need advice - best method for backup

[ReL1988]

Hi everybody!

Got myself new 1.5TB usb3 external hdd (Western Digital).

My problem is that i need to backup the following:

1. my gf laptop (windows 8.1)
2. my mbpr (osx latest version)
3. 1 or 2 external flash drives

Is there any good method to use time-machine while still having the capability to backup the other locations on the same external HDD ?

If not, what format should i use? what do u suggest for my need? ExFat?

Thanks!
any other recommendations and ideas are very welcomed..!

Ariel

 

[CaptainWD]

Hi everybody!

Got myself new 1.5TB usb3 external hdd (Western Digital).

My problem is that i need to backup the following:

1. my gf laptop (windows 8.1)
2. my mbpr (osx latest version)
3. 1 or 2 external flash drives

Is there any good method to use time-machine while still having the capability to backup the other locations on the same external HDD ?

If not, what format should i use? what do u suggest for my need? ExFat?

Thanks!
any other recommendations and ideas are very welcomed..!

Ariel

Hey ReL1988,

I believe you could make two separate partitions on the external HDD and use one for Time Machine and the other for the rest of the backups (use different formats if you need to). You would need to format the drive, though and lose all information on it. If you have something that you'd like to keep, I would suggest backing it up and them proceed to partition and formatting.

Hope this helps,

Captain_WD.

 

[ReL1988]

thx for quick reply

what format do u suggest for the "noraml" partition? ExFat?

 

[Weaselboy]

thx for quick reply

what format do u suggest for the "noraml" partition? ExFat?

ExFAT is not a journaled file system, so is not very reliable. You would be safer using NTFS on the Windows partition for backup.

 

[ReL1988]

thanks!

one more question..
i got 256GB ssd, so how many GB should i give to Time-Machine partition?
how much will it take?

thanks again!!!

 

[Weaselboy]

thanks!

one more question..
i got 256GB ssd, so how many GB should i give to Time-Machine partition?
how much will it take?

thanks again!!!

If you made a 500GB partition for Time Machine that would give you 2X the space for keeping multiple versions of files and work well.

 

[ReL1988]

in what order should i partition it?

should i do it through mac or pc?

:\ got confused

----------

i created -
513GB - mac extended + journaling (for time machine)
900GB - FAT (for windows)
the rest - ExFat (for mac)

is it fine this way? should i do anything more ?

thanks!!

 

[Weaselboy]

in what order should i partition it?

should i do it through mac or pc?

:\ got confused

----------

i created -
513GB - mac extended + journaling (for time machine)
900GB - FAT (for windows)
the rest - ExFat (for mac)

is it fine this way? should i do anything more ?

thanks!!

What you did is okay to start, but if you are going to be using that to backup the Windows machine, you would want the FAT one in NTFS. Just do that on the Windows machine. Reformat only the FAT partition and it won't touch the Mac one.

Or you can use something like Paragon NTFS to the Mac to give it full NTFS read/write support. But if you are just using if for backing up the Windows machine, I don't see why you would need this.

 

[ReL1988]

done,
thank you so much.!

 

[CaptainWD]

exFat is suitable for short-time usage such as getting files from a Mac to a PC via external drive without having to reformat the drive for every system.
As ReL1988 pointed out, it is not very reliable from a security point of view. I would also go ahead and say for Windows you should just use NTFS as it is more secure and better for long-term storage.

Post back if you encounter some issues

Captain_WD.