Partitioning Backup hard drive???

[dnanian]

Lee:

A few things to note here.

- When you take delivery of your G5, it comes with a DVD that contains everything that your machine ships with. As such, you don't have to back up the as-shipped configuration unless you really want to: it can be restored from the DVD.

- That said, it's impossible for anyone to tell you how big the partition needs to be, because it depends on the size of the files on the drive. So, when you get the machine, do a Cmd-i ("Get Info") on the drive. See how much space is taken up. Add about 20% for "slack space", and that's how big to make the partition.

- If you want to create a Safety Clone, yes, you'll need a partition for that as well. Typically, 8-12GB is plenty large enough.

So, the question is: how?

It's really, really easy. Start Disk Utility, select the drive you're going to partition, and then click the Partition tab. Then, choose the # of partitions you want from the "Volume Scheme" pop-up, and drag the dividers to set the size (or, enter a size).

Pretty easy stuff -- you'll be on your way in no time.