I want to use Time Machine to back up my mac. I have heard that it will wipe the HDD if its not formatted correctly. Disk utility says its
Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Is this alright? or will it wipe it?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Yes, if you use Disk Utility to reformat the drive or assign that drive to TimeMachine it will wipe all existing data off the drive/partition.
Like was mentioned, only use one drive for TimeMachine and preferably another one for a bootable clone.
Would've been nice to know that ahead of time. All the instructions I ever found about setting up an external drive was to connect it and utilize the Time Machine app. Nobody said anything about formatting. The app itself, I'm not 100%, didn't tell me NOT to connect a drive with other data on it, etc. before continuing. Oh well.
Do not use the same drive you use for other data as a Time Machine backup drive. Your backup drive should be completely separate. It also should be at least two or three times greater capacity than your computer's hard drive that you are backing up.
See here.
Will Time Machine wipe my external hard drive if its formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?
