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I am partitioning my external hard drive into 3 partititons. I will use 2 of them for time machine drives and the third will be for general storage usage.
What is the best type of format to use for these partitions?
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
TimeMachine is "extended journaled", as is the "general storage" if it is just for Mac files. The entire volume should be "GUID":
Disk Utility, select the drive (not just a partition), select "Partition" from the top menu, select "Options" to get to the shown screen.
TimeMachine is "extended journaled", as is the "general storage" if it is just for Mac files. The entire volume should be "GUID":
Disk Utility, select the drive (not just a partition), select "Partition" from the top menu, select "Options" to get to the shown screen.
Thanks for the help. What if I am going to possibly use the general storage drive on windows based computers, such as a school computer lab?
My read would be this:
Keep the TimeMachine drive (with only two partitions) for only TimeMachine. You should not muddy-up your backups with "general use".
You can get a 16 GB or 32 GB thumb drive, and format it exFAT which both Windows and Mac can read and write. Or get an external drive with higher capacity like 160 GB for the same purpose. Just do the exFAT formatting on the Windows machine, as Macs do not always do this cleanly.
Further, when you can afford it, you should separate your two backups physically (separate external drives). The chance of 3 drives (internal, two external) all dying at the same time is very very small, and much smaller than two drives (internal, one external) dying at the same time.
Also, when I got the partition screen you show, the "options" button shows as inactive. Any thoughts?
First be sure you selected the drive and not the partition on the drive.
Then select the scheme (above the drive layout box) as "2 partitions".
Got it, THANK YOU!
Glad to help. Ask if you have more issues.
when you say " Just do the exFAT formatting on the Windows machine, as Macs do not always do this cleanly." Do you mean do that format for the drive I am goint to use on both types of machine, or do you mean to actually format the drive on windows machine, and not do it through disk utility?
Disk Utility and Windows disk manager can both format as exFAT. But for reasons known only to the gods, a Mac-formatted exFAT does not always work in Windows (I did experience this). A Windows-formatted exFAT does work more reliably in Mac (just did this tonight).
Now I am on the same page. Thank you.
Many Windows-Mac compatibility mysteries remain to be discovered.
What is best format for HD partition?
