Hiya Geoff,

On Sep 19, 2010, at 2:11 PM, Geoffrey Heard wrote:

> I can't find any instructions for Time Machine. The first thing it wants to do, apparently, is to take total control of the HD I want to use for back-ups. Is this normal? Can't it use just part of the HD?

If you have partitioned the HD, you can let Time Machine to use just a single partition (Select Disk in TM preferences).

That is what I'm doing. On the first partition of the external HD for TM backup, I have OS X installed  and sometimes boot from it to run Repair Disk on the internal HD. Faster than booting from OS X DVD and Disk Utility in the external HD is newer.

Mine is a FireWire HD but, IIRC, Intel Macs can boot from a USB HD if its format is GUID Partition Table.

> Let me explain the situation.
> 
> I'm about to embark on a trip using my #2 machine which, at the end of the journey, I want to leave behind me with some other gear so it can be there ready for use next time I travel to that destination.
> 
> Now -- what I thought I would do was back up my #1 machine to a 500 GB USB HD using Time Machine, use that to put all my stuff on the #2 machine, then during the trip, let Time Machine do incremental; back-ups from time to time.
> 
> When I return, I thought I would plug that USB HD into my #1 machine and use Time Machine to bring my #1 machine up to date.
> 
> But will Time Machine do that? If not, does anyone have any suggestions about what will?

Personally I have never tried it but I think you can do that using TM.
cf. <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html>


Kino