Advice requested re setting up new backup process

[kevinm]

I'm hoping that I can get some advice about setting up a new backup procedure. I have read quite a bit in the discussions and help but am still not sure how to proceed.

My situation is this: I have a MBP with a 300GB hard drive. I have a brand new 1TB external drive. I want to use both SuperDuper! as well as Time Machine.

Questions:

1. How many partitions should I make on the external drive? Do I make one for SD and one for TM? Or do I need more for SD? I have read about people making one for a bootable backup and one for a general backup (not quite sure why this would be needed).

2. How big should these partitions be? Am I correct in thinking that the SD partition (if just one) need be no larger than the source drive ie it can't grow? Should I therefore make one partition 300GB and the other 700GB for TM? Or is it not necessary for the TM to be this big?

3. A slightly unrelated question: If I attach 2 external drives, can I get SD to back up to 2 drives simultaneously?

Thanks very much for any help.

Kevin

[dnanian]

In general, you'd make two partitions, one for SD! and one for TM. As you indicated, I'd use a 300GB one for SD! and the rest for TM.

You can't get us to back up to two drives "simultaneously", but if you schedule two backups to the two different drives, say, one minute apart, we'll run them back to back.