Making partition for Time Machine

I have a 500 drive and I'd to configure Time Machine to use 350 GB for backups, and use the rest for regular storage, how can I do that?

yes - use disk utility to partition the drive (this will erase all the contents of the drive so be sure to backup any thing on it that you want to save) and have TM use the 350 partition (what size is your source drive and how much storage do you have on it to backup?)
LN

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I am setting up a time machine backup to a external Hard drive. I want to backup by Mac book Pro running OSX 10.8.5. I would like to Partition the disk and use one partition for Time machine backups and the other for my Lightroom backups. How to do this?

I want to create a two partition disk. One partition for time machine, the other for Lightroom backup. Currently Time Machine is using the entire drive and it is doing the intial encryption and is about 29% complete after two days. I've decided that I want to turn encryption off and partition the disk. So I do I start over?

With the external drive attached, open Finder>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility. Select the external drive from the list in the left side panel of the DU window. In the main window panel, click Partition in the buttons top center of that panel.
Select the number of partitions you want and adjust their sizes.
For the first partition, click to highlight the partition, then select the format, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then the partition table as GUID [both of those are the defaults]. Click Apply and it will ask to confirm and erase and format that partion...oh, give the partition a name, like Backup.
Then repeat those steps for the second partition..and remember to name it...something like Lightroom.
Close Disk Utilitty and you are ready to send TM to the one partition, and do your backup of Lightroom to the second partition.

How much should I partition for Time Machine/Backup?

Hi all,
I upgraded my PB G4 HD to a 160GB recently and have just purchased a 1TB External HD. How much should I partition in the external to be used for Time Machine backup purposes of my internal HD? Will the same size suffice, or should I allocate more?
Also, I was thinking of formatting the drive so that it's both Windows and OS X friendly, but that means formatting it to MS-DOS something (I was just reading about it in another thread), will that cause any issues for the partition for Time Machine that I created? Thanks.

Also, I was thinking of formatting the drive so that it's both Windows and OS X friendly, but that means formatting it to MS-DOS something (I was just reading about it in another thread), will that cause any issues for the partition for Time Machine that I created? Thanks.
That's not practical. If you want to use the hard drive on a Windows machin while still being useful for Time Machine you should use MacDrive.
I upgraded my PB G4 HD to a 160GB recently and have just purchased a 1TB External HD. How much should I partition in the external to be used for Time Machine backup purposes of my internal HD? Will the same size suffice, or should I allocate more?
I would make the partition at least twice the size of the internal drive. Preferably, you would want 50 GB for a Leopard install that includes just the base operating system so you can boot off the 50 GB to recover your Time Machine data if your Leopard installer disc ever becomes unusable.
Also since you have a Powerbook, your 1 TB hard drive should be Firewire. USB will not boot Powerbooks. If it is USB only, you can remove the external hard drive case and replace it with one compatible with the drive inside that case from http://www.macsales.com/ that has Firewire.

External hard drive partition for Time Machine wont mount

I have an external HD that I've partitioned half for Time Machine, and half for external storage. Today the Time Machine partition wouldn't show up on the desktop. I checked Disk Utility and it recognizes both partitions, but the Time Machine partition is greyed out. When I selected it, in the stat list at the bottom it said "Mount Point: Not Mounted." I then clicked on "Mount" at the top, and after a bit a popup told me it couldn't mount and I should attempt to repar the disk. So I clicked "Repair Disk," and after a while, I finally got the message "Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Why is only one partition affected? Can I reformat one petition but leave the other untouched? Are there any other options before I do this?
One other item that is probably related: I've been having an issue with a flash drive that seems to constantly unmount itself, giving me "error, disk ejected improperly" messages. Earlier today I believe I had the same thing with my external HD.

Why is only one partition affected?
The drive malfunction that caused the problem only affected that partition.
Can I reformat one petition but leave the other untouched?
Yes.
Are there any other options before I do this?
This is not an option, it's mandatory: start a new backup on another drive. The one you have has lost data once already. If it were mine, it would be in the recycling bin now. You need more than one backup to be safe anyway. Apparently you have no backups at all of the data on the other partition. That means you're going to lose that data, sooner or later.

External drive partitions for Time Machine

Questions:
     1. Do I need to have a two partitions on my external hard drive, one each for my iMac and another for my MBPro?
   2. Do I need to partition to use both Time Machine and SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Clone.?
   3. Which is better to use for backup if you need or want to retrieve a specific file?
Thanks for your help.
Vernon

1. No. Configure each machine's Time Machine preferences separately. Time Machine will take care of the rest.
2. Yes. You must clone to a freshly formatted drive or partition on a drive. I suggest you use two separate drives. One for Time Machine and the other for the clone. This way you have a good backup in case one fails.
3. I don't understand the question. Which "what" are you referring to? If you mean choosing between Time Machine and a clone, it's better to have one of each. The more backups the better.

PCs won't recognise my HDD after formatting partition for TIME MACHINE

Hi,
I divided my WD Passport HDD in 2 250GB partitions, to work both with TIME MACHINE and also as an archive to share files and folders with other computers. Time machine has now backed up my system, but as I plugged the HDD in my PC it won't recognise it... I mean, it recognises that a USB storage device has been connected, but then it won't show in My Computer.
What can I do? does anyone know if there is any ways that I can keep my archive partition compatible with Windows?
thanks,
Fra

Hi Fra and welcome to Discussions,
I assume that your archive partition is using 'Mac OS Extended (journaled)' as file system, correct ?
If so, only MacDrive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ can help Windows to see and use this partition.
If you use FAT32 (a.k.a. MS-Dos in Disk Utility) or NTFS as file system on your archive partition, there are reports of Windows PCs not being able to see/use harddisks that uses GPT (GUID Partition Table - standard on Intel Macs).
You could solve this by reformating/repartitioning your external harddisk using MBR (Master Boot Record) as partition scheme, but not only will this erase all informations that are on your external harddisk right now, it will also prevent Time Machine from using this harddisk.
So, this is not a viable option for you.
Regards
Stefan

Partitions for Time Machine Backup ???

Helllo
I want to use OS X Server to make Backup of my 9 clients. I bought a 2Tb Harddisk and what I read is that I need to make for each client a partition to be sh
sure that Time Machine runs smoothly and start deleting old backup after the partition is full.
This is very frustrating because our business is not static. Some Users has only 30Gb on their drive others up to 200Gb. Is their no way to use the 2Tb as a Dynamic Partition?
Who is able to help me to choose the correct strategy. I read some documents an seen a Video from lynda.com and they all advice to split the drive in as much partition as needed.
Regards
Gérard

Helllo
I want to use OS X Server to make Backup of my 9 clients. I bought a 2Tb Harddisk and what I read is that I need to make for each client a partition to be sh
sure that Time Machine runs smoothly and start deleting old backup after the partition is full.
This is very frustrating because our business is not static. Some Users has only 30Gb on their drive others up to 200Gb. Is their no way to use the 2Tb as a Dynamic Partition?
Who is able to help me to choose the correct strategy. I read some documents an seen a Video from lynda.com and they all advice to split the drive in as much partition as needed.
Regards
Gérard

Making space for Time Machine backup

I am trying to backup my Macbook pro. I have a 500gb drive with 190gb free space. I have a 500gb external HD that I use for my Time Machine backups.
Shouldn't time machine automatically delete the old backup to make room or do I have to manually delete something?
Thanks,
Paul

See the pink box at http://pondini.org/TM/C4.html

Extending partition for Time Machine

I have a 2TB drive. It has 2 partitions. The first is 75GB and is used for TM. The remaining partition is 1.25TB (only has about 90GB of data on it). I know I can delete the second partition, then drag down the TM partition. What I want to do is still keep about 500MB for data. Will I have to first move the 90GB off to another drive first? I assume so. Then delete the partition, then move the TM partition down leaving the 500GB at the bottom? After I do that, do I need to reformat that new partition? I'm a little confused on what do I do after I delete the second partition.
I want to leave my old TM backup in tact. It is already telling me the backup disk is full and had been deleting backups from December 2010. Not too bad. I assume that extending the partition will solve that problem for now. I have an iMac with a 500GB drive.
Thanks

You could split the second partition, making a new partition at the bottom of the Disk Utility diagram. Then copy the data from the second partition to the new one (drag & drop or use Disk Utility's Restore tab).
Then delete the second partition and expand the TM partition down into the vacated space.
See #3 in Using Disk Utility.

I was thinking about formatting my external hard drive into two partitions. HFS for time machine backup

I really want to format my MacBook after I back up and have it clean like a new machine. And I was wondering if I need to back up after a couple of months will Time Machine back it up as a new computer or will it overwrite?
Also if I do 250GB HFS+ partition for time machine & 250GB NTFS/FAT32 to use with windows. Can the HFS+ partition be used to save files from MacBook using drag & drop? I.E. without using time machine?

A data recovery specialist or some data recovery programs should be able to help. Most format simply rewrite the directory tree saying no files are on this disk. The bits that represent the files are still flipped appropreiately so they still exists, you just don't have the location info to get at them. Secure formats and erases rewrite each bit to a zero or 1 or random so the data is then truely gone. This type of format takes a long time to complete.
I'm not making a recomendation of a particular program but here is one company that does what you ask:
http://www.remosoftware.com/mac-recovery The cost is pretty high but I'm sure they don't sell many copies and need to cover their development costs.
Good luck and don't write anything on the freshly formatted disk until you decide what to do.

Can I use an empty (NFTS)partition on my 1tb WD drive for Time Machine

I have a 1TB WD external hard drive formatted NTFS into 6 partitons. Can I use one of the partitions for Time Machine? or will it try to destroy all the partitions I have on the NTFS drive? I have Macbook Pro (early 2011 with OXS 10.7 Lion) and am running Parallels with Windows Vista on the Mac. And I have a Toshiba satellite running Vista. I just want to be able to read and write to my USB drive, from both and transfer files from the windows machine to the Mac and vice versa. Any Suggestions?

TimeMachine backups should be at least 2x the size of the HD. Assuming you hve a 500 GB drive, all of the 1 TB will be needed, not just 1 partition.
Even if you decided to run below specs, you still need a disk with the GUID partition mapping scheme and HFS+ partition for TimeMachine.
I just purchased a new/self-powered LaCie 1 TB fro my 500 GB MBP. "New" being the operative word.
As to reading/writing NTFS ... Mac can read read NTFS but not write it without special software.

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.

I want to use my 1TB Seagate Hard drive for time machine and transferring files from Mac to PC.

For about a year I've been using my 1TB external hard drive for only time machine. To be honest, it wasn't until today that I tried to connect my hard drive to a PC and realize it isn't compatible. I read about partitioning the hard drive so that it can work both for time machine and transferring files between pc and mac. I'm not what you would call tech savvy, so I was wondering if I can get some advice on how to do this.
Thanks in advance.

To do it, you have to partition the hard disk, so you will have one partition for Time Machine and another one to store files and use them in a PC and Mac. To create the partition, follow these steps > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html
In order to read and write in the external disk on the PC, you have to select "MS-DOS (FAT)" as "Format". If you choose any other option, the PC won't be able to read your external disk. Apart from that, note that you can't use files bigger than 4 GB with FAT. If you want to use the external disk with files bigger than 4 GB, you have to format your new partition in exFAT, and you have to do it on a PC

What size for External HD for Time Machine?

Hello. An Apple Support Tech suggested an external HD, twice the size of the internal for Time Machine backup. I presently have 1TB in the iMac and a 500GB Lacie--a long way from double! Do I need to rush out and get a 2TB one? Hope not due to the $$$!
Comments would be appreciated. Cheers.

A few additional points:
You can use Time Machine to back up more than just your internal drive. If you have a FireWire drive that is also primary storage, you can set Time Machine to back up both the internal drive and external FireWire drive. So be sure to include data on any other drive that you may want to also back up, when determining the required size of the Time Machine drive
You don't need to get a fast FireWire drive for use with Time Machine. A less expensive USB 2.0 drive works just fine. Capacity is more important than speed.
You don't have to use the entire external drive for the Time Machine backup. If you get one that is larger than currently needed, you can partition it and use one partition for Time Machine. You don't even have to partition it. The volume used by Time Machine can also be used to store other data.
You can exclude specific files and folders from being backed up. For example, if you use VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop, you may want to exclude the virtual hard disk image files used by the virtual machines. Those files are huge and every time you run the virtual machine, those disk image files change, and therefore, Time Machine will save another copy. That will chew through your available Time Machine backup space really fast. Also, you may feel like there is no need to backup files in your Downloads folder (because you can always download those files again), so you can exclude it. So be sure to consider things you don't need to backup, when figuring out how large your Time Machine backup drive should be.

HT4848 Is it possible to partition an external hard drive that is already being used for Time Machine backups without it being erased?

I'm want to use my current external hard drive, which I use for Time Machine Backup, as a recovery disk for Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. From what I have read, the recovery disk assistant will erase all data on the external drive unless it is partitioned. Can I partition my current backup drive without erasing it, even though it is already being used for Time Machine?

It's very simple to test. Turn off your computer. Have your time machine backup plugged in. Hold option and turn it on, keeping option held. Do you see your time machine drive? If so, select it and press enter. You'll end up in recovery. If it works, there you go. Then just click the apple and restart to get back to your regular desktop. Then you'll know for when you're ready to do the deed.
Edit...
I'm not sure if time machine will think it's an entirely different computer, though, when a hard drive changed, making an actual restore not doable. Either way, you could still reinstall mt lion fresh and then just migrate after, skipping the need for SL.

Making partition for Time Machine

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