Time Machine and partition on external drive

Planning to buy a big external drive, but, is it possible to partition the external drive and make TM work on one ?

Absolutely, in fact it is recommended to give TM its own partition. Use the first partition of the drive (that's the one that ends up at the top of the list in Disk Utility).
Make sure the partition is double, if not three times, the size of what you will be backing up.
Note that you have the option (Sys Prefs-TM-Options) to exclude drives and folders from backups. This may save a lot of space and is useful for the applications folder (as you likely have that stuff on CD/DVD), for music (if you have it on CDs), the downloads folder etc; see [this page|http://www.ryanblock.com/2008/05/good-folders-to-exclude-from-time-machine -backups] for more ideas on what to exclude so as not to backup unnecessary stuff. Also, if you work with scratch disks (in Photoshop or video applications, for instance), exclude them as well as that's just unnecessary.
/p

Similar Messages

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    I'm using Time Machine and a LaCie external drive to backup. I also have a 8 GB LaCie flash drive I want to use for small jobs. If I plug the LaCie flash drive in, is my Mac going to think it is the LaCie external drive and start trying to backup?

    no.

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    christopherfromadelaide wrote:
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    QUESTION.
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    regards  - Alan

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  • Time Machine Backup across multiple external drives

    Hello all-
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  • Does Time Machine require a dedicated external drive, or can it include other files?

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    David Henderson7 wrote:
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  • Time Machine issues since adding external drive

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    Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
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  • Time Machine has locked my external drive. HELP

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  • Errors when transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive.

    Hello,
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    Since you don't really have a question, I will give you a very broad information source for the next time you have a Time Machine question.
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  • I need to create a second back-up of iPhoto from Time Machine to a separate external drive.  The old iPhoto in TM will not open.  Please help!

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  • Time machine back up other external drive?

    Hi folks,
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  • Time Machine and SuperDuper on External Hard Drive?

    Hi!
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    Effie Darrow wrote:
    Should I partition an external hard drive and have part of the partition for Time Machine and part for my SuperDuper clone?
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    If I do this how much space should I give to each partition (the computer is 250GB and I'm using about 90GB, I mostly deal with documents, photos and music, I don't have movies or many huge files on my computer)
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    see above
    and if the Time Machine partition becomes full as I assume it will in a few months if I understand correctly it will just start overwriting older back ups?
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