SD Questions

[Nekkid_Fish]

Newbie here ... so I hope my questions aren't too stoopid.

I downloaded a registered copy of SD last night, and although I know I need to get an external drive to backup to, I decided to go ahead and run a backup locally. But, it seemed to stall at some point, and my HD disk space available went down to Zero.

I stopped the SD, found the backup in my docs, deleted it, and my available disk space went back up to 201.69 GB.

I'm on a 1 GB iMac (Intel core) running Tiger - MAC OS X 10.4.8 (up to date version) ... just FYI.

On page 16 of the user manual, it shows an image where they can backup the HD to iDisk, Backup, or Disk Image. When I have SD open, the only choice I can backup to is Disk Image.

I do have a .mac account, so I'd think that I'd at least have iDisk as a choice, but it's not there.

So ... I'm curious as to why my backup attempt last night used up all of my disc space ... and why I don't have the choice of where to back up to like the user manual shows?

Thanks for any and all help! Jules

[dnanian]

Hi, Jules.

First, you can't really back up to the drive you're backing up. It's kind of a hall-of-mirrors thing, where it tries to store the backup in the backup which makes the backup bigger, which... you get the idea. You have to store the backup on some other drive.

Your iDisk is unlikely to be fast enough to work for this kind of thing: you really should get an external drive...

[Nekkid_Fish]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Hi, Jules.

First, you can't really back up to the drive you're backing up. It's kind of a hall-of-mirrors thing, where it tries to store the backup in the backup which makes the backup bigger, which... you get the idea. You have to store the backup on some other drive.

Your iDisk is unlikely to be fast enough to work for this kind of thing: you really should get an external drive...

Okie dokie ... going shopping now.

I'll be back with more questions I'm sure.

HUGz! Jules

[dnanian]

Get a good one, Jules -- you want a good FireWire drive with an Oxford chipset. Examples readily available at retail include the Maxtor OneTouch III FireWire/USB unit (300GB at about $120), most LaCie FireWire drives and the WD MyBooks.