Can I use the same external drive?

[corlin]

Corlin here:

Can I use the same external drive partition, for both a "Safety Clone" and for a "Smart Update Clone"?

I have a 250 GB firewire external drive. Divided into three partitions, one I use exclusively for large video files and my iTunes library, another has my "Smart Update Clone", and the third I use for a compressed backup using "Tri-Backup".

Yes I will continue to use another backup product for a while.

Can I put the "Safety Clone" on the same partition as the "Smart Update Clone" ?

[dnanian]

Well, Smart Update is a copy method, while a Safety Clone is a type of clone. If you have an existing Safety Clone, you can update that Safety Clone with Smart Update, which, as you might expect, means updating it will go faster then if you were to erase and re-copy all the files.

The Safety Clone itself (produced by one of the two Safety Clone copy scripts) is not a full backup. In fact, it's almost the opposite of one -- it's a "checkpoint" of only the operating system files and (mostly) Apple applications, designed to allow you to boot to it to isolate your system from unwanted changes or unstable updates.

One of the Backup copy scripts is the thing to use for a real backup and -- while it can be stored on the same drive as a safety clone, cannot be stored on the same partition -- you can't really have two bootable copies of the OS on the same partition... you really need two partitions.

Does that answer your question?

[corlin]

Corlin here:

Yes. As I thought only one boot per partition.
Ok What about this.....

I boot into my complete clone on the external drive partition, then use SuperDuper to erase and make a Safety Clone on the internal drive on My iMac.
Then boot my internal drive and play with *nix stuff I want to expermaent with.

This isolates my play from the work I have to get done each day.

?

[dnanian]

I guess I don't see what that accomplishes: why not just make the safety clone on the external drive? The way you suggest, you're moving all your files to the external, then moving the OS stuff back. (And, at least under Panther, putting your user files on an external FireWire drive can cause trouble, because the FireWire drive -- unhacked -- won't mount early enough so your Home directory can be found.)

So, as I said, why not just make the safety clone to the external, and play around there?