Using SuperDuper with a 500 Gb MyBook

[SugaredJuggler]

Hello there, I am planning on upgrading my MacBook to Leopard. Before I do this I thought that I would use SuperDuper to backup everything. I have a 500 Gb MyBook External Firewire hard drive. Now I have been putting things on here like all my music, full dvd movies, and photos. But now SuperDuper is telling me that I need to reconfigure the hard drive in order to make a backup. Can I do this without deleting everything? Or do I need to back everything up from the hard drive? Backing up everything would be a little more of a hassle but not too bad. Anyone now what I could do? Thanks!

[dnanian]

You're best off partitioning the drive and storing your backup on its own partition. See "Storing a backup alongside other files on a destination drive" in the User's Guide (Help > User's Guide)...

[SugaredJuggler]

Is that reliable? Is there a way to actually partition the MyBook and then configuring that as needed?

[dnanian]

Yes, you can partition the iBook with data on it using iPartition, from Coriolis Systems.

[justG]

...which, by the way, is a brilliant app. I purchased a license on the same day I bought SuperDuper!, which I believe was the day after I got my Mac (allowing for research 'n' reading reviews 'n' such!). =)

iPartition 3 was recently released, is Leopard-compatible, and works great. It even deals with Boot Camp partitions without having a coronary.

Just one thing: partitioning a drive non-destructively means moving all that data around. If you've got a bunch of stuff on that 500GB drive, expect the process of creating a new partition with iPartition to take a while. I tried it on a 500GB drive that had about 250GB of data on it, and ages later, I thought it had stalled so I aborted it. When it wouldn't abort, I force-quit the app. Those are both really bad ideas. So don't be impatient like me, just let it do its thing and go to sleep. =)