Time Machine and External HDD

[spaceghost21]

I received a WD 1 TB My Book external HDD as a gift from my brother. I would like to use it both to store music/movies and as a Time Machine Back Up. Since my MacBook Pro HDD is 250GB I figured I'd devote half the HDD to back ups and the other half to storage.

What I am wondering is the what is the best way to achieve this? I didn't see any options in Time Machine to limit how much of the disk space it uses. Should I partition the External HDD in two?

Any experiences/advice is welcome. Thanks!

spaceghost

 

[sourceninja]

Time machine will use 100% of the free space it is given. Then it will start deleting it's own backups to make room for more. If you put your own files on the drive, time machine will ignore them and not delete them. Just make sure anything you put on there is not inside the Backups.backupdb folder and you are safe.

If you want to limit time machine to a set amount of space, then you will need to use a partition. Personally, on my 1TB drive, I let time machine have the run of the drive. However, I made a second folder called Storage that I put any stuff I want to store on the drive inside. This way I can store my stuff on the drive and time machine can use the drive. The only time this setup will be a problem is when time machine eventually takes over all the freespace. At that point I will not be able to add new files to the drive (but time machine will still be able to use the drive).

 

[JC86]

I was under the impression that time machine only works with Mac's Time Machine Capsule. So I guess as long as you have a NAS external HDD you're good to go with time machine?

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: JC86
I was under the impression that time machine only works with Mac's Time Machine Capsule. So I guess as long as you have a NAS external HDD you're good to go with time machine?

No.

If you want to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) then the easiest way to do it is with a Time Capsule. I believe there is an alternative way to use non Time Capsules, but I am not positive.

Otherwise, if you are using any other external storage (USB, Firewire, eSATA) then it will work just fine once you format the drive to HFS+

 

[sourceninja]

Not that I would recomend it, but if you want to use a NAS with time machine you can do this:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: JC86
I was under the impression that time machine only works with Mac's Time Machine Capsule. So I guess as long as you have a NAS external HDD you're good to go with time machine?

No.

If you want to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) then the easiest way to do it is with a Time Capsule. I believe there is an alternative way to use non Time Capsules, but I am not positive.

Otherwise, if you are using any other external storage (USB, Firewire, eSATA) then it will work just fine once you format the drive to HFS+

There's always iSCSI. Basic method: Set up Open Filer or a similar NAS with an iSCSI target, and then use one of the Mac iSCSI initiators to connect to the presented iSCSI target. Once done, you can easily use that drive for all Time Machine activity.

It's been working perfectly for me for quite some time. The only disadvantage is that Apple (still!) doesn't have a native iSCSI initiator in its' OS (c'mon - catch up with MS!) so it's not as easy as I'd like.

 

[rangda]

Originally posted by: TheStu
If you want to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) then the easiest way to do it is with a Time Capsule. I believe there is an alternative way to use non Time Capsules, but I am not positive.

I am using an Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS for time machine backups for 2 macs. You do have to go through some work setting this up (you need to create the sparse bundles manually) but it takes all of 5 minutes.

The instructions are from Infrant but they would work for any NAS.

The nice part of using the NAS is that I get timely backups while @home and most NAS' let you limit the size of the share so you can keep your backup volume under control.

 

[Goosemaster]

no need to use up the entire drive or even partition it. Hit me up and I'll show you how to make a sparse bundle. I currently have a 400GB sparse bundle on a 1TB drive so the other GB are never touched.

 

[Circlenaut]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: JC86
I was under the impression that time machine only works with Mac's Time Machine Capsule. So I guess as long as you have a NAS external HDD you're good to go with time machine?

No.

If you want to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) then the easiest way to do it is with a Time Capsule. I believe there is an alternative way to use non Time Capsules, but I am not positive.

Otherwise, if you are using any other external storage (USB, Firewire, eSATA) then it will work just fine once you format the drive to HFS+

There's always iSCSI. Basic method: Set up Open Filer or a similar NAS with an iSCSI target, and then use one of the Mac iSCSI initiators to connect to the presented iSCSI target. Once done, you can easily use that drive for all Time Machine activity.

It's been working perfectly for me for quite some time. The only disadvantage is that Apple (still!) doesn't have a native iSCSI initiator in its' OS (c'mon - catch up with MS!) so it's not as easy as I'd like.

Heh, I just started doing this (with openfiler) and it works like a charm! When snow leopard comes out, if it has native iSCSI support, I'll ditch my time capsule.