Backing up from external hard disc

[martincloake]

Advice appreciated. I run a 120GB Intel Mini, attached via USB to a MiniMax 350GB external drive. I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, plus my website folder and in future maybe some archived work as my main drive fills up.

I'm new to Leopard, but want to run Time Machine to back up my main drive to an always on Firewire drive (Iomega 160GB portable). Doing this means my libraries, plus stuff on the external drive, aren't backed up. So I want to use SuperDuper to back these up from the external 350 drive to the attached Firewire drive. I've read the user manual to see how to script to ignore particular folders, but I can't work out if it's possible to script to 'only copy' certain folders so I can back up my external drive stuff.

To explain in simpler terms - I use an external drive as an extension of my Mini to up my storage capacity, and need to get a backup strategy that covers both sections.

If anyone can walk me through how to do this, I'd be very grateful

[dnanian]

You can't combine folders from two different source volumes like that. Instead, you need to partition the backup drive into two volumes, one for each source. Then, schedule two "Backup - all files" to back up to the appropriate destination volume. Make sense?

[martincloake]

It sort of does, Dave, thanks. But I thought Backup all files made a bootable copy of the HD, not a backup?

At the moment my FW drive is my Time Machine disc. Do I need to reformat that disc to partition it?

[dnanian]

It does both, actually - it makes a copy of the source to the destination. Whether it's bootable depends on whether the source has OS X on it.

Partitioning would require erasing in most cases, although 3rd party software -- iPartition -- can partition without erasing.

[martincloake]

Cheers Dave. Almost there - and I apologise because I'm probably being a bit thick here (I will blame it on lack of sleep due to late nights spent sorting the mess created by Apple's move to MobileMe, but that's another story).

I want to do two separate things. One is to make a bootable copy of my HD, to store on a separate, unconnected HD to cover dire emergency.
The other is to schedule regular backups of music and pic libraries from the HD that acts as an extension of my main drive to a permanantly-connected FW drive. This drive also has my TM backups. Essentially, using two bits of software to back up from two different hard drives to one backup drive.

If I can do this, I'll just disconnect the FW drive, reconnect, partition it, schedule TM back up to one partition and SuperDuper backup of libraries to the other. Has my frazzled brain got that right?

[dnanian]

That'd be the best way, yes. Drop me a note to support and I'll give you tips on how to isolate just the libraries in a copy script.

[martincloake]

Magic. Thanks. Your instant and clear response puts Apple to shame :-) (Although I realise we are talking about slightly different scales here) lol!