Hi Josh, While you can partition a new hard drive fairly easily with Disk Utility by selecting the drive and going to the "Partition" tab, you might consider just getting a dedicated hard drive for Time Machine backups. Time Machine will fill up the available space, deleting the oldest backups as it runs out of room, which is why you want to either partition the drive or dedicate a drive if you are going to continue using it over time. And this is also why you don't want to store other files in the same location if you continue to run Time Machine and run out of space -- since these other, non-Time Machine files, can eventually be overwritten when this happens.
Starting up Time Machine can be as simple as attaching a brand new hard drive (that is formatted for Mac's file system) and answering the prompt for "Do you want to use this drive for Time Machine backups?", which includes an option for deciding later if you don't want to decide now. I like to keep a bootable clone of my current operating system. You can create this with either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. This lets you get a working system up right away by attaching the cloned hard drive, and booting up while holding the "Option" key. Then, once you've heard the chime and activity stop after 10 or 15 seconds, press either the right or left arrow key followed by the return key to boot from your clone. The only amendment for Lion is that your clone won't include the Lion recovery partition, but you can create a separate recovery drive if you read the TidBITS article, "Lion Recovery Disk Assistant Creates External Recovery Drives": http://tidbits.com/article/12411 You can read details about how to create a bootable clone in Lynne's blog article from last year: • "How to copy (Backup), (Clone) Your System Start Volume" http://maciosaccessdotnet.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/mac-osx-system-backup/ You can also get even more extensive details by taking advantage of your list member's 80% discount, and getting the "Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac" volume. I'll quote from a recent post by Travis about the two (off-list) contact points for doing this. "So, anyone is welcome to purchase directly from support at mac-access.net, or myself ([email protected]) and you will get the same books at the same prices. With the added caveat that if you purchase through me, I do not have the facilities to offer the downloadable bookshelf that Gordon and Lynne maintain, so you will need to contact them to get that setup after the transaction is complete." The reference to the downloadable bookshelf is way of getting access to a bookshelf for the most recent copies of your book purchases that is more accessible than the main TidBITS site. This is useful if you want to get another version (e.g. ePub for reading on your mobile device) or access to a later version after your purchase. Since Lynne and Gordon are away at Wimbledon at present, setups for the bookshelf access, or processing the orders through them might take a bit longer. They usually handle the non-U.S. orders and Travis handles the U.S. ones. You can read more about the Take Control book on backups and download a PDF sample of the content here: http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/backing-up HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jul 2, 2012, at 7:56 AM, josh gregory wrote: > Oh wow... very interesting. And a good end to it, too. So this brings > up a question: How do you go about setting up time machine? I've > looked, and it looks like the only real way to do it is by > partitioning a part of the hard drive, which I'm not keen on just yet. > Thoughts? Thanks! > > On 7/2/12, Sarah Alawami <[email protected]> wrote: >> I think I learned a lot from this mess that happened to this poor guy.. and >> there are some good products as well. >> >> >> >> http://www.macworld.com/article/1167339/macbook_woe_a_tale_of_a_near_mac_disaster_averted_by_good_backups.html#lsrc.rss_howto >> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
