HT201250 if I used external hard disk for backup time machine, is it possible to use that external hard disk to save another else from diffrent computers?

If I used external hard disk for back up time machine, is it possible to use that external hard disk to save another else from diffrent computers?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can do this, but you should make a new volume on your external disk. Time Machine needs a volume that is only used to store backups, so you can't store other data in the same volume as the one you are using for making backups.
If you want to create another volume on your external disk, use Disk Utility to do this > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Anyway, you should get another external disk to store other files, but if you don't want to, you can create another volume in it

Similar Messages

  • Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup.  However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails.  And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external.  Sort of a catch 22.  Any ideas?

    Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup.  However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails.  And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external.  Sort of a catch 22.  Any ideas?

    Is it a USB hard drive?  USB hard drives have the problem of not giving full speed if they are hooked up on the same bus as keyboards and mice.  Double check your profiler to make sure that is not a problem.  If it is Firewire, make sure there aren't other firewire devices in use at the same time.  I recommend not only keeping a Time Machine backup, but also a clone, and if you do use Time Machine, to make sure the Time Machine drive or partition is at least twice the size of the original drive.

  • OS is Mountain Lion, upgraded no problems, used an external Hard drive for my time machine, now my iPhoto will not show any of my photo's or ay new ones I import! Help please!!

    OS is Mountain Lion, upgraded no problems, used an external Hard drive for my time machine, now my iPhoto will not show any of my photo's or ay new ones I import! Help please!!

    Do you get this window when you hold down the Command+Option keys and launch iPhoto?
    If not then you're not holding down both keys long enough.
    OT

  • I have a 250GB western digital external hard drive for my time machine backups. if i just want to backup and recover my photos and movies how do i do that with time machine?

    I have a 250GB western digital external hard drive for my time machine backups. I did not download the software that came with the external HD. If I only want to backup my photos and movies from my Macbook how do I do that in Tme Machine with my external HD?

    Format the HDD in Disk Utility>Erase to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the open System Preferences>Time Machine and set up the external disk as the Time Machine HDD.  Then look at the Options, and exclude what you do not want backed up.
    Ciao.

  • I am using a WD My Passport Studio external hard drive as a Time Machine. I get the error that a back up folder could not be created when my iMac has been asleep, any advice.

    I am using a WD My Passport Studio external hard drive as a Time Machine. I get the error that a back up folder could not be created when my iMac has been asleep, any advice. The hard drive is set set not to go to sleep.

    Were you not plugged in via USB to begin with?
    I would recommend performing some resets just to be on the safe side. Unplug the external HD, and try these steps:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

  • Hi, I used an external hard drive as a time machine,now I want to use it on a windows PC as a normal hard drive again. How do I "reformat" the time machine to an normal usb-device?

    Hi, I used an external hard drive as a time machine,now I want to use it on a windows PC as a normal hard drive again. How do I "reformat" the time machine to an normal usb-device?

    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+format+hard+drive

  • Transferring 650 gb to a new external hard drive for my time machine.  It is going real slow. Says it is going to day days. After an hour or so it stops and I have to start again.  When I restart, it starts where it left off.  I'm not always here to resta

    I have a new external drive for my time machine.  My hard drive of 650 gb is full.  It is reallyslow backing up to my external drive.  I have to stay near by as it stops after an hour or so.  If I'm not here to restart it, I lose all that time it could have been backing up. It says it is going to take 581 days. Eventually it will say 12 days. Back up time is all over the place.  How can I keep the machine backing up when I sleep at night.
    Gerald

    I would go into your  in the upper left corner of the mac
    Click on system preferences
    Click on energy saver
    Change the computer sleep and display sleep to never.

  • I want to use a nas drive for my time machine back ups.

    Hi,
    I'm pretty new to macs. I've set up time machine on my kids macs using a time capsule without problems.
    Ive now bought my own mac and want to use time machine to back it up but only have a network hard drive to do it on. When I go to choose disk, I'm not given the option of the drive. I can see it in finder ok.
    Is this possible?
    Thanks
    Roy

    There's more to it than a "party line." Many folks who have started this, and thought it was going well, found it wasn't as reliable as they thought.
    From a post in another forum (found by V.K.):
    *The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can't guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.*
    *If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.*
    *To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.*
    That only addresses Leopard, of course. Snow Leopard seems to have some additional requirements, that don't work with some NAS solutions that did work, to a degree, with Leopard.

  • How can I use one external hard drive for both Time Machine and iPhoto Library?

    I have been using a 1 TG LaCie external hard drive for Time Machine backups.  My (older) Mac has 160 GB and is almost full.  I would like to move my iPhoto Library to the external hard drive, but I've heard Time Machine doesn't share one space well.  Should I
    1.  create another partition (but will this erase what I've already saved) with Disk Utility?  *I am running Snow Leopard*
    2.  create another volume to use for iPhoto, and if so, should the two volumes be of equal size?
    3.  leave it with one partition and move the iPhoto Library to the same partition with Time Machine back ups?
    I know I don't need the entire 1 TG for back up of 160 GBs.  Please advise the best path to take.  Thank you!

    You are getting incorrect information from your ASP. If you look at drive specifications the heat generated is no different for high vs low capacity drives.
    I have upgraded the internal drive in my iMac 2007 with a 3TB Hitachi drive without any heat issues or other problems.
    Larger hard drives have higher density platters so to access any given amount data the drives travel a shorter distance. Higher capacity drives should therefore run cooler than lower density drives because the drive spends less time spinning to access data.

  • Can't use my external hard drive for the time machine

    I have a mac mini and i'm having a time trying to back data using the time machine to my external hard drive

    you need to format the external drive. To do that (if haven't got anything important on that external hard drive at the moment) select finder > Go menue > then utilities > open disk utility > then select you external hard drive and partition it to the size you want and format it the Mac os extened journaled.
    Once you have done the above, re open time machine from system preferences and brows the disk. Time Machine will then re format it to its own format and start backing up.....

  • Formatting an external hard drive for Mac/Time Machine.

    Hello-
    Just purchased a Time Capsule to use both as a wireless Network and backup hard drive. Both are working great. However, I have an external hd (500 gig "My Book") I used with a previous computer (PC). I would like Time Capsule/Time Machine to backup everything on the My Book external hd but I realize I need to reformat in order to have the Time Machine backup this drive. It appears that the only way to reformat the external hd is to erase it's contents. This isn't an option for me as this drive is almost full and has a ton of data I do not want to lose. Can anyone elaborate on how I can reformat this disk so it will be compatible with my new setup without losing any of it's contents? Thank you for your time and help.
    Matt

    Some 3rd-party apps, such as iPartition, claim to be able to do that. But they +*very prominently+* warn you to back up first, in case something goes wrong. And there have been a few posts here where something did go wrong and the user hadn't backed-up, so lost everything.
    iPartition (and I think all the others) cost money, of course. Instead of spending it there, your best bet is to get another external HD, a larger one. Copy the data to it, reformat the WD, and copy it back. Make sure Time Machine is backing-it up to your Time Capsule (ie., not listed in the exclusions box of +Time Machine Preferences > Options).+
    Then erase and partition the new one. One partition should be at least as large as your Mac's internal HD, the other 500 GB or more. Use this drive for "secondary" backups of both, via CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. [CarbonCopyCloner|http://www.bombich.com> is donationware; [SuperDuper|http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html] has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling.
    You might even want to get a portable HD for this, so you can take it off-site and also be protected against fire, flood, theft, direct lightning strike on your power lines, etc.

  • What is the best external hard drive for iMac time machine?

    I need to purchase 1TB external hard drive to use as a backup drive for iMac (lion) Time Machine. I currently have the Lacie little disk but I need more storage. All I need is a simple USB connection.

    I've been happy with my silver FW Western Digital drives, I use two daisy chainned together (1TB, 2TB).  These were the ones sold for mac's so they have a aluminum look to them.  Only a bit more expensive than their black USB brothers.

  • Can I use One Hard Drive for 2x Time Machine Back Ups and another partition for all my data?

    Hi Forum,
    I am planning to but a RAID disc set up, but if i get a 2 disc set up, on one disc, can i have:
    Time Machine back up for one Mac
    Time Machine back up for 2nd Mac
    Anothe partition for all my data.
    then have that RAID'd to second disc?

    no one?
    and if this set up was on one disc, and one partition for one TM was for the Mini that has this drive attached, would TM back up this whole drive 2x TM Partitions and 1x partitions with data on, ok? it wouldn't get confused by trying to back itself up

  • Using OS X Server For Group Time Machine

    I'm not an OS X Server user, so I'm looking for some help on some basic issues regarding Time Machine.
    Right now I have several clients (3-4) running utilizing Time Machine via a connected drive(s) to their systems. I'm considering converting an existing Mac Pro to OS X Server and consolidating TM backups to that system.
    Is there a way in Server to limit the amount of storage each client can have for TM backups?
    Is that something that is configured in Server?
    Or is that handled by creating a partition for each TM backup?
    Backups would be over Gigabit Ethernet. Would that be a performance issue?
    Thanks.

    Is there a way in Server to limit the amount of storage each client can have for TM backups?
    In some earlier versions of Server, it may have been possible to push a setting to the client with Workgroup Manager to limit backup storage. My understanding is that it hasn't worked since some version of 10.6.
    Or is that handled by creating a partition for each TM backup?
    Yes.
    Backups would be over Gigabit Ethernet. Would that be a performance issue?
    That depends on how much data you back up and how much other network traffic you have. It's slower than a local backup.

  • I used my not empty hard drive for the time machine, so now i only have stuff from time machine, everything else is gone!!! please help, does this mean everything else is completely gone?

    Did mac format everything that was there? if not, why cant i see it when i opebn the drive, and if it did format it is there a way to bring it back? my whole life is on that harddrive!!!!

    If you clicked through a warning that Time Machine was going to erase the drive, then yes, everything that was there before is gone. Restore from one of your backups.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Problem in refreshing JSP

    I've installed Tomcat 4.1, mySQL. My JSP pages are put in a sub-directory of CATALINA_HOME/webapps and I've also set up the web.xml file in /web-inf. When I invoked the JSP pages for the first time, they worked properly. But when I refreshed the page

  • "Unsorted cuePoint" in flv video file

    I hava an application which heavily uses cuepoints for al kinds of navigation and event purposes. To properly handle the cuepoints I use some sorting etc. of the cuepoints when the onMetaData fires. The video is played as a NetStream from a WOWZA rtm

  • I LOST MY TOOLBAR WITH 'VIEW' AND 'PRINT' - HELP!

    my main toolbar that allows me to change things disappeared. how do I restore it ?

  • Cant start fbpdf from AUR

    Hi there you guys! I get this error when I try to open a pdf: fbpdf: fbval_t doesn't match fb depth here seems to be the relevant code. http://repo.or.cz/w/fbpdf.git/blob/1ae6 - d:/fbpdf.c I'm starting to learn python from edx.org MITx course, but I

  • Pixma Pro-100 re-install

    I'm having bizarre color rendering issues with my printer. Printing from Photoshop CS 5 and using Canon photo paper, correct ICC profiles, latest driver, and following Canon's own procedures for Photoshop CS 5. I understand Canon Pro printers are on