HT201250 Is there a size limit for an external drive to be used with time machine?

I have an iMac with a 2TB drive. I have a 2TB WD drive used for Time Machine that is full. I would like to go to the bigest WD (type) external drive that will work with Time Machine. Is there a TB limit for TM in OS X Lion?

Welcome .  I have also used a 2TB WD My Book ext HDD for Time Machine backups for the past year and have had no problems.  They seem to get a  very bad wrap.  Perhaps we are a few of the lucky ones.  The two brands recommended by macjack are very, very good brands.

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  • Quiet external hard drive for use with Time Machine?

    Few questions related to Time Machine:
    1- what external hard drive that would be good to use with Time Machine, that also runs relatively quietly? Since TM runs 24/7, am looking for one that is quieter than my current G-tech.
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    1. I like these (have three of them) - literally whisper quiet:
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    3. No, it'd be best to be on another drive - you can create separate partitions, but if/when the drive fails, both of your backups would be gone. So, keep your clone on a separate disk. In fact, it's good to have two different backups.

  • Partitioning a disc already in use - for use with Time Machine

    I just bought the upgrade to 10.5 Leopard, and I want to use my external disc (LaCie 500GB - a couple of months old) to back up using time-machine. The thing is, I've already been using it to backup manually, and to be sure, I want to keep that possibility.
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    I had nothing but nightmares with my LaCie 500GB drive and Time Machine. I had it partitioned, and I could never go back to previous backups to restore a file. After finally reformatting the drive back to a singe partition, I got it to work. But then a month later the drive gave out and I almost lost 250GB or my media. DIskWarrior saved that catastrophe. I ended up getting the drive repaired. LaCie would not replace it, even though it was only 3 months old. Other people with LaCie drives have had issues with Time Machine also. I went back to using SuperDuper and doing scheduled backups with a new Beyond Micro drive I purchased. I don't trust this Lacie drive anymore for backups, especially it's partitioned.
    -Bmer
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  • Partitioning an ext. HD for use with Time Machine HFS+/FAT32

    Hi, I hope that this question is not already answered somewhere - I did a couple of searches but couldn't find the answers I need.
    I'm setting up an external LaCie 500GB HD (USB 2.0) for a friend, in order to use it for Time Machine backups (one partition) and as a non-backuped "data dump" (music / films etc.).
    My plan is the following: Partition the ext. HD into a 200 GB HFS+ Journaled partition for use with Time Machine, and a 300 GB FAT32 partition for data (FAT32 to ensure the interoperability with PCs).
    I have a couple of questions (apart from if you think the proposed setup is good in general):
    1. The Time Machine partition would be used to back up a MacBook with a 120GB HD - in your opinion, is 200GB too much/enough/too less space?
    2. In general, does Time Machine work with partitions on ext. HDs as seen in the setup I propose? (or should I use a drive with only one partition?)
    3. are there any possible problems I might run into when partitioning a drive into two different file systems as HFS+ and FAT32?
    4. Is it OK to use the Leopard Disk Utility for this or should I use another application?
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    Hi,
    Could you please share the answers you found?
    I'm going through a very similar situation...
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  • Best hard drive for use with Time Machine

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    I'm looking for a Firewire 400 & Firewire 800 drive that STAYS ON all the time, and doesn't automatically spin down or spin up like the rubbish WD My Book drives do.

    I can't tell you if it is the "best" hard drive for you to use with TM, but I'm quite happy with the 500 GB Buffalo Technology DriveStation Combo TurboUSB I bought recently. It is quiet, quite inexpensive for the capacity (I paid about $120 for one on sale at Fry's), & completely compatible with OS X & TM.
    Best of all for me, it automatically powers down when my iMac sleeps. It also spins down after a time if the Mac's Energy Saver preference "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is checked; otherwise it remains spun up until the Mac is put to sleep or switched off.
    It comes with "Turbo" USB & Memeo "AutoBackup" software, neither of which I installed. (The box didn't claim these extras came in a Mac version but both Mac & Windows versions were included on the CD.) Out-of-the-box, I reformatted the drive with the Apple Partition Map scheme & two partitions, a 160 GB one for cloning my internal drive & the rest for TM. The drive works perfectly for both uses & seems quite fast, as one would expect from a 7200 rpm SATA drive.

  • I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

    I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

    Do not worry about it.
    Time Machine needs that your external drive is formatted in HFS+, or better known as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". This filesystem is used by Apple on Macs and Windows cannot read or write drives formatted with this filesystem, being this the reason why all your devices do not read the external drive except your Mac.
    You can only use your external drive to make Time Machine drives. If you store anything different, you may damage the Time Machine structure, so it is better not to use it as a drive to store other data. Instead, get another external drive to do it or create a second partition on the external drive formatted in FAT32 by using Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html FAT32 can be read by Windows PCs

  • External HD for use with Time Machine

    I have a new MacBook Pro with 320GB HD. I want to buy an external HD to use with Time Machine for a back up. HOw much capacity should I be looking at for the external? Is 500GB enough or is it possible to partition a 1TB unit for use as backup and extra storage (photos, music, etc...)?
    Thanks.
    This should have been posted in the late model forum. Sorry.

    tsoup2u wrote:
    Can I use disk utility to partition once plug in HD?
    Yes, you can. Click the Partition tab. Click options and set the partition scheme to GUID. One option is to have one partition a bit smaller than your internal HDD, which you can use for a bootable clone (SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner).
    See this post for a great discussion of backup strategies:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9423426&#9423426

  • Partitioning an External 320gb drive for use with Time Machine and...

    I want to be able to use my Western Digital 320GB external drive for use with Time Machine and to use as extra storage space on both my Mac and when I boot into Windows Vista.
    Is this possible?
    I was playing around in Disk Utility and would I partition the part I want to use for Time Machine with the Mac OS Journaled, and whatever I want as space for windows, use a MS - DOS format?
    Has anyone done this before?
    Cheers-

    Unless you are using 64 bit version of MSWindows (64 bit XP/Vista), it won't be able to handle a disk with GUID partition table (GPT). Disks with Apple Partition Map (APM) or GUID partition table are the only ones that Time Machine will work with (not MBR disks). Note also that the MBR/APM/GPT are at the DISK level and not the partition level, so don't mix the format with partitioning scheme. Time Machine disks are meant to live in the Mac universe (for now, anyway) and sharing with the MSWindows 32-bit universe is not possible.
    See http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=macpcdiskdd06sv8.png for some additional background.

  • What size should external back-up drive be for use with Time Machine?

    I am very new to Macs.
    My iMac has a 500GB hard disc - not much on it yet.
    I want to back the hard disc up daily and automatically to an external hard drive using Time Machine. So that I could restore everything if the iMac failed.
    1. Does the external hard drive that I buy need to be larger than the iMac's hard disc, e.g 1Tb? Or is 500Gb enough in my case?
    2. Should it be pre-formatted for Mac when I buy it? Or do I have to do this?
    3. Should it use firewire or USB?
    4. Presumably I need to leave the external drive plugged in all the time? Or will this stop the iMac from switching on and off?
    I really want the easiest solution possible as I am not very techie and I want the minimum amount of fiddling with it. So I am confused between whether to choose a Western Digital My Book Office edition or Studio edition, 500Gb or 1TB, firewire or USB, or maybe a Lacie?
    Would be grateful for advice.
    Thanks very much.

    Welcome to the Apple forums. If you have a 500G external disk, that will work fine for quite a while with hourly, daily and weekly backups, but sooner or later it will fill up, but then it begins to delete weekly backups. The same will happen with whichever size of external disk you buy: sooner or later. . . . Nonetheless, that disk will be fine for most purposes. I have 250G and use a 200G partition for my MacBook Pro and while that was fine, it tends to delete weekly backups so I have about 6 months of backups stored. (I also make other backups of all data).
    It may be preformatted, but that is unlikely. Use Disk Utility (in Applications>Utilities) and use MacOS Extended, which is selected in the Partition tab (you do this even if you only use a single partition).
    The system works with either Firewire or USB 2..
    You do not need to leave it in all the time. If it is connected, it will make the backups, if not, nothing will happen and it will indicate that the next backup will occur when the disk is attached. To disconnect, you would highlight the disk in a Finder panel and press the Eject icon (not while TM is running of course) then disconnect the cable.
    I am not able to suggest which disk is best, although my LaCie one has not missed a beat. Others may have a different idea. Try a Google search with the disk manufacturer's name and "problems" or somesuch. No disk is perfect of course.

  • Advice - External HD for use with Time Machine?

    Hi,
    Just wanted to know what's best for me to buy. Looking into what's available has only made me more confused...
    I want a HD that:
    - Works well with Time Machine and my Macbook
    - Will copy everything from my computer rather than drag-and-drop or manual file choice (although that's more the program I use than the HD itself, right; Time Machine does that as far as I know?)
    - Enough space for all of my video files from my video camera (there's quite a lot of them)
    I want to start deleting some video files from my computer and my video camera but I don't want to lose them, so that's the major use really. As long as they'll all fit and if I want one back on my computer again it'll be easy enough to find it and put it back on...
    Any ideas? Keep in mind that I live in Perth, Western Australia...
    (And I apologise for the ignorance/lack of proper techy terms!)

    Hi Eleanor,
    I'm from Sydney so it's great to see another Aussie on here! Welcome to the forum.
    Just a couple of points that I would keep in mind in addition to the correct advice already given:
    Apple recommends having a dedicated drive for Time Machine, so ideally you wouldn't use it for anything else. Also, as a guideline, they recommend having a Time Machine drive at least twice as large as the primary drive in your computer so that enough space is always available. The more space, the further back your backups will go before needing to be written over.
    You can put other stuff on the drive but ideally it's better (if your budget allows) to get a second external drive for video camera files and the like. Those video files also grow pretty big as you've probably noticed, so they will need room to move as well. External drives are cheaper than ever, so two drives is the best bet.
    One final recommendation/option is to go for a Time Capsule as your Time Machine drive. The benefit here is that it works wirelessly so you won't have to plug it into your USB/firewire port at all. It just backs up without any action from you whatsoever, which is what makes it ideal. If you don't yet have a WiFi network, here's your chance to dive in. If you do, it's a natural fit for your network.
    So my ultimate recommendation is: 1) Time Capsule 2) USB/firewire drive.
    I hope that helps!
    Message was edited by: Michael271

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