Backups without making this kind of mistake?

[doofmaczemy]

Hello,
Many of my files (the ones i can no longer fit on the first drive) are stored on my second drive (the drive that i back up to).

The problem is that stuff laid aside for storage purposes on this second drive are getting written over by everything on the first drive whenever i make a backup.

How do you tell Superduper exactly which folders/ files NOT to write over when performing a backup? Technically, if I could put everything new inside of one folder on the second drive, and then if i could tell SuperDuper to leave that one folder alone, i would be all set. I DO NOT want to partition the drive.

thank you for any advice/ suggestions

[dnanian]

You really should create a separate partition and move the data to an 'archive' partition: that's the right way to do it.

[doofmaczemy]

But aren't there any other ways?
Maybe something a little more creative??
It can't be too hard to preserve one folder on your HD2 from
getting written over by HD1... no?

p.s. I'm not asking U to help me accidentally erase my stuff...
if something goes wrong.. it's my own fault!

[dnanian]

No... there isn't any other way. Partition. Really. It's the right way to do it, and if you have to restore with something that isn't selective, it'll still work. Storing archives and backup on the same drive is a bad idea.

[doofmaczemy]

Sure,
it's just that i have a useless windows (unmounted) partition that i cant get rid of.. I'd rather get rid of that first, before mucking about.

Supposedly, you have to go out and buy special software to erase partitions..
Well, I don't like the idea of creating a partition if one has to erase everything on the hard drive just to get rid of the partition. (or buy the software)
(BTW i don't feel that informed on this subject, or maybe I have just
been misinformed.)

[dnanian]

I understand. You don't have to purchase special software to get rid of partitions: Disk Utility can do it. In Leopard, in most situations, it can supposedly do so without data loss, although this isn't something I've tried. Regardless, if you have a bad partition that's set up for windows, you can always simply reformat that partition for the Mac and move to the files there, no?

[doofmaczemy]

Different partitions can be reformatted independent of each other?
Don't you have to reformat the entire drive to get that done?

From what I understand, once you reformat something, you
erase everything in/on it.

[dnanian]

No, erasing a single partition doesn't touch the rest of the drive.

[doofmaczemy]

you mean using... Disk Utility?

[dnanian]

Yes: using the Erase function in Disk Utility, and "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format -- that does a single partition, not the whole drive (unless, of course, you select the whole drive).