Sandbox - which drive?

[picaman]

Alright. So I'm going to tackle this Sandbox thing, which, through no fault of your own, confuses me slightly. But I have put some thought into it. Let's see if I have this right:

I currently boot off of a 250GB FireWire drive named Betty Boot. I'm getting a second identical 250GB FireWire drive, which will be named Bertha Backup and used for...wait for it...backup.

So, if I use Bertha exclusively for backup, I only need to partition the second external FireWire drive Bertha Backup into two partitions. Let's call them Bertha Backup (200GB), and Sally Sandbox (50GB).

I'll then do a "Backup--all Files" to Bertha Backup, and a "Sandbox-shared users and applications" (using the "Startup from Sally Sandbox" option) to Sally Sandbox.

(Question one: If I want to schedule a weekly backup, what specifically do I schedule?)

Anyway, after I do this, the OS I'm actually using will be on Sally Sandbox and system and program updates will be applied here. And Betty Boot will always have the original unmodified OS/programs to roll back to if needed.

(Question two: this is still true even if a weekly backup has occurred?)

At the point where I'm confident that the updates applied to Sally Sandbox are stable, I should be booted from Sally Sandbox and then: Copy Sally Sandbox to Betty Boot using "Backup--all files" with the "Smart Update" option selected. Doing this will make Betty Boot identical to Sally Sandbox, including any new installed applications, and program and system updates.

And--correct me if I'm wrong--I shouldn't involve my internal 80GB drive (that would be "Martha My Dear") in any of this because Betty Boot will soon be larger than 80GB (but still much smaller than 200GB!) and the Mac Mini internal drive runs at 4200RPM which is slow slow slow and why I got the external FireWire boot drive in the first place.

Sorry this is so long and detailed, but I want to make sure my head is wrapped around this before I proceed. Thanks in advance for your time!



Jamie

P.S. My PCs never had names