Hard drives, backups questions

[Sebastian]

Hey gang

I would like your opinion on how to set up my hard drives.

For the last couple of years, this is how I have worked with this stuff:

-All my Live projects are currently in the Mac Hard Drive. Until now I have back up most Live projects to DVD/Cds.

-I have a 150GB external hard drive where I store: all drum loops, all mp3/itunes collection, all pictures, all personal documents. I have about 17GB left on this drive.

-I just received a Western Digital 1 TB External Drive (usb/400/800/esata).

Im trying to organize how to backup all this stuff and figure out if I need to move any of the files I mentioned, now that I have this monster new 1Tb drive.

I dont have Time Machine because I dont have the version of Mac that has TM.

Would appreciate your comments, ideas, suggests.

Thank you

Sebastian

[steko]

Hey Sebastian


Get Carbon Copy Cloner. It's donationware & can do incremental & bootable backups.

I use it all the time & it works like a charm!

Partition the 1TB Drive as Rave said.

For your Intel Mac use the Guid partition scheme in Disc Utility.

One partition as big as your internal drive for doing bootable backups of the internal drive, the rest for data partition.


Maybe one big problem with WD-drives & booting/cloning:

http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=14059


Carbon Copy Cloner

Downloadlink: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Documentation: http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CC ... CHelp.html

Carbon Copy Cloner Discussion: http://forums.bombich.com/viewforum.php?f=12



In your profile is 10.4.7. Why not 10.4.11? http://support.apple.com/downloads/Mac_ ... te__Intel_


steko

[Sebastian]

thanks guys

forgive my ignorance, what is the point of partitioning?

Also, did you say partition the actual Mac Hard Drive also?

FYI, Im not a prof studio, just a bedroom warrior

[timothyallan]

+ 1 for carbon copy cloner, I use it for all my backups.

[Sebastian]

hmm dont quite get the partition thing yet....

[timothyallan]

yeah, i dunno why you'd partition it either unless you constantly re-install your OS?

[steko]

Hey Sebastian!


Do not partition your internal HD!


The point of partitioning your external HD:

Let's say your internal HD is 250, or 500GB. Thats much less than your external 1TB HD.

Usually you want to have a bootable external clone, which is identical to your internal HD. If you erase something on your internal HD, on next cloning it will be erased on your external HD also. (One could also make backups, where stuff that was erased on your internal HD will not be erased on your external HD. Usually you don't wanna do that & even the biggest external would get filled up soon.

So not partition the external would be a waste of space, if your internal HD is much smaller than your external HD.

Make one partition as big as your internal (identical clone), the second for other stuff which fits not on your internal (in the end you would need to backup that stuff somewhere else...)



There are many possible scenarios, so please read the Carbon Copy Cloner manual thoroughly for more & deeper info, especially if you are a newbie to this stuff!!!

http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CC ... CHelp.html


Also check the link about problems with western digital HDs in my first post!


Good luck & happy cloning


steko

[steko]

You should also check, if your external HD is formatted the right way. Most new HDs come preformatted for PC (FAT 32).

You should defenitely change that to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in Disk Utility.

Also even if you wanna have just one partition, check it has GUID partition scheme (for an Intel Mac) in Disk Utility.


Finally, when the external HD is mounted, go to System Preferences - Spotlight - Privacy Tab & add your external HD (drag & drop), then it will not get indexed.

If you don't, everytime you connect your external, Spotlight is indexing & on searches with Spotlight you would always get duplicate search results (original + cloned version), which usually makes no sens & is confusing.

If you have two partitions, for the second one with data, which is not on your internal, indexing makes sense.




steko

[Sebastian]

thanks, ill have to read up on partitioning more. I dont quite understand why I may need to do it