Ex Hd and Mac

digitalfailure

digitalfailure

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Hello there my esteemed chums

I've just got hold of a 1Tb ex hdd to stay permanently connected to my gorgeous 'lil' iMac.

I have 1320Gb of nothingness :D

The box says formatted for windows and the leaflet inside gives brief instructions on reformatting it for Mac but i'm unsure as to use

GUID partition table
or
Apple Partition map

whats the thoughts guys :)
 
digitalfailure said:
Hello there my esteemed chums

I've just got hold of a 1Tb ex hdd to stay permanently connected to my gorgeous 'lil' iMac.

I have 1320Gb of nothingness :D

The box says formatted for windows and the leaflet inside gives brief instructions on reformatting it for Mac but i'm unsure as to use

GUID partition table
or
Apple Partition map

whats the thoughts guys :)
Click to expand...

I may be wrong, not 100% sure on this, but I thought that the GUID partition type is essential if you want to be able to boot from the external drive on an Intel based Mac (likewise, the Apple partition type from a PPC based Mac). Either will do for data only.

As I use Carbon Copy Cloner to keep a 100% bootable copy of my main boot drive on my external drive (just incase!), I therefore tend to opt for GUID.
 
Just remember if you format hfs etc then if you have any windows pc's they wont be able to read from it (with out extra software). It should be formatted fat32 which is fine on a mac anyway, my macbook reads my WD externals straight out the box.
 
I'd like to have a section of it assigned to time machine as a back up for the main HDD on the mac and also a section for images storage.

would the back up for the hdd need to be the same size as the imac's drive?

Not too bothered about a back up for the lappy tbh, currently that has it's own 500gb ex hdd
 
Time machine does not compress files, but it does exclude some system generated files (swap for example). To use Time Machine effectively, you need a much bigger disk than the one you are backing up (well bigger than you're current usage anyway).

  • The first time it runs, it basically copies every files (bar a few).
  • Next and every subsequent time, it only copies the changes.
  • When it runs low on space, it will delete the oldest files from the backup that no longer exist on your main disk.

This means the more space you have, the more history it will hold, but it will need to be at least as big as your current disk usage to be of any help to you at all.

What it won't do for you is give you a bootable disk if everything goes wrong, and with the internal disks in the iMacs a bit of a pig to self replace, it's handy to have an bootable backup to hand, hence "CCC"
 
Ive got 2 x 1Tb's one is just for storage, the other is split into 2 x 500Gb partitions and one is set up for TimeMachine (HFS+ i think) the other is Fat32. It works fine, my MAcbook is 250Gb and it used about 160Gb to back it up, as was said the first time took a while as it copied pretty much everything, the 2nd time it just did any changes.
 
FAT32 / HFS+ all comes later - this is about the partition scheme for the new disk rather than the format of the partitions. GUID is a more modern system than the old MBR (Master boot record) scheme most commonly used in the DOS / Windows / PPC world. GUID is required if you want to boot the system from the disk under OS X.
 
so how do I go about splitting this 1tb disk into 2x 500gb drives?
 
digitalfailure said:
so how do I go about splitting this 1tb disk into 2x 500gb drives?
Click to expand...

  • Fire up 'Disk Utility'
  • Select the disk from the list on the left
  • Select Partition from the tab on the right
  • Select '2 partitions' from the volume scheme
  • Click 'Options' below the partition graphic, and select GUID :love:, followed by OK
  • Click each of the two partitions in the graphic in turn and select the format from the drop down on the right, and name them as you wish.
  • Click apply

JUST MAKE VERY SURE IT IS THE RIGHT DISK BEFORE YOU HIT APPLY!
 
2 partitions set up with ease thanks to the advice above. Thank you :)
It's currently half way through it's first time machine back up. Quite staggering how an almost new machine has a 56gb back up :eek:

I have the second partition set up to act as an image backup disc for lightroom, so during import it makes a back up automatically.
 
dont you have to take pictures to need storage space?
 
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