If I format into two drives, will it keep time machine on one or should

have been told that Time Machine backups should be on a dedicated drive.

They already are if you partitioned your 2 TB drive into two 1 TB partitions. You have, in effect 2 drives.

Time Machine is on one 1 TB partition and you can use the other partition with CCC.

Time Machine backups are not officially supported by Apple if you have the drive connected to the USB port on your AirPort Extreme though.

I am currently using a 2011 AirPort Extreme

Do you mean Time Capsule.. there is no hard disk in an extreme?

If the drive was formatted into two 1TB drives, that may not be the best for TM backups, correct?

Again if you are talking about Time Capsule you cannot partition the internal disk.

If you want to mix data and backups see method here.

Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

If I use the entire 2TB for TM backup and use external drives for CCC, that should be easy??

That sounds better but there are ways and means.. If we had a clearer idea of what you actually have it would be easier.

Just wondering if I still need to keep one of my OWC external drives for CCC and other files?

No one here who contributes to the forum would ever dream of keeping all of their backups on a single Time Capsule.

It is always wise to keep a CCC clone at least, maybe more if you have a large library of images, media, etc.

You cannot use FW800 on a TC.. it is usb2 only.

The advantage of the FW800 is that it is fast.. much faster than backups to the TC. Even for TM the backups are faster and more reliable than to a network drive.

The very big advantage for CCC is you can make the external drive a bootable image. That is not possible with network drive. Using a bootable image is the very fastest and best way to get a computer going that has a dead hard disk. Nothing even comes close.

If I get the new Airport Time Capsule, the entire 2TB has to be used for TM, is this correct?

There is no way to partition the 2TB drive (without voiding warranty).. so using it for both TM and data can be tricky.

You also have no internal backup on the TC.. you cannot use TM for network drive backup.. but with CCC that is not a problem.. CCC can handle network drives.

Pondini has suggested how to get around the problem by fixing the size of the sparsebundle. You need to understand that TM backs up differently on network cf local drives.. it uses a virtual disk called sparsebundle. by manipulating the sparsebundle size you can prevent it growing to fill the TC disk.

See Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

He has other suggestions there.

Zimmer1956 wrote:

As I mentioned, my current external drives use TM on one and the second is CCC. They are NOT network drives and plugged in to my Mac by FW800.

I have a LaCie cloud for pictures and music through my PS3.

Do you have to use the new Airport TC as a network device or is there an option to turn off the network?

If it can't be turned off, I won't make any changes right now.

Thanks

The TIme Capsule is purely a network drive.. it cannot be connected locally. There is no option to use the disk in any other way. The TC is also a router, you do not have to use the router part. It can be bridged but it must live in the network.. there is no other way to use it.

I do follow that the FW800 drives are not networked.. they cannot be networked unless you shared them from the computer....

But we seem to be missing your question somehow..And I am sorry about that.

TC is designed by apple for Time Machine backups.. almost exclusively.. and actually for laptops.. which are going to use wireless since it is hard to plug devices into them. For a desktop computer a TC is really not the preferred device, unless you need a secondary backup located away from your computer.

Perhaps tell us more why you want the TC.. and then we can explain better.

But as a location for TM backups.. a local drive plugged into your desktop is far superior. Superior speed and reliability. Superior cost effectiveness.

IMHO it adds nothing..

TC is for Time Machine backups. Otherwise you are doing just fine with the Extreme and Express. I see no advantage for backup over what you have already. So there is no overwhelming case for it.