Backing Up Firewire Partition to Notebook.
 

My external firewire drive has 2 partitions named as:

(1) PB17 Backup (10GB): stores the backup clone of my Powerbook.
(2) Pocket HD (30GB): stores my personal files, programs, etc.

Does it make sense to use SD! to backup (2) to the Powerbook since I can do a copy and paste of (2)?

I think it does. We're much faster backing it up, since we won't copy things that are already copied. Give it a try and you'll see.

(Note, though, that (1) already has (2) in it, doesn't it?)

Can I use the same method to copy Pocket HD, or use a .dmg file instead? If I use a direct backup method, where on the Powerbook would SD! copy all the files and folders to? Is there a risk it might delete some files in the process?

Hold on, maybe I've misunderstood what you're doing here.

You want to "back up" your personal files to the PowerBook, as opposed to storing them on the PowerBook and backing them up on the external drive?

That's right, Dave. I got 6 different folders totalling about 16GB on Partition 2 of the external drive - that I wish to backup to the notebook...else if the external drive fails completely I'll lose my work, files, pictures, programs altogether...

I don't wanna backup my Notebook to Partition 1 of the external drive together with the 16GB of info.

What do you think?

Why not put the stuff on the external drive on the PowerBook, then, back up the lot to the external drive?

I suppose I could, but I'd really wish to compress the whole stuff before dumping it on the notebook.

I tried various compression methods using Stuffit...but the meter shows 5-6 hours? That's horribly long...even creating a .dmg file using SD! wouldn't take that long I suppose...

Maybe I should try using DU and see how it works...

I don't think Disk Utility is going to help you here. The problem I see is that you're trying to do too many things with too few partitions. I mean, you can back up your files to the laptop, but the laptop is far more likely to fail (given the heat environment, and the fact that it's portable) than the external drive, so it's sort of false security...