When the drive has finished formatting, choose the “Partition” tab. We’re going to use an even 50/50 partition scheme for this example (specifically, a 1.5TB drive split into two 750GB parts) though you can configure yours as appropriate. To be clear, backups will not stop once the maximum space is reached, it will simply rewrite older backups, thus preventing access to old drive states as they become rewritten. You can certainly get away with smaller sizes, but because Time Machine takes incremental snapshots of the data on your Mac, the backups will simply capture more data for a longer period of time if the partition size is larger. For example, if the Mac has a built-in 128GB SSD drive, setting the Time Machine partition to be at least 384GB or larger would be ideal. Next we’ll set up the external hard disk to have two separate partitions, one for the Time Machine backups and the other for regular file system access.Ī quick note about sizing: It is good practice to set the Time Machine drive to be at least 2x-3x your primary hard disk size. Step 2: Create Two Partitions for Time Machine & Storage Just let the process go, don’t be surprised if it takes a few minutes. How long it takes to format a drive depends on a variety of factors, including drive speed, interface speed, and total disk size. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the format type, ignore the naming convention for now, then click “Erase” and confirm the drive will be erased. Select the external hard drive from the drive list on the left, then click the “Erase” tab. Launch Disk Utility, found in /Applications/Utilities/. Connect the external hard drive to the Mac. 
This process will erase all data on the hard drive, meaning this is best to pursue when you first get a new external drive for backups and file storage.
How do i backup my mac to an external hard drive mac os x#
You can partition a drive without formatting, but we’ll cover this process anyway because many third party hard drives ship with Windows-centric FAT32 or NTFS file systems which, while they are compatible for dual use with both Mac and Windows, are not compatible for using as a Time Machine drive, and as they are not exclusively formatted for the Mac, will have other limitations which are not desirable for exclusive Mac OS X usage. The first set of steps involves formatting the drive. Step 1: Format the Drive to “Mac OS Extended” Compatibility Drives that are pre-formatted for OS X are usually no different than a standard external drive, other than having a higher price tag. Note on buying external hard drives: it’s almost always cheaper to buy a generic external hard drive and format it yourself to be Mac compatible. Minor patience, and about 10 minutes for initial setup.Large external hard drive (check out this Amazon deal).Any Mac running OS X with Time Machine support (every modern version).
0 kommentar(er)
