Super Duper/Time Machine -partioning Raid 1 Device Strategy
 

Four related questions:

I am purchasing a new external drive to be used as both a Time Machine Backup and a SuperDuper clone location. I intend it to be setup as a Raid 1 Device, perhaps the NewerTech Guardian Maximus 2TB+2TB.
The external drive will be used primarily to be the backup for a iMac running Snow Leopard that has about 330 GB on it.

1) Is it really necessary to set up the SuperDuper and Time Machine on separate partitions? Any advantages/disadvantages?
2) Is there any potential problem with the mirroring of such a dual-nature backup strategy?
3) Besides the fact that the Raid 1 nature of the device is "idiot-proof", is there any other advantage to doing that than having, say, 2 separate 2 TB drives? Perhaps, that could cause problems with trying to set up time machine.

4) Finally, a related question. I currently have the iMac backing up to a 1 TB drive with 2 partitions - one for SuperDuper and one for TM. The TM side is currently full and "won't" back up anymore. Any potential problems with doing a temporary solution (until I get the new drive) by doing a "live" repartitioning using the Snow Leopard Disk Utility?

Thanks,
Nick

Hi, Nick.

1. See http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=3566

2. Hardware mirroring shouldn't present any problem, it's transparent to the application.

3. Transparent protection against hardware failure is always valuable. I RAID mirror (or use higher RAID modes with distributed parity and thus recoverability, e.g. Drobo) everything, always, without exception (well, save for things like laptops, which can't).

4. I assume Time Machine could handle that, but don't know for sure. Of course, you could have Time Machine remove older backups... it's not really intended as an infinite archive.