OS X :: How Much Hard Drive Storage Is Needed For Time Machine?
Nov 23, 2009
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?
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 a 1 TB drive in in my iMac that was recently replaced. The restored data uses about 850GB. I have been using a 2TB drive as a Time Machine backup drive. With the new internal drive in the iMac, TM said that it couldn't back up the drive, that 4.91TB were needed, and only 2TB available. I reformated the TM drive and I get the same error message. How can a 1TB no longer be backed up on 2TB?
Info: iMac (24-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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?
I would like to use FileVault to encrypt both my hard drive and time machine back up external drive. Does encryption noticeable slow down the computer.
Info: MacBook Air (13-INCH, MID 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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.
Well my last couple of Time Machine back ups have been huge like 60GBs and my initial was approx. 100gbs, I thought time machine made smaller backups after the initial one not huge ones. Also, it seems like something is eating up my hdd space; last week I had 100gbs free and now I have only 50 and no major changes have been made to my mac so I am quite confused. Also, in my Music Folder I see a list of all of my artists and a folder called iTunes with all my apps but it also has a folder in that called iTunes Music which is 32 gb. That folder has a list of all my artists but I don't see a couple in the other folder that are in my iTunes Music folder. I used Disk Inventory X which gave me 10gbs.
I recently bought a small capacity external hard drive. I don't download and store music, movies, et cetera so I purchased a 250gb Western Digital portable one.
I want to mostly back up my writing (I do a lot), some photos (for convenience, although I don't have many), and files (I have client information on my computer). So for the most part, they are small things.
If my computer was to crash, my worry is mostly that my writing would be lost. My question is, if I use Time Machine, does it automatically back up everything ? Or do I select things? Am I better off dragging and dropping? I am new to this.
Also, I also run Parallels as for one of my jobs, I have to use a Windows based program. I don't do anything else in my Parallels. If I was to lose the info on my computer, and Parallels was backed up, would I have to reinstall it on a new computer? This concerns me as I no longer have my Windows CD that I needed for the initial installation.
I was just wondering if there is anyway to use time machine as an external hard drive? i'm running low on storage with my macbook and wanted to move some files to it permanently for storage
I was trying to move all of my movies on to my external hard drive and I copied all of them (took two hours) on there. Then I deleted all but three of them off my computer and emptied the trash. I then look back at my hard drive's files and they aren't there!!! The only thing that was there was the 3 files.
But I also have time machine saved to update my external hard drive. It did and I can see the previous computer times/events/whatever you want to call it. I go to Hard drive>backups.backupdb>My Mac Book Pro>2010-05-04>Macintosh HD>Users>Me>Movies which only shows my iMovie library. I do the same thing but with Music>iTunes>iTunes media>movies to which only one file shows up.
I am a new Mac user. I want to set up Time Machine on my Mac mini as well as have an external hard drive for my audio projects. Can I use one hard drive for Time Machine and extra storage?
Just finished setting up my new 27" iMac and the last piece of the puzzle is to setup Time Machine. I have an external 500GB hard drive that Im not using (even though my hard drive is 1TB, Im only using 157GB right now so the 500GB should be fine). My concern is...will it slow down the computer when its backing up since the drive is USB? Would it be worth buying a Firewire 800 external drive (~$150)?
I have a Macbook Pro 13.3" running 10.6.4. I've had this computer for a year now and I have always wondered. Can my 500 GB Toshiba Hard Drive be used for Time Machine and for storing files at the same time?
I've heard about partitioning it, but will that delete the files on there? I dont have enough space on my hard drive to backup my external HD.
I have an external hard drive that I use to back up my Mac with Time Machine. Where on that drive would I be able to find web bookmarks that I have since deleted from Safari?I don't want to reset all on my bookmarks, just look up one.
I recently purchased a Time Capsule and love it. However before getting the Time Capsule I used an external hard drive for Time Machine. My question is how do I get Time Machine to work on the external hard drive while it its plugged into the Time Capsule? When I connect the external hard drive to Time Capsule, it recognizes it and I can access the other data I have on the drive. However, when I try to access the Time Machine backups I get The alias ... could not be opened, as well as getting a failed message when I try to do a backup. I've been trying to find a solution online but haven't had much luck.
I'm new to macs, having just bought a 24" iMac on the 2nd. So I qualify for the Leopard upgrade. The Time Machine feature really sounds cool, and I'd like to use it. 'Cept I haven't a clue about which external hard drives are the best, or in particular... which one is the best.
I'm assuming firewire is the way to go for speed, but I have no idea how large a drive I'd need. My internal drive is 500GB. Anyone have any suggestions for a durable, quiet external drive? What can I expect to pay?
We also have a second 20" 2.4 Ghz iMac in the house that has the 320GB drive in it. It will be getting the Leopard upgrade as well, so I could use a suggestion for an external drive for Time Machine for that iMac too.
I started installing Leopard last night before going out. I came back late last night (or early this morning) and sat down to explore the new OS. There was a pop-up about using Time Machine with my external hard drive. I clicked okay.
It began loading and running Time Machine before telling me my external hard drive was the wrong format or something. It then gave me the option to delete (which I assumed ment delete the Time Machine files from my external hard drive). I clicked on it.
A few minutes later I realized that it had erased my entire external hard drive, renaming it "Time Machine Backups". I had JUST moved my entire music and movie collection to that hard drive and am wondering if there's any way I can recover those files.
I was thinking of getting an external hard drive for use with Time Machine. On Amazon I found a Seagate 1.5 TB unit for $129. However there is a similar model "for the mac" for $192. I am wondering if the cheaper unit would work, or if the one for 50% has some indispensable feature.
As you may have read in other threads, I upgraded my hard drive today with plans to restore from Time Machine. I left for class with the restore on a screen that asked me to select which items I want to restore (everything). When I left, it said it was calculating the size of the transfer. The transfer button was grayed out. When I came back 6 hrs later, it was still calculating. What on earth is going on?
I was just wondering if the big ol' hard drive that I use for Time Machine backups, if I can store other files on there also or can it only hold Time Machine backups?
I just purchased a seagate 1.5TB drive - can I put 2 partitions on it - one for time machine (mac formated) and one for Windows (NTFS formatted) will that work if connected to the Airport Extreme and if so how do I do that with the disk utility?
I need some help on this matter. I have a Western Digital external hard drive hooked up to my AirPort Extreme; and I am able to view it as a drive on my MacBook Pro but when I go and try to start up "Time Machine" its no where to be found. The hard drive is formatted as a FAT32 drive, does this matter in regards to recognition by Time Machine?
i have a Mac Mini and two mac notebooks that run Snow Leopard. I've been backing these machines up to a 300 GB drive that is now full.Today I brought home a 2TB drive so that I can use Time Machine to backup the desktop Mac Mini.
Can I use the same hard drive to use Time Machine for the two notebooks, as well? What about storing other backups on that drive as well? I'm just trying to map the most logical approach to having safe backups. Let me know what you think.
I may need to take my new 27" iMac in for a replacement and only have with me a 250gb usb hard drive. I have used 182gb's of space on my iMac as of right now. Should I be OK for this one back up? While on the subject, what size external back drive should I be looking at?
Time Machine is backing up my internal 1Mac hard drive fine to an external drive ("backup ext drive"). I have another external hard drive attached to the Mac that I would also like to back up to the back-up ext drive. I've looked around on Time Machine as best I can but can't find any place that lists drives to be backed up, so I can tell Time Machine to back it up, also. I have found a list in Time Machine of drives I can back up to. That list shows both external drives. But of course, I want to back this one up, not use it as a back up drive. Should be something simple I'm missing. I've seen a lot in the forum about issues backing up external ard drives via Airport Express (or Extreme), but though I have Airport Express, both external drives (back up ext drive and the one to be backed up) are directly connected to the iMac, so I'm not trying to use Airport for this.
Time machine only backs up the changing files in Mac. I want to use Time machine so it can back up my drive completely. From my music to pictures, to Apps to settings. I have a Case sensitive structure and I am about to format it to a non-case sensitive. And I want to back up everything. Is time machine a program for me?
Can anyone tell me how to tell Time Machine how to find an external hard drive (that is attached to myiMac) that I'd like to back up? If recoginizes it in a window for selecting a drive to back up to, but I can't seem to find any window to tell it what drives I want backed up. It backs up the internal hard drive on the iMac.
I have an external HD that I would like to use to back up my files using Time Machine and I was wondering if I could create a partition to use Time Machine in one of these partitions. In other words I would like to use one of the partitions for Time Machine and the other partition for less important stuff.
I have still another EHD/TM question and I can't quite figure out where to ask for the help I need. I have a Mac Pro OS 10.5.8 with 2 internal drives and a large EHD that I was using solely for Time Machine Back Up. After a recent conversation with tech support at Apple, I've decided that I should have still one more full copy of stuff that is critical to me--my original photographs. I currently only have the backup copy on TM.
So, I want to take my large LaCie EHD and partition it. I want to store things as follows: 1. Internal HD #1-primary HD containing all data except original photos 2. Internal HD #2-HD that contains nothing but original photos 3. EHD (LaCie): a. Partition #1: Second copy of original photos b. Partition #2: Time Machine back up of HD #1 and HD #2.
It seems as if it is easy enough to do the partition but I'm wondering if there is a way to get my original photos to go into both HD #2 and Partition #1 of the EHD at the same time that I import them via a card reader.
If not, I'm wondering how I can set this up so that I don't have to remember to copy the photos from HD #2 to the EHD. Do I have to use another back up program? If so, any recommendations? Will using another program mess up Time Machine? What am I not thinking about?
I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or preferences on a good 500gb (or more) portable hard drive for Time Machine on my Macbook. I need it to be portable because I travel quite a bit.
I have been looking at the Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST905003FAA2E1-RK but I can't tell a) if this will work for my macbook and b) if it will work for Time Machine.
Any thoughts or recommendations? Would any portable hard drive that I buy on Amazon work for Time Machine?
