Can I drag and drop entire hard drive into and external hard drive?

A Finder copy won't work. It will miss all sorts of essential hidden and system files.

Use a cloning utility like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete copy of your hard drive to an external drive.

Time Machine won't work with your external drive because the drive must be reformatted as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). If you go ahead and do that, TM will work with it. As for losing the data already on the drive, BACK IT UP FIRST! Get another external drive if you need to. If you have data you don't want to lose, always back it up.

Hi

+"So does reformatting make the external hard drive only usable by Macs/Time Machine?"+

Not really. If the external drive is formatted as FAT32 you can read/write to that drive from any Mac as well as any PC. If the external drive is formatted as NTFS you can only read from it but you can read/write from any PC. You can write to an NTFS formatted volume if you use a 3rd-Party Utility such as MacFuse. If the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended you can read/write to it from any Mac. Unless you install a 3rd-Party Utility (I don't know of any offhand) you won't be able to read/write to it from any PC. PCs don't know what a Mac OS Extended format is.

As already mentioned TimeMachine will not work with any other format other than Mac OS Extended.

+"Will I be able to use the same external hard drive to back up multiple Mac computers with Time Machine?"+

Yes but only if that external drive has been formatted as Mac OS Extended. If there is existing data on that drive that you don't want to lose back it up first.

+"Will I still be able to drag and drop movies into the external hard drive for basic storage?"+

If you leave the external drive exactly as it is - ie no formatting - and you have already drag/dropped files to it from your mac or any other mac then you will be able to continue to do this.

Tony

If you want to keep other things on your Time Machine drive, you should make separate partition(s) for it. Time Machine will work best if it has its own, exclusive space. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine may not work properly on a drive with the +Master Boot Record+ partition map scheme, which yours probably has, so your best bet will be to copy the data on that drive somewhere temporarily, then reformat it with the GUID *Partition Map Scheme,* then copy it back. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550?viewlocale=en_US

Make two (or more) partitions as desired. If you want to exchange files with Windoze, you could make one with the +MS-DOS (FAT)+ format, which both can read and write, although there are some restrictions.

See #5 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for formatting instructions.

If I go ahead and reformat the external HD to Mac OS Extended, will I be able to continue to use the external HD as a storage facility for files without the use of Time Machine?

Yes. It will simply be a regular external drive.

It would be ideal if I could use the external HD for Time Machine as well as just saving some movie files to be accessed for road trips and such.

It would be better if you partitioned it and use one partition for Time Machine and other partition for other things.

I suggest you make two partitons now. Use Time Machine on one to backup then use SuperDuper! or CCC to make a bootable backup on the other.
When you get your computer back, restore from the SD!/CCC backup (if needed) then you can delete the SD!/CCC backup and us it as storage.

I'll offer a counter opinion re: partitioning.

The problem with partitioning is that one invariably cannot predict in advance how much space to allocate to each volume. Eventually one volume will run out of space, and the other volume with have a bunch of extra space on it that can't be used for what you need. This isn't a problem if everything is on one partition.

For your purposes, just having a few GB of extra stuff sitting on the drive, I would not recommend partitioning. Just reformat it as HFS+, with just one volume for Time Machine. You can go ahead and store other items on this volume too. No need to partition.

I have done this with my TM drive for more than two years - several GB of miscellaneous files sitting on the drive, in addition to the TM backups, all on the same partition. Never a problem. The warnings about having other files on your TM volume seem to be all over these forums, but I have never seen an Apple tech note against doing it.

Király wrote:
. . .
I have done this with my TM drive for more than two years - several GB of miscellaneous files sitting on the drive, in addition to the TM backups, all on the same partition. Never a problem. The warnings about having other files on your TM volume seem to be all over these forums, but I have never seen an Apple tech note against doing it.

Yes, Time Machine will work fine (well, unless you fill the drive completely with other stuff so it can't even start the hidden log it keeps there -- then it will crash).

But when the drive is full, you won't be able to add much, if any, other stuff there. If you never want to add anything, that's not a problem.

And that's why we recommend putting the Time Machine partition first, so you can increase it later if you need to. You may be able to shrink it, too, unless it's already filled-up.

Just reformat it as HFS+, with just one volume for Time Machine. You can go ahead and store other items on this volume too. No need to partition.

I guess I was thinking that he could back up with SD! and TM at this point then boot off the SD! backup after he gets the computer back to get things sorted.

The warnings about having other files on your TM volume seem to be all over these forums

I wasn't thinking that but with a single partition and using SD! he would need to create a sparse image instead of a straight copy (which would erase the TM backup).

But yeah, partitioning has bitten me and it's a pain to sort out later.

I've divided it into four partitions, each with enough space to accommodate the family's various computers

Ouch!

Are these all Macs?
You can use one partition, create a sparse disk image (which will grow/shrink as needed) and backup to that. Then there's no need for any partitions as the sparse disk image sort of acts like a dynamic partition.

Chris CA wrote:
. . .
You can use one partition, create a sparse disk image (which will grow/shrink as needed) and backup to that.

Can you boot from a disk image?

Good point.