Use of portable hard drive

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Use of portable hard drive

I have just bought a 5T portable hard drive to hold my Photos libraries which are getting too big for my iMac. Can I also use it for the Time machine backup? Being 5T it should be heaps big enough.

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.13

Posted on Jan 7, 2020 4:09 PM

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Answer 1

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den.thed

Level 10

83,326 points

Jan 7, 2020 4:36 PM in response to ianfromweetangera

Yes you can, but it is a bad idea because you will lose your photos and backups if the external drive ever goes belly up. A better idea is to uses two external drives, one for your Photos Library and one for backups.

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Answer 2

Jan 7, 2020 4:25 PM in response to ianfromweetangera

Yes, you can do this. But you should let Time Machine have its own space where it will be undisturbed and you won't likely do some "accidental damage" to the backups.backupdb folder or the files within.

Perhaps the best way is to partition your new large drive as two volumes, one for you data and one for TM to use. Give TM plenty of room to grow, maybe 2-3TB, and se the rest for your data.

You can partition the drive using Disk Utility.

Then open System Preferences > Time Machine and configure TM to use the partition that you created for it.

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Answer 3

Jan 7, 2020 5:07 PM in response to den.thed

Many thanks. That's what I suspected would be the response. No problem. I'll get a 1 or 2 TB drive for photos and use the one I just bought for Time machine. My existing one is only 500 GB and is getting a bit old, such that I have started to worry about it suddenly dying on me.

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Answer 4

Jan 7, 2020 4:51 PM in response to den.thed

True. 👍🏽

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Answer 5

den.thed

Level 10

83,326 points

Jan 7, 2020 6:17 PM in response to ianfromweetangera

Good plan, you're welcome!

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Use of portable hard drive

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