New to SD - format recommendations

[cashbridge]

I have just purchased a new 320 gig firewire/USB external drive to back up my intel iMac (250 gig HD). Because of all the great recommendations about SuperDuper I would like to use that as my back-up program. Being new to all of this - what is the best way to format the external to accomplish this? Do I need partitions, etc?
Suggestions?
Thanks.
C.

[dnanian]

If you want to store other things besides the copy on the drive, you'll want to partition it. You should use the "GUID" partition scheme (see the Options button in the partition tab of Disk Utility), and the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format.

[cashbridge]

If you want to store other things besides the copy on the drive, you'll want to partition it. You should use the "GUID" partition scheme (see the Options button in the partition tab of Disk Utility), and the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format.
Thanks for the quick response.

So how much space should be allotted to each partition? Do I need to have any "room" leftover beyond the size of my internal drive? With the other partition could I store files from my laptop if necessary?
Thanks.
C.

[TMay]

cashbridge

As far as the backup partition, no, it does not need to be any larger than the volume you wish to back up (250 gigs, I gather.) In fact, it only has to be as large as the data you wish to back up, plus some allowance for growth as you add things to your main drive. What I mean is that if you are only using 75 of your 250 gigs, it might be that a 150 gig backup partition would hold you fine.

And yes, the other partition(s) can store anything you want, including files from your laptop.

I assume you have seen the warnings here about Leopard.

[Larry Estes]

Let me tell you what worked for me:

I have a G5 2.5 GHZ Tower (purchased Oct. 2004) and a MacBook Pro (purchased Oct. 2007) an OWC 500GB FireWire external HD (purchased Nov.2007). The MacBook Pro came installed with Tiger. I immediately partitioned the OWC external HD (APM) and cloned the Tower and the MacBook Pro to separate volumes on the OWC external using SD. Then I partitioned the MacBook Pro into 2 volumes, 1 for Tiger and 1 for Leopard. I then cloned Tiger (back form the external) to the MacBook Pro and when Leopard came out I installed it on the Tower and the MacBook Pro and made clones of both onto the OWC external (using Carbon Copy Cloner). Because of my fooling around with Leopard on the MacBook Pro I had to do a reinstall, actually cloned back from the OWC external to the MacBook Pro (CCC again) and all went well.

The Tower is formatted APM.
The OWC external is formatted APM.
The MacBook Pro is formatted GUID.

I can boot from any volume on the external and of course the Tower and the MacBook Pro.

This procedure is working for me!

[cashbridge]

cashbridge

As far as the backup partition, no, it does not need to be any larger than the volume you wish to back up (250 gigs, I gather.) In fact, it only has to be as large as the data you wish to back up, plus some allowance for growth as you add things to your main drive. What I mean is that if you are only using 75 of your 250 gigs, it might be that a 150 gig backup partition would hold you fine.

And yes, the other partition(s) can store anything you want, including files from your laptop.

I assume you have seen the warnings here about Leopard.
This sounds reasonable and will proceed in the direction of a partitioned Mac OS extended (journaled) format.
Thanks.