Time Machine: setting-up external hard drive question

Question

I purchased the Lacie 2TB External Hard Drive from Apple and in the set-up process it said to free up all 2 TB storage space if I intend to use it only for my MAC (which I do), so that's what I did. However, when I was doing that, the set-up screen kept giving me these warning signs if I did all MAC like the screen told me to do it would erase data on the disk...I did all MAC anyways so not sure what got erased since nothing I thought is supposed to be on there...don't these come clean with 2TB available? I just want to make sure I did this right!

Answer 1

KrystelleLynne wrote:
I have been doing back-ups on with it using time machine. I did not, however, do the check in disk utility. Since there are back-ups on the hard drive, should I still erase?
Not now no. All is ok then.
If Time machine HAS been backing up to it, its fine, it couldnt use it otherwise.
However now that youve got A (single) backup, dont make the huge mistake everyone else does,  backup your data on yet another HD and update it and store it somewhere safe
second HD doesnt have to use time machine, just drag and drop your valuable data.
Hard drives are cheap as dirt, buy another one at minimum if you cherish your priceless data.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.
Many countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data.