Time Machine To Be Used On New Internal Hard Drive

Hi
I recently bought a new 500GB internal hard drive, on which I have copied (not migrated) my files and applications to. I have used Time Machine on the old 120GB drive with a 1TB external hard drive. I have this drive partitioned such that only 320GB was dedicated to Time Machine and because I spent the last 6 months downloading files (mainly itunes music) onto my old internal drive, and copying it onto another part of the partition on the 1TB external, then updating Time Machine, I only have 135GB left in the Time Machine part of the partition.
I have not yet backed up my new internal onto Time Machine as I am worried about space.
I tried changing the sizes of the partitions in disk utility so I could put more space in Time Machine (I have 3 other partitions) by dragging the sizes of the other partitions to make them smaller. I received the error message "file system or repair failed."
Is there a way to make more space in the Time Machine partition?
Will a new back-up add all the files I have copied for a second time (they are now on different locations on the hard disk)?
Can I copy the folders of Time Machine back ups to another partition to free up space in order to use Time Machine from scratch with the new internal drive?
What is the best solution?
Thanks
Steve

okstevep wrote:
Hi
I recently bought a new 500GB internal hard drive, on which I have copied (not migrated) my files and applications to. I have used Time Machine on the old 120GB drive with a 1TB external hard drive. I have this drive partitioned such that only 320GB was dedicated to Time Machine and because I spent the last 6 months downloading files (mainly itunes music) onto my old internal drive, and copying it onto another part of the partition on the 1TB external, then updating Time Machine
Do you mean you copied files into the TM partition, or a different partition on the same disk as your TM backups?
I mean I copied the files from my old internal drive onto my new drive - I haven't done anything with Time Machine yet.
I only have 135GB left in the Time Machine part of the partition.
How much of the 320 gb is used by TM backups and how much by the other files?
As far as I know all of the used space is TM backups, so 185 GB
Will a new back-up add all the files I have copied for a second time (they are now on different locations on the hard disk)?
Yes.
Can I copy the folders of Time Machine back ups to another partition to free up space in order to use Time Machine from scratch with the new internal drive?
As khassani noted, you can't just copy them. SuperDuper! will do it, but so will the Restore tab of Disk Utility. But you must copy an entire partition to another entire partition, and select Erase Destination.
Roughly how much data have you put on the new drive?
How old is the oldest backup in TM?
I have put 140 GB on the new drive so far (60GB from the old drive, 45GB with files for Logic Studio, which I would be happy not to back up, and the rest with system files, library files, other new files and applications)
The oldest back up is October '08. I have been backing up manually about once a week if that makes a difference.
You may be able to let TM back-up the new drive, then manually delete the old backups of the items you moved, via the TM interface. See item 12 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.
Thanks very much for all of your help. Please let me know if you can offer further advice based on my extra information here.

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Yes, but you are very likely to get in trouble very quickly.
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sydababy wrote:
and then deleting them off of my computer.
BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous. One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
follow here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
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.

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Time Machine To Be Used On New Internal Hard Drive

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