I have partitioned external hard drive in 3, one of which is allocated Time Machine. In disc utility the partition for Time Machine har a shaded portion. What does this mean and how can I remove it?
iMac 24″, macOS 15.3
The photos & videos stored on this external drive....are they the original files? If so, where do you have the backup copies of the items within the Photo and Video partitions? If the data in those two partitions are important, then they need their own backup as well to some other external media.
Just checking since I've seen too many people with no backup of the data on their external drives, or they backup that data to the TM backup located on the same physical drive which is not a backup.
Edit: Also, I don't recommend partitioning any drive because sooner or later the user realizes one or more partitions are too small. With APFS file system, it is now very easy to create a new APFS volume which shares the storage pool with other AFPS volumes within the same APFS Container....these other APFS volumes act like a partition, but don't require physically modifying partitions on the bare metal.
Add, delete, or erase APFS volumes in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
The shaded or lined section, reflects the space that is used in the partition. Because it is named Time Machine, I suspect that it is a Time Machine backup.
FWIW 300GB of space for Time Machine is really small. Ideally you need to use a dedicated external drive just for Time Machine that is at least 2 or 3 times the size of your Mac's Internal Storage Drive.
amgreven wrote:
As I understand it Time Machine will automatically erase the oldest back-ups; as long as I have recent back-ups available then this should cover my needs. Thanks for your help.
You understand it incorrectly. It will try to remove the oldest backups, but Time Machine does not make multiple copies of unchanged files. There may be only one copy of the actual file. It won't delete anything from the backup if it still exists on the Mac.
Just to avoid having too many devices I thought I would make 3 partitions on one external hard drive. As I understand it the space available in the partition on the external hard disc can be expanded according to your needs. Thanks for your advice.
As I understand it the space available in the partition on the external hard disc can be expanded according to your needs. Thanks for your advice.
That may be what you hope to happen, but it doesn't work that way in reality.
You can erase from the "end" of the partition map and merge that into the immediately preceding partition. So, you cannot expand your Time Machine partition as it is at the end of the map.
It would have been much better to create APFS Volumes on the one drive in the single container.
How are you backing up the other two partitions?
Thank you for your qualified advice. A dedicated HD only for TM must be the answer. I have also consulted the article about separate volumes within the APFS container. By the way, I also read somewhere that another device, such as a HD connected to my Macbook, can be used to back up my iMac on TM. The Macbook is 11 years old, so I'm not too concerned about losing data on that.
An additional thought - I would suggest that you get a different external drive which should be exclusively dedicated to Time Machine backups. They aren't that expensive.
As I understand it Time Machine will automatically erase the oldest back-ups; as long as I have recent back-ups available then this should cover my needs. Thanks for your help.
There is approximately 150 GB available on the Mac HD so I thought 300 GB on the external device should be enough.
Thank you Barney for your advice. It sounds as if I should acquire an additional hard drive dedicated to Time Machine.
I have partitioned external hard drive
