Backing up multiple computers to one drive

[jscoonover]

First of thanks, maybe this isn't the place but i just wanted to say i really love SD-thanks for all your hard work!

I have a 300 GB drive that i was about to partition so that i can back up 2 computers an imac G5 (powerpc) and a macbook (intel). Is it possible to format partitions on the same drive differently (GUID and Apple)? If so, how? Or am i asking the wrong question?

Stated another way: I would love to be able have 2 bootable partitions (one intel based and on powerpc based) on the same drive using SD.

thanks for any help!

[dnanian]

You'll need to use "Apple Partition Map" to partition if you want to do this; note that Leopard really does not want you to do this with an Intel Mac, though... it's probably better, in 10.5. and later, to use separate drives.

[Van Helsing]

So if I were to have 3 x 1TB FireWire drives connected to my server.

Both RAID'd together to form 3TB worth of accumulative data storage.

Then have the 3TB Drive Partitioned into:

2 x 750Gb (GUID for Intel Mac)
2 x 250Gb (Apple P Map for PowerPC Mac)
4 x 120Gb (GUID for two Intel Mac Laptops)
1 x 80Gb (GUID for Intel Server)

As you may or may not be able to tell, I have 5 Macs here. I'd like to have two backups of each. One SD! Clone, and one Time Machine.

Could this idea be Achievable do you think?

Do I even need to do a full backup clone using SD?
Could Time Machine suffice enough as a Backup (is it bootable / fully restorable in the case of total data loss on the Mac?)

Thanks,
-Van

[dnanian]

I don't think you can partition a RAIDed drive, Van... and you certainly can't use different partition schemes on a single drive... you'd need to use sparse images.

[Van Helsing]

Ok, Sparse Images are fine then. I thought about not using them, because of the load it takes to mount a large sparse disk image before anything can be actually done with it.

The reason I wanted to partition is because of all the different drives sizes not fitting together very neatly.

Still, do you think an SD! Backup and a Time Machine backup at the same time are worth while? Can both be used to fully backup and restore a system?

[dnanian]

I do think redundancy is a good thing, and the two applications are good at different things as well. Of course, without having a bootable backup (due to the RAID), you lose out on a significant advantage of SD.

[Van Helsing]

So if I was to put SD!'s backups in Sparse images, would that get around the Partition type problem?

[dnanian]

Yes, but as I said, you lose out on a significant advantage: namely, you can't boot from the backup until it's restored.

[Van Helsing]

Well, that's not too bad.

I could have one Dedicated GUID Drive to backup and have bootable volumes on there for say, the laptops and server.

But for the bigger, desktop machines, which are a mix of PowerPC and Intel i'll have Sparse Disk Images, as there's no Partition Map to supporting the boot-ability of either type of mac.

[dnanian]

Well, you can use Apple Partition Map, but as I said, Leopard strongly discourages users from doing this (unfortunately).

[TMay]

Dave

You have said the same thing here two or three times very recently. Could you explain/state just what this "discouraging" from Leopard entails? How is it manifested? I think (but am not sure, running from Tiger just now) that Disk Utility under Leopard still says of the APM option, " ... or to use the disk as a non-startup disk with any Mac."

I guess my question is, is the discouragement in a help file somewhere, or does Leopard shall we say "actively" resist doing this?

[dnanian]

Two obvious things:

- You can't install Leopard to a drive that's partitioned as "APM" on an Intel Mac, which makes archive-and-installs difficult.

- If the drive is partitioned as APM, you can't select it in the Startup Disk preference pane.

[TMay]

Thanks. Sure, I see #1 now. Hadn't really focused on that. Number two I was/am well familiar with.