Time Machine - selective vs what HDD size ?

I never used Time Machine, partly because I have multiple hard drives and volumes and preferred to do selective backups manually until now. And with several terabytes, just did not want to have to purchase a 10 TB drive for this !... So I ended out with several methods (and destinations) for backups.

And since this machine has to remain on OSX 10.8.5 for now (for third party compatibilities), that is why I do not want to have to re-install if something happens...

However, while I read you can select ''files/folders no to be included'', this still leave me with some questions:

1) Can I select entire drives or volumes *not to* be included ? Even if I eventually add new files or folders on that volumes ?

2) Will TM backup the NTFS volumes I have (assuming I do not exclude these) ?

3) Considering TM can backup some OSX configurations over time, if I need to return to one (such this might have been the case recently after an update screwed everything for 24 hours...), and this, without recovering all the data ?

Considering I might have overall 3-4 TB of data but only need to backup maybe 1TB plus OSX config itself, I would expect to purchase a 2TB only HDD. Is this realistic (by putting exclusions to avoid backing up things that do not need to be backed up or that are backed up elsewhere such as on a server ?)

Thanks,

Rob