Will I need to buy bigger external HD for new iMac?

I have had my trusty iMac (the snowball one) for 6+ years now and have loved it dearly. It has an 80gig hard drive that is about three quarters full. I have other things stored on an external hard drive, and have been using a 200gig external for Time Machine.
Anyway, I am about to splurge on a new iMac. Going for the 21.5 inch one, but putting 2T hd in it and as much ram as possible.
My question is: what will time machine need for back up? For the past few years I have been using a 200gig external for Time Machine (I also have a 500g one for extra photos and music). It will be quite a while before I have even 100 gigs of stuff to back up with Time Machine. So can I continue to use the 200 gig external for TM? Should I use the 500gig instead? Or am I going to have to buy a new external to equal the 2T?
For what it is worth, I plan to keep my snowball iMac and use it to store some documents or photos that I do not need to access often?
Many thanks in advance.
Jane

Hi Jane,
Pondini has made excellent FAQs for Time Machine to be found here http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html
Quote from it:
+"A general "rule of thumb" is, TM needs 2 to 3 times as much space as the data it's backing-up (not necessarily the entire size of your internal HD).+
+But this varies greatly, depending on how you use your Mac. If you frequently add/update lots of large files, then even 3 times may not be enough. If you're a light user, 1.5 times might do. Unfortunately, it's rather hard to predict, so if in doubt, get a bigger one!"+
Endquote.
So, it seems to me that using your 500GB external HD for Time Machine should be sufficient for your useage.
Hope it helps
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

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