Backing up to a partitioned hard drive

[Brad]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Yes, as long as the partitioning scheme is native to the Mac. In general, you should partition using "APM", unless your use is exclusively Intel-Mac, in which case you can use GUID.

Hi Dave,

I have a question for you regarding this (and a bit more!)... Here's what I'd like to do: Use an external drive to backup both a G4 iBook (using firewire) and a Dell laptop (also using firewire, or USB 2).

My thinking is that "something like this" will work: I partition (using GUID--is this part of OS X's utils?--I'm an OS X newbie) to make say, 90 GB of my 250GB firewire/usb drive formatted with HSB+(?) or whatever the Mac's native format is, then make the other 160GB (I have a bigger drive on the Dell laptop) either FAT32, or preferably (I think) NTFS. Then I use SD! to backup to the 90 GB partition and whatever software (probably the Retrospect that came with the drive) on Windows to backup the Dell to the 160GB partition.

So far so good or am I already in fantasy land? Can I make the other partition NTFS or is it better to stick with FAT32? Then...

Can I set it up so that the weekly or monthly is a Read/Write Sparse image that goes to the 90 GB partition (which I would perform), then the usual user of the Mac G4 iBook (my girlfriend) can just press the 'backup button' on the drive to do her daily to the same 90 GB partition? Or do I need to create a 30 GB partition and a 60 GB (her iBook has a 30 GB drive) and can I set it up so the backup button goes to the 30 GB partition for her dailies and then I just store the weekly and/or monthly sparse image to the 60GB? Also, how large do the SmartUpdate's grow? She's pretty close to the max on her 30 GB drive already, so maybe I should just have one "periodic" every couple weeks or so, and just make two 45 GB partitions? (Because her dailies will be done using Smart Update and the button.)

Or can I not even do the multi-partitioning for two OSes like I want (OS X and Windows)?

And also--you must think I'm in la-la land at this point--we will be able to boot off the daily backup done by the button (that is, SmartUpdate-d)?

Sorry for such a long and detailed question, but I'm guessing that others may want to do a similar thing and might benefit from your answers...

Btw, I when I was in Fry's buying my firewire drive last night, the guy standing next to me said, "Oh yeah, that drive works great on the Mac, boots from the firewire and everything, and by the way, have you ever heard of Super Duper!? That's the *best* software!" I laughed and said, Yes, that's why I'm here--and the guy who wrote it is an old friend of mine.

Anyway, thought you'd appreciate the story!

Cheers,
Brad (C.)