What Size External Drive?

Have 5 Macs and am getting 3 new ones (retiring two of the old PPCs to the kids - can't run Leopard). Will update the 3 Intels with Leopard, and the new ones will come with it installed. I have external backups for the existing computers (my rule of thumb has been get twice the storage, so for example, for the 80 G iBook I have a 160 external). Anyway, is there a "rule of thumb" as to what size external one should have for Time Machine? Since it is constantly backing up I suppose the external size will/could eventually exceed the internal capacity. So, for a 160 G, (or any other size drive) is there a "multiplier" of sorts one should use for the size of the external drive? I'd like to have the externals on hand when I update the existing computers and when I get the new ones and 1st turn them on.
Any insight is most appreciated!

The rule of thumb I have been hearing is >= 1.01 * the total capacity of volumes being backed up. Of course, the bigger the better.
In English, thats an eternal drive that is a tad bit bigger than the drive (or drives) you are backing up.
This way, in a situation where you have completely filled up the volume(s) being backed up, you can be sure that you will at the very least have a complete backup of your entire system in its most recent state. Sure, TM will have erased older backups, but in the event of a catastrophic failure, you will at least be able to restore all your current files.
Of course if you can afford it, get the biggest drive possible.
Re: backups over X months old... there is no current way to do this that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a hack to TM prefs file soon. Hopefully just a one line "write" in terminal.
Message was edited by: erik graham

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