About Time Machine, new mac user, help.

[DemeanorRis]

About Time Machine, new mac user, help.
Okay, I know this is going to be a stupid question but I was wondering if a MYBOOK 500GB external harddrive can be used for time machine as well as at the same time, store extra music, documents and etc? Is there enough room for time machine or do I have to purchase a 1TB external hard drive for it?

And if one day, the MYBOOK 500GB stops working, can I erase whatever time machine saved on there? how do I do that?

Thanks guys, much appreciated if someone can answer those questions for me.

-CHRIS

 

[Cboss]

You can use it both for backup and any other type of storage that you may desire. Some people partition it and use each partition for different things, but that's not necessary.

Only you can say if 500GB is enough or if you will need more space. I'm using my 500GB external hard drive for backup and to store a few other things. I've only used about 170GB of my internal drive, but my external is now completely full, mostly of backups. I would recommend getting a 1TB drive since they are fairly cheap and you'll never (for a few years at least) run out of room and wish you had bought the larger one.

If your external drive fails, I don't know any better way of preventing others from getting that data than taking a hammer to it.
But, if you want to simply erase what's on there you can use Disk Utility.

 

[gr8tfly]

The rule-of-thumb has been to have 2x your source drive for your Time Machine drive. So if you have a 250GB internal, then 500GB external would be a good size. You can get away with less - that'll just reduce how far back in time the backup goes.

You can store any data you want alongside the Time Machine backup. It'll just reduce how much room is available for backup.

The TM backup is Finder readable, so you can trash its folder if you need to (of course, if the MyBook stopped working, you might not have access to it anyway).

 

[DemeanorRis]

Alright, thanks guys.

SO do I leave my 500GB on at all times if i do decide to use it as time machine?

 

[gr8tfly]

Yep. Time Machine will do backups hourly (and you can force one manually, if you need to).

 

[elit3nemesis]

I have a 250GB 13 MBP and will not always have my 500GB external connected at all times, but when I do connect it will it just start saving at that time? Can I adjust the size of my external HD room for time machine or will time machine just use as much as is needed? Thanx.