Adam Fratus wrote:
I have been using Time Machine on my 500GB USB 2.0 WD My Book for about a month now. I recently purchased a 1TB FW 800 WD My Book and would like to transfer my existing Time Machine backup data from the 500GB to the 1TB drive. There are a few things I am unsure of:
1. How can I make the 1TB drive my Time Machine backup and still have all of the old backups from the 500GB drive?
You can copy them, if you want. Copy the entire
Backups.backupdb file via the Finder (Snow Leopard only; not Leopard), or use the
Restore tab of Disk Utility as in item #18 of the
Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip.*
2. Since my Mac's internal drive is only 600GB, I'd like to allocate only that much space for the Time Machine backups. Am I able to partition the drive and use the other 400GB as storage that's accessible on both Macs and Windows machines?
That's probably not a good idea. What's important is not the total size of your internal HD, but the amount of data that's on it (and will be on it in the foreseeable future). TM normally needs 2-3 times that much space (see item#1 of the
FAQ Tip).
Make your TM partition first, so it's easier to expand it later on, if need be. Then format the second partition as +FAT 32,+ so both Windoze and OSX can use it. See item 5 in the
FAQ Tip for partitioning instructions.