want to back up 3 drives onto 1 big drive
 

I sure hope there is a way for me to back up 2 smaller internal and 1 smaller firewire drive onto one big 400gb internal drive that I just installed. But after reading the manual and looking at the FAQs, it appears that there might not be a way.

Please tell me how I can accomplish this. I hope I don't have to partition it. But that is the only way I can think of right now.

I was planning on doing Smart Updates. I just registered Super Duper!

You'll either have to partition it or use Sparse Images, either of which can be Smart Updated, Chris.

Why would you not want to partition the external? You can do so relatively flexibly, and -- if you want -- you can use a hybrid approach, where a directly bootable volume is in its own partition, while the other two are in images...

thanks,

I actually have FOUR drives I need to back up. If I create 4 partitions, that will create too many icons on my desktop AND in the finder window (on the left side). I would have a total of 8 volumes that way!!! too much clutter.

I have an 80gb, 120gb, and two 200gb drives, all of which are 2/3 full

I suppose the best approach would be the hybrid approach. so thanks for that suggestion. But let me first ask you one question about restoring from a sparsed image.

It doesn't seem to be much of a big deal to use Disk Utility to restore from a sparsed disk image. All you have to do is boot with your OSX Installer disk, and use Disk UTility to choose the Super Duper! created image to restore the original drive, right? that doesn't seem very inconvenient, to me.

question: when creating scripts to back up multiple drives, do I have to stagger the start times? if so, by how much? I don't know how much time to allow for each of the four drives.

question: after backing up last night, my backup HD now has the exact same Icon as my original icon. how can I prevent the bootable backup's Hard Drive icon from looking like the original drive's icon?

To restore from a sparse image, you have to mount it first (using the File menu). You then use the volume that appears as the source of the restoration.

You don't have to stagger the start times for a backup -- just pop them all at the same time, and we'll figure it out.

Finally, regarding the icon: it's a file like any other on the disk. If you'd like it to be handled specially, you can do so: look on the forums, and you'll find a little "set_icon" script that can be used. It was posted, with instructions, within the last few days, so it's right on the first page of posts.

Hope that helps!