Full hard drive, but i am backed up and want to clear it

my 80gb disk is full, but i have a 250gb external drive. is there a way to clear the drive on my computer, but have the other information on the external via time machine?

Hi,
You have a couple of options. You can delete some of the older back ups on the Time Machine drive and drop some of your data onto it. Just open the drive in a finder window and select and delete the back ups. Or, erase and partition the Time Machine drive to give yourself some space to play with, which would be my preferred suggestion. You really only need double your hard drive size for Time Machine, so if you give yourself a 50GB partition for data it'll be OK. Or, start backing up your data to DVD (DL if possible) to give yourself some hard drive space. And, the final option would be to get a bigger ext HD. At least 500GB partitioned would be the best bet.
Also, you can manage Time Machine, by turning it off and only backing up weekly or fortnightly. It won't stop TM sucking up all your ext drive space, but it will slow it down.
Finally, using your Mac with a full hard drive is a recipe for disaster. Whatever you decide to do you should do it asap.
Hope this helps.
SR

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