SuperDuper Set-up with Drobo: .sparseimage vs. partitions

[quixado]

First, thanks to Dave for reaching out to me on Twitter and suggesting posting here for set-up advice. Beyond software, it's the people that can make applications rock!

So...my back-up hard drive just died (WD MyBook POS). I'm on an Intel Mac running Leopard. The old HD was set-up into 4 partitions:
- Time Machine (double the MBP HD size)
- SuperDuper (same as MBP size, running periodic Smart Updates)
- Backups rsync'd from Linux box
- Misc back-ups

I decided to replace it with a Drobo (http://drobo.com). In doing research on the best way to set it up, reviews on multiple partitions are mixed because Drobo doesn't support OS X's partition moving (although people seem to have successfully done it). So as you add capacity, you wind up having to just add more partitions.

One solution I was looking at was the use of .sparseimages to create volumes for TM and SD. This would allow Drobo to have just one expandable partition, yet have max-sized volumes for backups. Some of this guidance came from: http://cli.gs/UnQpGP

I don't have much experience creating or using sparseimages, or using with SD. I would appreciate any feedback, recommendations, settings, or configuration guidance.

Thanks and happy holidays!

- Josh