Using Time Machine HD with another computer temporarily

Hi - I have an 1TB Iomega 7200rpm drive on my G5 which is used exclusively for Time Machine. However I temporarily need to use a fast external drive with my Macbook in order to record audio and this is the only one I have...
Can I safely use the TM drive on the Macbook without compromising the data already on it? If I plug it in, will the Macbook think it's a TM drive and try and back up to it? Ideally I'd just create a folder called 'Audio' and record straight to it, then I can just delete this folder when I'm done...
Does anyone have any advice on this process...? Thanks in advance, Sidx

You'd be better off to partition the drive instead. See #3 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If there isn't enough contiguous space to make a new partition, you may be able to just create a folder, but be sure it's outside the Backups.backupdb folder containing your backups.
And no, Time Machine won't automatically start backing-up to the drive when you connect it to your MacBook. You might get a prompt asking if you want to do that, but it won't do it unless you tell it to.

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