First time user of Time Machine.  Have some questions....

To All,
Sorry for starting another thread as I could not find the answers I was looking for in other threads.
Basically I have been on a Mac (iMac) for about a year, and I wanted to start using the Time Machine utility to back up my iMac to my external USB 1TB HDD, and I had a question about the entire setup process.
What I was looking to find out is if I could create a blank folder on my usb drive and call it 'backup' and then go into Time Machine and set it up, so that it will always backup my stuff to that folder I created? I ask because I have a lot of other stuff on that drive that I do not want to lose, so I am hoping I can create this folder and have it backup there.
Right now I have about 750gb of free space on the drive, so I know I have plenty of room, and I want to get this setup rather quickly, so any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much!!!!

Mattc867 wrote:
I keep other stuff on my external HD too.
Assuming the drive is already formatted properly, all you need to do is select it as the drive for Time Machine Backups.
It will create a new folder in the root directory of the external drive called, incidentally, 'backups'.
Actually, it's named Backups.backupdb.
Anything that you currently have on the drive should be left alone.
True, but it's not a good idea to put other things in the same partition as Time Machine backups. Either partition the drive, or use a separate one. See #1 and #3 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Time Machine 101
and perhaps browse the rest of he FAQ Tip.

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