Partition ext HDD for Time Machine & Storage

Joe94

Joe94

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Morning,

I’m hoping for some advice & another general consensus. I have got a 2tb external hdd ready to set up with my new iMac, with the plan to partition the the drive so half is for Time Machine (only 1tb needed) & the other half for photo storage to act as a third image back up.

Is this okay to do? Your should I separate the two drives?

Thanks, Joe
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's probably fine to do, but 2TB isn't much space, and I'd be inclined to have a second drive.
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Thanks Toni, I these seems to be the general consensus too, so yeah I think I will get another external HDD.
 
my iMac has 2tb internal + a 3tb external believe me for photography your gonna need it(y)
 
Joe94 said:
Morning,

I’m hoping for some advice & another general consensus. I have got a 2tb external hdd ready to set up with my new iMac, with the plan to partition the the drive so half is for Time Machine (only 1tb needed) & the other half for photo storage to act as a third image back up.

Is this okay to do? Your should I separate the two drives?

Thanks, Joe
Click to expand...

How big is your primary drive? Time Machine will use whatever you give it and eventually fill any size of drive but the usual ratio is 2 - 3 times the size of your primary. This will provide a decent trade off between cost and security. If your primary is a typical 1TB (Apple are mean....) I'd just buy a 3TB external for about 80 quid. Then get another one (maybe 2TB) for your backup.

Another advantage of this is that you can rotate them - so use your backup for a week then swap to another backup for a week. So if something really crazy happens (there have been a *lot* of lightning strikes lately....) you have the other one powered down safely in a drawer :)
 
JonathanRyan said:
How big is your primary drive? Time Machine will use whatever you give it and eventually fill any size of drive but the usual ratio is 2 - 3 times the size of your primary. This will provide a decent trade off between cost and security. If your primary is a typical 1TB (Apple are mean....) I'd just buy a 3TB external for about 80 quid. Then get another one (maybe 2TB) for your backup.

Another advantage of this is that you can rotate them - so use your backup for a week then swap to another backup for a week. So if something really crazy happens (there have been a *lot* of lightning strikes lately....) you have the other one powered down safely in a drawer :)
Click to expand...

Thanks you for this advice Jonathan, much appreciated. Just to ask though you mention the second drive that I would use for purely photos backup (the photos will also be stored on the iMac), can be swapped every now and then, does that mean I would also need to link the up with time machine?
 
Joe94 said:
Thanks you for this advice Jonathan, much appreciated. Just to ask though you mention the second drive that I would use for purely photos backup (the photos will also be stored on the iMac), can be swapped every now and then, does that mean I would also need to link the up with time machine?
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I think you're overthinking stuff :) It's easy to get wrapped up in this "my pictures must survive a nuclear holocaust" thinking - and for some stuff that's true. But it's worth now and again sitting down and calculating the cost of what you're doing and asking if it's worth it.

There was another post on the bus. forum about a client coming back after (maybe) 10 years and asking for a copy of their pictures. A photographer with sufficient backups might easily make £1K off that event - pure COGS profit. But that's a once in 10 years event - if long term backups of commercial shots cost more than £100 a year then they would be a waste of money in that case. (You can argue it could happen many times in 10 years but if you ran a poll then few people would be able to honestly answer they had made more than 1 sale like that).

Time Machine is *really* handy for
1. I did something stupid and my machine doesn't work
2. Apple did something stupid and my machine doesn't work
3. I deleted something a tax return that will take me 4 hours to reimagine
4. I bought a new computer and I want it to look exactly like the old computer without me even thinking about it

IMO it's pretty rubbish for pictures (because they are big files that don't compress well and don't generally change much)

I would put Time Machine on you primary drive and then forget about it. Exclude all pictures and other drives.

Set up your backup cycles for pictures etc but think about it. There's no real point paying £00s a year to back up deletes :)
 
JonathanRyan said:
I think you're overthinking stuff :) It's easy to get wrapped up in this "my pictures must survive a nuclear holocaust" thinking - and for some stuff that's true. But it's worth now and again sitting down and calculating the cost of what you're doing and asking if it's worth it.

There was another post on the bus. forum about a client coming back after (maybe) 10 years and asking for a copy of their pictures. A photographer with sufficient backups might easily make £1K off that event - pure COGS profit. But that's a once in 10 years event - if long term backups of commercial shots cost more than £100 a year then they would be a waste of money in that case. (You can argue it could happen many times in 10 years but if you ran a poll then few people would be able to honestly answer they had made more than 1 sale like that).

Time Machine is *really* handy for
1. I did something stupid and my machine doesn't work
2. Apple did something stupid and my machine doesn't work
3. I deleted something a tax return that will take me 4 hours to reimagine
4. I bought a new computer and I want it to look exactly like the old computer without me even thinking about it

IMO it's pretty rubbish for pictures (because they are big files that don't compress well and don't generally change much)

I would put Time Machine on you primary drive and then forget about it. Exclude all pictures and other drives.

Set up your backup cycles for pictures etc but think about it. There's no real point paying £00s a year to back up deletes :)
Click to expand...

Thanks Jonathan, your 100% right aha I think I am and to be honest I don't want too haha, it just you read all of these thing about backup/copies/clones etc and it almost seems a lot of people can also go a bit OTT with it.

Your example is true as you say for some scenarios but for me Im not doing this as a business it is purely a hobby and all im interested in is making sure my picture that I have took time to take and process us Lr are backed up in a couple of place and so I agree that I am probably better off totally separating my photo backup system (basically copying the photos onto a couple of external HDD's and a cloud) and then just have one separate drive for the time machine.

In regards to the Time Machine though and forgive me if this sounds silly but your breakdown of it is really helpful, but I also though Time Machine created a boot up drive and if it does is this still not better on an external HDD (separate from photos still), than on the internal HDD? Because in the example of a new pc how would I set the new one up off of the time Machine backup?

Thanks again for your help with this, very helpful :)
 
I'm not sure Time Machine would actually work on an internal drive (if Apple don't want you to do something then usually it's easier to give up....). Plug in drive for TM.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I'm not sure Time Machine would actually work on an internal drive (if Apple don't want you to do something then usually it's easier to give up....). Plug in drive for TM.
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Thank you for the confirmation :)
 
T_J_G said:
I run time machine on a separate partition on an external drive. Works fine.
Click to expand...

Fab thanks for this :) Also as a side question, am I right in saying that with Mac you do not need to create an external boot drive? (like you do with windows), because imacs have this built in? and so the important thing is the TM to ensure your files & system is backed up.
 
Joe94 said:
Thanks Jonathan, your 100% right aha I think I am and to be honest I don't want too haha, it just you read all of these thing about backup/copies/clones etc and it almost seems a lot of people can also go a bit OTT with it.

Your example is true as you say for some scenarios but for me Im not doing this as a business it is purely a hobby and all im interested in is making sure my picture that I have took time to take and process us Lr are backed up in a couple of place and so I agree that I am probably better off totally separating my photo backup system (basically copying the photos onto a couple of external HDD's and a cloud) and then just have one separate drive for the time machine.

In regards to the Time Machine though and forgive me if this sounds silly but your breakdown of it is really helpful, but I also though Time Machine created a boot up drive and if it does is this still not better on an external HDD (separate from photos still), than on the internal HDD? Because in the example of a new pc how would I set the new one up off of the time Machine backup?

Thanks again for your help with this, very helpful :)
Click to expand...
Having the photos on the internal drive and one external hard drive at home backup and cloud storage would be all you need for your photos. That would probably be better than many do. Like @JonathanRyan says Time Machine is better for general system stuff.

I probably overthought things when i set up my backup system a few years back (RAID1 twin 3TB unit for at home and twin externals for offsite storage). I could easily use just two external drives as one would be always at home and one away from home. I'd have liked to have used cloud storage but my internet speed is far too slow for cloud to be useable.
 
rob-nikon said:
Having the photos on the internal drive and one external hard drive at home backup and cloud storage would be all you need for your photos. That would probably be better than many do. Like @JonathanRyan says Time Machine is better for general system stuff.

I probably overthought things when i set up my backup system a few years back (RAID1 twin 3TB unit for at home and twin externals for offsite storage). I could easily use just two external drives as one would be always at home and one away from home. I'd have liked to have used cloud storage but my internet speed is far too slow for cloud to be useable.
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Thank you Rob, I very much appreciate this. :)

On a side note, do you know if with a Mac you need to create a usb boot drive? I have read you dont because macs have a utility built in & that have the time machine for general system back up is all you need to worry about?
 
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