I have an iMac, I have only very poor, old backups.

Is Time Machine a good way to do this? I know there are a load of ways and some that might be more frequent, better, secure etc but nothing I have on it is really that critical so just after easy.

And if so a few questions:

– Am I correct in thinking I need a hard disk as big or bigger than that in the iMac?
– Am I correct in thinking that the disk will be kind of closed in a Mac only format?
– Before I do the time machine can I partition the HDD into two allowing say 200GB for my old PC backups and 800GB for my Time Machine? And if so what is the best way to do this?
– Does it matter what sort of disk I buy? I was just thinking of getting a 1TB external?

I thought they might have actually invented a time machine 🙁

I’ve had good luck with time machine. Our imac died, I had a time machine backup and the new one restored from it perfectly using migration assistant.

I’ve not tried to partition the disc though. Your other assumptions I believe to be correct.

My Mac mini does two time machine backups. one to an external HDD plugged in via sub, the other to a NAS that’s in the corner of my office.

Time capsule will back up to any external drive I use a Seagate Central NAS which is also shared by a PC there is no need to partition the drive as Time Machine creates its own folder.

my 2p…

I’m a pro graphic designer and i’d say that you’d be better off buying any decent 1tb external drive and regularly backing up your stuff manually. once and week/after a projects finished, stuff from elsewhere you need in one secure place etc…

time machine takes away the pain of needing to physically drag and drop as and when you choose. perhaps I’m just ‘old school’ but i’d not trust time machine for anything of real importance. so for some more casual folk time machine might be the perfect solution!

i think it looks nice though…

Time machine works really well and is totally in the background
You need a disk bigger than the contents of your hard disk, and ideally bigger than the disk itself as time machine does incremental backups it tends to just grow and grow and then deletes old stuff
The time machine partition can only be used by time machine, but no issues with setting up multiple partitions on the back up disk before you start – use disk utility to do this
I use USB external disk on one machine and wireless one on another, both work well. USB3 will be way quicker for that first big write

Thanks all, I think I will go for it. Just to be clear I am talking about Time Machine backup not the Apple all-in-one solution Airport Time Capsule.

My current HDD is 750Gb, time machine says it needs 220Gb so I thinking of buying 1Tb and partitioning to 800Gb and 200Gb.

Nothing too important, urgent or frequently changing so sounds like it will be ideal.

The first backup will take ages as it will need to copy the full 220Gb, follow on backups will be incremental, and should be quick and not noticable

I have a 1Tb external HD which I use to backup 2 macs using Time Machine. It’s not full yet. The first backup is a full one, then they are incremental.

It’s worked fine for me, backing up and restoring.

Anyone used one of those wireless external drives for time machine and does it work ok?

Before I do the time machine can I partition the HDD into two allowing say 200GB for my old PC backups and 800GB for my Time Machine?

how much is the cheapest 500g-1tb drive? £40? is it really worth the hassle of partitioning a drive and then trying to get a pc and mac to read it?

use super duper to make a bootable clone rather than time machine or just manually back up to an external drive.

If I understood what would be involved in following the last couple of lines then your approach would probably be the right one.

But I don’t, so I guess that is why the Time Machine approach is attractive.

The external drive will not be expensive but I would rather have one box than two so partitioning is attractive.

Start with Disk Utility on the Mac – format option GUID (Win7/8 can read GUID partition tables).
partition drive split in 2 partitions, (or more if you want more), then format the OS X partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled);format the Windows partition MSDOS FAT.

Reboot to Windows (or unmount and plug into Windows PC) and open the disk management tool and select the MSDOS FAT partition and format it again as NTFS.

Thanks, that is really useful.

I have just ordered the drive and will follow your instructions!

Right, I have finally got round to this.

I have now partitioned my new disk into two successfully. 300Gb as NTFS, 700 Gb as Mac.

I am now trying to copy files from my old external drive to the NTFS partion of my new one via my Mac.

But when I try to copy it won’t let me. Equally if I try to save something like a .txt file on the NTFS partition it won’t let me and says that the disk is read only. Have I done something wrong? Any suggestions appreciated.

Sadly, out of the box, OS X won’t write to NTFS disks, so you’ll need to install some utility software.
Have a read of this article.

Thanks, that was very useful.

Can’t you just connect the disc to a windows / ntfs machine ?

Just remember that as a backup you are still going to lose everything in event of fire/theft/electrical blow up.

Take a look at some of the cloud based options for a smaller amount of important stuff.

Time Machine is a nice way to easily keep a local hourly backup. It’s easy if you use a NAS like a synology. It’s also easy if you use a HDD plugged in to the Mac. Go for backup storage at least 1.5x the size of your installed HDD. e.g. 1TB iMac should have at least a 1.5TB time machine drive.

However, Time Machine is a handy immediate backup. You also need an offsite backup. Try Backblaze if you like cloud-based stuff. Cheap, unlimited storage, and secure. Although that first back up will take days/weeks depending on your files and connection speed.

I’d also recommend you keep another backup too. Consider using Carbon Copy Cloner, a HDD at least 1.5x the size of your current Mac HDD, and only bring it in to the house for when you back up. It’ll give you a bootable, easy to use backup.

Like others have said, Macs won’t natively write to NTFS-formatted disks.

Just remember that as a backup you are still going to lose everything in event of fire/theft/electrical blow up.

I am tackling this with the high tech solution of taking the disc around to my friends house and leaving it there once I have done the back up 😀

Take a look at some of the cloud based options for a smaller amount of important stuff.

I have DropBox doing this.

To be honest not that much really changes on the computer on a regular basis so an infrequent backup will be fine.

Thanks for the added advice though.