Double Duty for an External Drive?

[Nabby]

All,

I have an iMac that uses a 750 GB external drive for Time Machine. There is a TON of space left on that drive. I'm considering putting my movie folder on that drive and referencing the movies there for my iTunes library. That iMac will house the iTunes library that my Apple TV will use. Are there restrictions on having that drive serve "double duty"? (Time Machine backup and housing iTunes movies).

Thanks.

Nabby

 

[nutmac]

I can think of one. If the external drive dies, so will your movie collection.

 

[mstrze]

It pays to keep a backup drive strictly a backup drive.

Why not just buy an extra external and use that as you iTunes Media Library storage? 500GB drives are dropping close to $50...I bought a WD 1.5TB for $139 recently, and have seen them for closer to $100.

Store your media on the new external then back that up to your backup drive.

 

[randy98mtu]

It is possible, but as others have indicated, you may want to consider having a redundant backup. I have a large collection, so I have a few external drives. I have 2 for storage (a 500 and a 1TB), one for a full Time Machine of my internal and the 2 externals (that one is a 2TB). Then I started getting nervous about all the pictures and movies of my daughter if anything ever happened to my office, so I bought a 750 gig Passport to back up only the iMac internal drive. That left me with some free space, so I made a Windows partition on it so I have some portable storage to go along with my redundant backup of my irreplaceable data. I keep that one at work most of the time and bring it home every few weeks to refresh the backup.