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Old 07-15-2013, 02:14 PM
jeremy_m jeremy_m is offline
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Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 14
away with partitions on my internal?

Dear Dave et. al.,

I have a scenario I would like advice with. I live by SD!, and bootable clones. I am constantly battling lack of internal drive space on my 15" 2008 MacBook Pro C2D, and have just splurged for a Solid State Hybrid 1TB drive to replace my 750GB internal.

I have always partitioned my internal so that my system and user is on a 500GB partition, because all of my backup drives/partitions are 500 GB. I have only one drive in easy rotation that could accommodate a 1TB partition to receive an SD! bootable clone, and this is unacceptable to me - I need one bootable clone onsite and one offsite at the very least.

I would like to avoid partition my internal this time around -- it is such a hassle to move movies and music to a separate drive inside, and i'm always jostling between the two partitions when space gets scarce, trying to keep at least 15% free on each...

So, after reading the SD! manual again, I wonder if you/all would comment on this possibility. I know this would not be in accordance with best practices....

I want to keep my internal un-partitioned this round if possible.

Is it possible to clone *reliably* using the backup-all files script:

1. to a smaller destination volume IF the amount of data being cloned is significantly less than (e.g., at least 100GB less than) the size of the destination volume?
2. exclude say ~/music and ~/movies, and
3. come out with a BOOTABLE clone (without the excluded folders, of course)

This would allow me to continue to have the security of multiple bootable clones while not upgrading all of my external backup drives and also while allowing me to proceed with an internal drive with a single partition. I am willing to have music and videos be backed up elsewhere and to mess with them separately.

Since I have multiple bootable drives with updated systems installed (not all clones), bootability is not absolutely necessary for the mass of other external clones themselves, but bootability upon restore is crucial -- since the beginning of my tenure with SD!, I have not had to reinstall applications. And I am not about to give this up now!

Thanks!
Jeremy
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