Mountain Lion, Time Machine and How Best to set up an external HD?

Hello,
I'm just about to upgrade to Mountain Lion. (2011 MBP running Lion). Before I do that I would like to back up with Time Machine. My question is how best to set up the external HD before I back up and then upgrade.
The hard drive is brand new and I haven't formatted it for use yet. It is 1TB in size and the hard drive on my MBP is 500GB (currently using around 300GB).
Am I right in thinking that Time Machine will overwrite older back ups if there isn't sufficient space on an external hard drive?
How would you use the new set up the new, obviously larger, external drive. I was thinking of possibly partitioning it 750/250 and utilising the 750 for time machine back ups and the 250 for other stuff.
Any thoughts?
Cheers

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

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Capsule but since I already have a wireless router I need suggestions on
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Regards
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Update:
Turning off the spotlight on the external hard disk helped improve the speed dramatically. Brought it down from 1 GB in 1 hr to almost 1 GB / minute.
System Preferences --> Spotlight
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Regards
Uddhav

uddhav wrote:
Turning off the spotlight on the external hard disk helped improve the speed dramatically.
That may indicate a damaged index. Keep an eye on subsequent backups -- if they take a long time, and/or show "indexing backup" on the Time Machine preferences panel for very long, you may need to delete it, so OSX can recreate it. See the pink box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting for instructions.
It will say this is a time machine disk so except the time machine folder everything else will be added to the exception list.
Is there anything else on the drive (in the same partition)? If so, that's usually not a good idea. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #3 for an explanation.
Now says 19hrs still a lot according to me but much better than 2 days.
Yes, that's quite slow, especially if your Mac supports USB 3.
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After upgrading to Mountain Lion. My time machine does not save infomation anymore. I've also lost a folder on my macbook pro. This is the error message that I'm receiving. Please help
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/charlie soukhaseum's Time using URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
Disk image already attached: /Volumes/charlie soukhaseum's Time /Charlie Soukhaseum’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Failed to mount disk image: Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=31 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain error 31.)" UserInfo=0x7ff65c900560 {MessageParameters=(
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Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/charlie soukhaseum's Time using URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
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Failed to mount disk image: Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=31 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain error 31.)" UserInfo=0x7ff65b209e10 {MessageParameters=(
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Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/charlie soukhaseum's Time using URL: afp://Charlie%20Soukhaseum;[email protected]/charlie%20soukh aseum's%20Time%20
Disk image already attached: /Volumes/charlie soukhaseum's Time /Charlie Soukhaseum’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Failed to mount disk image: Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=31 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain error 31.)" UserInfo=0x7ff65cd08190 {MessageParameters=(
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Waiting 60 seconds and trying again.

That seems unusual unless you changed drives.
If you upgraded the drive it sees the computer as a different one to the original backup..
I am not sure that it isn't better to do a fresh backup but you can try and inherit the old backup..
See Pondini
B5 B6 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Mountain Lion, Time Machine and How Best to set up an external HD?

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