If I back up files to an external HD w/ time machine and delete them off the MacBook, will the HD also delete them on next backup?

I hooked up an external hard drive and my MacBook offered to run Time Machine to create a back-up.  Once the back-up is done, I'd like to delete some of the videos off of my actual MacBook but if I do that, will I be able to watch them on the external HD or will it delete them on the next backup?  Thank you for any help you can provide.  I am running a MacBook 13 inch with Mac OSX 10.5.8 if that helps.

If you delete files backed up by TM, then eventually they will be deleted from the backup. TM is not a permanent storage alternative. For that you should purchase and connect a separate drive.

Similar Messages

  • Using external HDD for Time Machine and files in one single partition ?

    Hello everybody.
    I've been searching for some time now and have encountered some contradictory answers, so I turn to you.
    I would like to know if it's possible (one) and safe (two) to use a single partition for both Time Machine and file storage. I've read that this should be ok, since TM is actually only a single folder, which means the rest can easily be used as a standard Finder drive. Some people say however that this is not good to do so, because TM will run out of space quicker. But if the -let's say- 30Gb used for files where used by TM after a month, that would be the same, wouldn't it ? It would simply erase older backups. But is it safe to do so ? Will Time Machine not makes errors when accessing files or doing an entire system backup ? I don't won't to make a new partition really, that's why I'm asking you here, to let me know some arguments about it.
    Thank you very much for your answers.

    Marekova wrote:
    Yet, overlooking that, you say "safe: mostly", why is that ? where's the "danger" or, what where you thinking when you said that ? Aren't these simple folder's ? Do you mean that, because during a full backup, these "stranger" files could be a problem ? It would be great if that was clarified, since I've found no indication about it elsewhere, has anyone tryed it ?
    Oh, yes folks have tried it. That's why I (and many others) recommended against it.
    Here's a similar thread from just the other day: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1926893 Note the responses from the top 2 "gurus" on this forum.
    I probably should have asked you what you mean by "safe." If you mean, will TM delete other files on it's partition, no, it won't. If you mean, can there be problems, then yes, there can be conflicts and difficulties, as mentioned.
    As to whether TM backups are simple folders, no, they aren't. They look like normal files and folders, but they actually contain what are variously called "hard links," "multi-links," and (my own personal favorite term) "ghost clones." Think of them as very fancy aliases. So they're not to be fooled with directly, by us mere mortals.
    If you want more on this: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14
    and/or: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
    and, if you haven't seen it yet: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
    You should also know that, for some reason, TM stores it's backups differently when it does them wirelessly. In that case, they're in a "SparseBundle," very different from the structure used for directly-attached backups.
    All the more reason to put each Mac's backups in a separate partition, and if you want to store other data there also, a 3rd partition for that.
    I've been using Mac since many years now, but I have no idea about backups, so excuse me if the statements appear a little childish.
    Nope. Even those of us who are "older than dirt" and have used many flavors and varieties of backup systems for decades are in a whole new world with Time Machine.
    And most of the folks on this forum who found themselves in deep trouble got there because they assumed things or didn't ask.

  • Partitioned  external drive for Time Machine and Daily storage

    Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive....need to have space available on the original drive on the MacBook....How do I move existing stored data and point ongoining saved music..files...etc to the new drive...???
    Thank you...Bob

    Yogabob wrote:
    Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive
    You could use an application like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to copy them to the new partition, but it's probably just as easy to drag the files/folders to the new partition, then delete the originals.
    and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive
    You probably don't really want to do that. Files you're using will be accessed much faster if they're on your internal HD.
    Another consideration is, you really should have backups of the moved files somewhere, in case you have a problem with the new drive. Although TM will back them up unless you exclude that partition, if the drive fails, you'll lose both copies.

  • Can I use my external HD for Time Machine and still use it for storage?

    I have a 1TB external HD and my computer has yet to arrive. I was planning on backing it up via Time Machine and I'm wondering if my external HD will still be useable as a storage device once I pair it with Time Machine.
    There's no way the backup will take up the full 1TB of space, so I'm hoping it doesn't just go to waste >.<

    If you really only want backups of the current contents, don't use Time Machine.
    It's designed to keep copies of things you've changed or deleted for as long as possible. This allows you an excellent chance to recover a previous version of something you changed or deleted in error.
    It also allows you to revert your entire system to the exact state it was in at the time of any previous backup, even if that's a different version of OSX. It's rare, but if an OSX update, or installation of a kernel extension or 3rd-party app makes a huge mess, it's much easier and more reliable than rebuilding everything.
    You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). See #1 there for size considerations.
    For alternatives, see Kappy's post on [Basic Backup|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12366915#12366915].

  • External drive for Time Machine and Firewire Hub

    Just got a new iMac. My old iMac G5 was running 10.4.11 so no Time Machine. On the new iMac I am running 10.5.6 I find I have questions about how to go about making best use of this new facility available to me. Since my new iMac has only one firewire port (FW 800) I also need an additional port here.
    My thoughts are to use an external drive connected with FW 800 as a Time Machine backup and use the (usually) extra FW 800 port to extend the FW 800 and I find I can get a dual interface drive with both FW 800 and FW 400, so I could use the FW 400 for FW 400 devices like other FW 400 drives and my video camera.
    Currently I use SuperDuper to make clone backups of my HD on a weekly basis (I use 2 drives for this on a rotating basis). I plan to continue that in addition to the facility offered by Time Machine (on a separate drive).
    My questions are...
    Is it a good idea to use the extra FW 800 or 400 port on an external to connect other drives to use for clone BUs?
    If that is a good idea...
    What brand and size of drive to use for the Time Machine BU (FW 400/800 sharing)
    A. Maxtor?
    (I have several OneTouch II and OneTouch III that I use for clones, I have been using them for a few years without problem. I seem to remember reading about some problems with Maxtor, have I just been lucky?)
    B. Newertech MiniStack v3 from OWC MacSales?
    C. OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro™?
    If the OWC Mercury Eltite is a good choice...
    Is a 750 GB large enough?
    Is it worth it to get the 1TB Enterprise 7200RPM?
    Any other suggestions?
    Andy

    i needed 3 drives in total so went with my 2nd choice of buying external enclosures and then hard drives,
    at the end it cost me much much less so i endded up buy another as a spare,
    so currently using 4 NexStart combo enclosure each one fitted with a 500gb hard drive,
    i got one connected to my G5 and 3 connected by FW400 to my imac through a daisy chain,
    for time machines it doesnt matter about speed so you dont need to use up the FW800 Port,
    FW400 will be fine,
    before this i had a USB2 WD Book and was using that with time machine and never had a problem through USB,
    i always connect to a port i hardly use as i wont ever need to keep taking it off if i had to connect my camera to it for example....

  • External disk for Time Machine and Aperture Vaults

    I'm planning on buying an external HD for backups with Time Machine and I will also be using it for Vaults in Aperture.
    Should I partition the disk into two volumes, one for each, or will TM and Aperture co-exist quite happily on the same volume?
    I'd rather use a single volume as, in my experience, partitioning a disk always results in one volume filling up long before the other, however integrity of the backups is the most important requirement.

    I strongly agree with V.K.
    The other big reason to partition is, as you say, one volume will fill up before the other.
    That's exactly how TM is designed to work -- fill up whatever space you allocate to it. Unlike traditional archive-type backup systems, it manages it's space and deletes backups automatically. As you probably know, it keeps it's hourly backups for 24 hours, then deletes them, except the first of the day, which becomes a daily backup and is kept for a month. Similarly, after a month, one of those daily backups becomes a weekly, and the others are deleted. But the weeklies are kept as long as there's room. Unless something goes wrong, you never have to do a thing.
    So, if you have other data in that same partition, TM will, eventually, fill up the remaining space, limiting the space available to Aperture.

  • I named my external hard drive "Time Machine", and now it no longer appears on my desktop.

    I attached an external hard drive to my iMac, renamed it "Time Machine", and then set it up as the backup drive for Time Machine.  Now the drive no longer shows up on my desktop, tho the Time Machine backup appears to be working. Is it not supposed to show up on the desk?

    Hello:
    When you designate an external drive as the one to use for Time Machine backups, that volume will be named "Time Machine" and a blue Time Machine icon will appear on your desktop.  In my own case, I have a two partition external disk - one for Time Machine, and one for making bootable clones.
    I never name my external HDs - only the volume(s) contained on them.  If that is what you did, get rid of (or change) the drive name.
    Barry

  • Recovering files from a external HD pre Time Machine

    Please someone throw me a ladder to get me out of this ginormous hole I doug myself.
    A few days ago I set up my old MBP to be a server of sorts. It is plugged into my external HDD and my Wife's external HDD. My reasoning for this is so our computers can wirelessly back them selves up with Time Machine. Setting my new MBP was not problem was doing a fresh install because I wanted to start fresh, select the location of the drive I wanted and go, cake! The wife's drive was just as easy or so I thought. She comes to me today and tells me that the only thing she has on her external HDD is the backups folder from Time Machine. She is missing 3 folders. I presume when I set up Time Machine on her compy that it did not recognize her old backups from previous and reformatted her external HDD. So my question to you is that is there a way to revert or go back and fetch the old files that were on her drive or will I be groveling and apologizing until I die.
    I beg for some help.

    So my question to you is that is there a way to revert or go back and fetch the old files that were on her drive or will I be groveling and apologizing until I die.
    probably the latter. if the drive was reformatted to make it work with TM the only way to possibly recover anything from before that happened is by using Data recovery software like Data Rescue II or Filesalvage. you should stop using the drive and do it ASAP. But there are no guarantees here. if the data that was there before has already been overwritten by new data then Data Recovery won't work.
    Message was edited by: V.K.

  • Backing up client to server external drive with Time Machine - problems...

    Hi,
    I'm running 10.5.2 server on a MacMini (G4 1.25GHz/1GB) which has an external firewire drive that has been set as a sharepoint for Time Machine backups. The problem is that from the client MacBook (10.5.2 - connected on a wireless g network) I can select the drive in the Time Machine preferences but when I accept the changes it resets to the 'off' position.
    Hmmm? Any ideas?

    The server wasn't set up in Advanced. I'm not trying to back up the server itself but the client.
    Can anyone offer any ideas!?

  • I have an Apple Macbook and will be backing up the entire system to an external hard drive utilizing the Time Machine application. when I am doing this, will the data on the external drive that I am using be erased?

    I have an Apple Macbook and will be backing up the entire system in order to upgrade to a newer OS. I will be using an external hard drive to do this and there is already data on it. To complete the backup, i will be using the Time Machine application. Does this application wipe out all of the existing data on the external hard drive, or will it create a new "folder" for the backup?
    thank you

    No, but as steve359 states you should use a dedicated hard drive for backups. It you need a temporary backup then you can use the drive provided it has sufficient space for all your data on the hard drive.
    When Time Machine finds that the drive has data on it already it may decide to erase the drive before continuing, which is another reason to use a dedicated drive.

  • Can I use the same external hd for time machine and storage without partitioning it?

    Hello,
    I have been using an external hard drive for my Time Machine that was only used for this purpose.
    I downloaded some files in it that I want to use, and I haven't backed up using Time Machine since.
    Can I download the files on my MacBook from the HD without running into any problems, or is there anything else I should do?
    I prefer not to partition the hd, since I will be deleting these files, or transferring them to a different HD, and using this HD only for Time Machine back ups, as I did previously.
    ** I am not sure if this changes anything, but I just updated from Snow Leopard to Lion.
    Thank you so much

    carolsm wrote:
    Thanks Kappy, I will do that.
    I just really needed these files and had no other hard drive to store them.
    Do you think that it will be okay just this one time if I download the files on my MacBook without compromising my backups?
    I will transfer them to a new hard drive, and erase them from my Time Machine external  hard drive.
    For the time being it will be fine. There is always a chance of a disc crashing and therefore not advisable practice. Some here run seperate drives with Time Machine, Cloned backup and file backup. I have a portable drive I keep Time Machine backups and file backups on. I am running that at my own risk, but no problems over the last couple of years. Just make sure I get it to my normal TM Backup disk as soon as I get home. Backing up those other files will not compromise your Time Machine backups as you asked.
    Cheers
    Pete

  • Can I use an external drive for Time Machine and storing other data?

    At the moment I have one external drive, a 500gb LaCie. My internal drive is 160gb. I don't think I'll be using all 500 of those gigabytes for a while, so I want to put them to good use. Can I make a partition on this drive and use that for Time Machine, leaving the rest of the drive for my documents and other files? If so, how would I partition the drive? I'm not fluent in Disk Utility and even though I'm pretty sure I know how to do it, I don't want to screw up. Also, how big a partition would you recommend?
    While we're here, I have a second question, somewhat relevant to the first. Could I move my Time Machine backups to a second drive if I wanted to? Also, if I used a big drive (say 1tb) could I use Time Machine to backup my current LaCie to a partition on that drive? Thanks in advance.

    videoCWK wrote:
    Does that also mean that I could back them both up on a very big drive?
    Yes. Time Machine will, by default, back up all of your external drives unless you specifically exclude them.
    Also, will Time Machine backups eat all my space after a lot of usage?
    It depends on what you do on your Mac. If you work often with very large files (video editing, heavy photo editing, big disk images, Microsoft Entourage data file, Parallels disk image file, etc) then your backup drive could fill up very quickly.
    I use my Mac mostly for e-mail, web browsing, iTunes, iPhoto, and the occasional iMovie project. I have 92 GB on my main hard drive (60 GB of which are my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, and one iMovie project.) My Time Machine backups consume 155GB on my backup drive, and that's after using Time Machine for a full year.

  • HT204157 How do I go back to a year or more ago in Time Machine and recover photos I have since deleted?

    My wife has a MacBook Air and a La Cie Rugged 1 TB external drive that she uses to back up to with Time Machine. She takes a LOT of photos, and so knowing that she had a backup available, has deleted many photos from the internal drive to keep the machine running.
    Now she needs to find some of the photos she deleted, without know exactly when she deleted them, and she is finding that TIme Machine won't seemingly go back that far.
    Why is this? More importantly, how can she get to the photos of family and friends that she is searching for?

    Are your old files still on the other machine or hard drive?
    If you've not used/set up Time Machine, whatever you did up to that point, is done. Once you set it up, it will save your drive's contents but it can't copy content that is missing.
    If you stuff is still available on an old machine or drive, you should be able to find it and simply use target disk mode to connect the two machines and drag them over. Or, attach a portable drive, copy them there, then attach it to the new machine and copy them over.

  • Using an External Drive for Time Machine and Other Things

    I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
    Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?

    rgraves wrote:
    I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
    Maybe. See #1 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
    Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?
    It's best to put such things in their own partition. See #3 in the FAQ.
    You may also want to make separate partitions for each Mac's backups, if you're backing-up either one directly (ie, not over your network). See #4 in the FAQ.

  • External hard drive, time machine and games

    I have a seagate external I've been using with my g5 iMac as a time machine backup. kids got guitar hero and spore for xmas, and it is playable only on my wife's intel macbook, which simply lacks the hard drive space for them. what I would like to do is take my external and hook it up to the macbook and install those games on the external without wiping, reformatting or otherwise repartitioning that external. Is this possible? am I being silly? is it ok to just hook it up, install and go with it while leaving my time machine backup untouched? or is something going to have to be sacrificed to make it happen?
    thanks for the help all

    TM will not be affected, other than the space dedicated to t.
    As to the applications you want to install, if they allow you to install to anything other than the startup device, then install to the external.

Maybe you are looking for