soon to be a first time SD user - partition question

[southside]

Hi,
I have a Powerbook G4 1.25 GHz and running Panther... I have made small backups of various data over the past 3 years or so of owning the notebook. I am getting a LaCie D2 Quadra 500 gb external drive in the mail shortly (hopefully very soon). I plan to use SD on it to create an image backup of the drive. After that I plan to try to update to either TIGER or LEOPARD. I have read horror stories of the LEOPARD upgrade and also understand that the current version of SD is not LEOPARD compatible. What are recommendations of partitioning the new LaCie HD - or not to partition it? We also have an old Dell PC running XP. We put it away, haven't used it in quite awhile. There is a remote possibility that we might want to use it in the future, and if so, might want to backup the latest and greatest from it to the external drive. If we do that, I know I will need at least two partitions - one in the HFS and the other in NTFS (or FAT - for Ghosting). At any rate, would like to hear recommendations on the partioning of the drive. If anybody has LEOPARD running on a Powerbook G4 1.25 GHz notebook (with 1.5 Gigs RAM), would also like to hear if it is best to just stick with what works - PANTHER, rather than upgrade to TIGER or LEOPARD...

thanks in advance!,
southside

[dnanian]

If you're considering creating a bootable copy, you have to use the Apple Partition Map partition scheme with this drive and your mac. As such, you cannot share it with Windows without using special software on the user side.

So -- I'd suggest investing in a different drive for your PC.

[TMay]

southside

On the other issue you raise, upgrading of your current Panther, I guess all things being equal I would first upgrade to to Tiger, take it to its current incarnation (10.4.11) and then go to Leopard after a bit. See if all your important stuff works in Tiger (it should) and then when SD is Leopard compatible and L has a few more bugs removed, go there. (I do think "horror story" is a little strong, but there are some issues for some.)

By "all things being equal" I meant money. Neither of these are free upgrades, as you know. If you have to pay for install disks, then I guess I'd only pay once, go direct to Leopard (but wait a few weeks.) If you have access to a Tiger install disk without needing to purchase new, then I'd do as I first said...start with Tiger.

I am running Tiger on a number of machines, including G4 PB's similar to yours, and it has been a fine release. My sister also has a 17" G4 PB, is running Leopard, and has had no issues....but her usage is basic and simple and her son is a software engineer. (JK, he is, but he hasn't had to advise Mom on Leopard yet.)

[southside]

Thanks David and TMAY... so it is true, that with this software you often get speedy responses from the developer... that is awesome! will leave the drive ASIS and just hook it up FW800 to my relatively old-fashioned PowerBook 1.25GHz and create an image... planning on upgrading to the paid-for version of SD... also, TMAY, thanks for that info... had heard some folks complaining about TIGER on the POWERBOOK G4 models - that the indexing with SPOTLIGHT takes forever, etc... have wanted it since the introduction of widgets, but have been holding off on the upgrade... have heard that some folks do not get the best graphics visuals with LEOPARD on their Powerbook G4s - something to have to do with the higher quality graphics are only available on Intel CPU based Macs... and I know that you will mostly hear about horror stories on discussion boards, since those that do not have problems usually don't need help/assistance/etc... one of the main upgrade problems has already been discovered - it was a piece of software that some 3rd Party programs were using... pretty sure I don't have that on my Powerbook, so that wouldn't be an issue... of course I would loose SD functionality with LEOPARD and that would be a bad thing - would rather have dependable complete/bootable/image backups...

with the SD bootable images - you are still able to restore individual directories/files - right? my drive should be here any day now... I have an APO address (live in Bangkok) and had to use an APO shipping company to get it here (www.apobox.com) - so it has taken longer than I would have thought... CAN'T WAIT!! will feel MUCH better with a complete image backup!!! and I am thinking that doing a clean install of TIGER (or LEOPARD) will be a good thing to do... sorta like giving the POWERBOOK an enema - remove all the nasty bits, reorganize the disk, etc, etc...

later and thanks TONs for your responses!!
southside

[dnanian]

Yes, the storage format for the destination is the same as the source, so you can just navigate, in Finder, to what you want to restore and copy it back.

[TMay]

southside

Yes, the initial Spotlight indexing of your main volume will not be speedy, but once it is done, you should not notice it updating. (In my experience, initial time will vary with volume size, number of files and their composition.)