I am trying to backup my macbook before installing snow leopard 10.6.3 and I get a message that says this hard drive cannot be used because it is being used by time machine.
I read that a hard drive partition is best before installing the upgrade.
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Before an upgrade is to be installed, it is best to backup your files as a precautionary measure.
A partition is not necessary. All a partition does is divide a HDD into two parts (called volumes) which act as if they were two independent HDDs.
If your intent is to install 10.6 (Snow Leopard), run a Time Machine update first and then install the new OS.
Ciao.
Partitioning a hard drive:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
To resize (or delete) an existing partition without losing data, you will need to use, for example, iPartition:
how do I partition hard drive?
