External HDD/Time Machine Running out of Space

[FearoftheNight]

So I have this 500 gig hdd that I partitioned and use one as media storage and the other as my time machine disc. Problem is I have about 20 gig lefts in media and 8 gigs left in time machine. What should I do? Should I can buy another hdd and have 2 separate discs for each of the purposes?

 

[ViRGE]

Well how much space do you need for time machine backups? The most immediate solution would be to shrink the TM partition and grow the media partition. TM simply deletes things when it runs out of space, so we don't care how much space it uses as long as it has enough space to hold an adequate number of backups.

 

[FearoftheNight]

my time machine partition is about 1:1 with my full mac hdd size so i don't think it would be a good option to shrink that. is there another option i can use?

 

[Gooberlx2]

Not really. If you're out of space, you're out of space. External HDDs are fairly cheap. I'd buy one and dedicate it to Time Machine.

 

[leglez]

Just pickup a Samsung 1 TB for $99 and grab a $20 or $30 external enclosure and use it for Time Machine.

 

[FearoftheNight]

ok how can i preserve my old time machine backups and media? can i cut and paste one of the partitions on the new hdd then resize the old one to 1 partition w/o losing any data?

 

[Goosemaster]

In the future create your own sparse bundle so you can limit the size that TM will use if you wish to use the drive for general storage purposes as well.

For TM all you have to worry about is the sparse bundle that you created. To move it to another HDD jsut move the sparsebundle over. (copying it over is better for safety reasons)

 

[sourceninja]

I never thought about using a sparse bundle before. If I made it an encrypted bundle or even a truecrypt volume, do you think that would work? One of my big problems with time machine is that it is not encrypted.

 

[FearoftheNight]

what is a sparse bundle? and can i copy my time machine files over or not?

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: FearoftheNight
what is a sparse bundle? and can i copy my time machine files over or not?

a sparse bundle can be equated to an image file. I can show you how to create one but have never done a data migration from sparse bundle to sparse bundle.

FYI time machine uses a spare bundle to store your data.