Dumb questions from "newbie"

[TerryW]

I have a 17" G4 & a 20" G5 & want to make backups to my 3 yr old unused firewire 160 GB Maxtor OneTouch. I tried using Retrospect but got a lot of error messages & have been told SuperDuper is better! I have the free version for now.

Although I have read a lot of Help & How-to stuff I am still confused :confused:
1: Can I make a bootable backup using SuperDuper & the Maxtor?
2: If Yes do I then make seperate backups & update them regularly or is it the bootable copy that is updated?
3: I suppse I'm asking if I should partition the Maxtor for the bootable copy & keep the other backed-up files seperately?

I hope someone understands what I'm asking??? Oh - I do understand that both Macs will/may have their own partitions on the Maxtor if this is how to do it!

Many thanks,
TerryW.

[dnanian]

Yes, you should be able to make a bootable copy on the Maxtor, assuming it's properly partitioned as "Apple Partition Map" (see the Options button in the Disk Utility partition tab), and you've done a "Backup - all files".

That backup is your backup, and has your files, so that's what's typically updated. You can, of course, keep more than one backup.

[TerryW]

Thanks - I'll have a bash at it! I just wish it didn't seem so daunting!
TerryW

[TerryW]

I've done a bootable backup & it's all there so I went ahead & & bought it so now I must read all about it & get up to speed. Reading the forum posts is very enlightening too! :)

[dnanian]

Great: hopefully, now that you've seen it's not so bad, you'll be more confident about your future backups.