of -43. What is this and how can I use my Time Machine on another external hard drive?
How do I partition my external hard drive without losing the data already on it? I've been using it with Time Machine on my old computer, but want to use it as a regular drag-and-drop type back up on my new computer. Is there any way to basically split the hard drive so I can still access the Time Machine backups on my old computer, but also be able to use it with my new mac?
I recently bought my mother a Macbook. It was a store display one but she had no problems with that. Anyways when we first boot it up I noticed that on the desktop there is a Time Machine disk. So I openMacintosh HD that there is only 17 gbs free out of 33 gb, so I check System Profiler to see if there is a smaller hd in there but the it says that the hd is 150 gb.
So I'm wondering how to delete the time machine partition and resize the Macintosh HD partition so I can give her the most space she can get.
I currently have a Time Capsule, but I want to get away from that internal storage. I have a Mac Pro that I am thinking of installing a WD Black 2TB into as a backup drive. Backing up my three internal drives and a MacBook Pro. I would like to purchase the AirPort Extreme Base Station (Not Time Capsule) and backup my MacBook Pro to my Mac Pro's WD 2TB Internal HD using Time Machine. Would I be able to do this? My Mac Pro is ALWAYS on. If I can do this, how easy/difficult would the setup be?
Has anyone tried using some of the NAS storage solutions out there as your Time Machine back up? If so, how well does it work? Reason I ask is because I'm thinking of getting one but I don't want to run into the same problem I had with mounting when I tried using an external HDD connected to my home server. I know it's not the same but I'm just asking to be safe.
I have a 500 gb ext HD, that i will be partitioning to 2 sections, one will be mac os extended for time machine, the other will be fat32 for storage and so that i can use the hd with windows and mac.
so my questions are:
1. how many GB should i leave for back up so that time machine works effectively?
2. any suggestions on how i should divide the 500 gb between mac os extended and fat32? such as 250/250 or 400/100?
Late last night I accidentally ejected Time Machine from the Devices section of the Finder window. I've now spent half a day trying to get the computer to recognise my external hard drive again as attempting to use Time Machine results in the message "Storage Machine for Time Machine backup can't be found." I can find my WD desktop 1TB drive with Disk Utility but not in Finder. If I click on the WD Ext HDD 1021 Media in Disk Utility there is the option to Verify in the top menu, but nothing happens when I click on it. All the options verify, and repair are greyed out. I've checked the computer hard drive and done the verify and repair disk and permissions process.
I've turned off the computer, disconnected the external hard drive, turned off time machine, then turned everything back on but still can't get the external hard drive to be recognized. This is extremely frustrating and I have run out of ideas. I know it all started when I clicked on the eject button for the external hard drive in the devices section of the finder. Such a simple mistake, but I have searched everywhere online and can't find a resolution that I can actually try. I can't verify and repair the WD hard drive if these options aren't available in Disk Utility.
I have a 250GB external HDD, and I need to partition it to some degree for Time machine. However, this is also my drive to move large audio, video and picture files from MAC to PC, so I need part of it to be NTFS. I have the paragon driver. What partition size should I set for HSF+ so that time machine wont have trouble backing up my entire HDD onto it.
I have time machine and I made two partition on it. One for data and other for music and movies. I want to combine them and use one. Everytime, I try to use Disk Utility it tells me something like boot scheme and it cant be done. Is there a way? I do not care about saving my music and movies.
I've been using my external hard drive for Time Machine for a while now (a Western Digital My Book) and have only used up about 100 of its 500 GB capacity. However, I'd like to temporarily use the remaining space on the drive as extra storage, since my other hard drive just died. Is there any way to do this without erasing everything that I've backed up with Time Machine already?
So I'm planning on getting a new MacBook here shortly and was wondering how the Time Machine transfer works. A few questions:
1. Can I select which Data I upload to the new computer? 2. Is data from Address Book saved? 3. When I want to backup my new computer, can I keep the prior back up from my old computer and have a separate one for the new computer?
I have my hard drive partitioned into two parts and after running time machine last night one of my partitions (Stuffz) is not showing up. This partition isn't even backed up by time machine so I'm not sure what exactly I need to do to fix this. It has a lot of important files on it.
I read this thread with much interest. [URL:..] While I don't need quite the storage space that guy needed, I am trying to figure out the best solution for me. New to the mac world, I have new 2.8 gHz 24" iMac (pre 9400m). I want to be able to share (read and write) all of my itunes and iphoto files with all users on the machine, and it seems as if using an external drive requires the least amount of trouble to set up to do this. I think I have 2 routes to go. I could get a raid 1 array like the WD Mybook studio II and forgo backups, using this as my raid protected file storage drive, though that post has me concerned about FW disconnection and Raid, which I don't quite understand. Since I don't need much space, I noticed Newegg has the WD studio 320gig w/ FW800 for $80 each. I figure one for media, one for time machine, and I am done, no messing with raid. I also have a fairly new 320 gig drive in a windows/linux machine I could buy a USB enclosure for and use with time machine, since buying a FW enclosure is equal in price to the WD studio 320g drive. I have been seeing issues with sleep modes on drives connected via firewire (WD especially), and have now researched my way into absolute confusion.
I recently bought a new MacBook Pro, and wanted to transfer all the data from my old MacBook Pro, but I get the message saying I need to update time machine on my old one in order to use time machine. However, my old one is too old to update. So I decided to use the cable to transfer, because I heard I can do it that way even though it could take time.