Can SuperDuper periodically backup MBP HD and 3 FW Lacie HDs to one Drobo?

[Hoek]

Hi

I recently had one of my external Lacie hard-drives fail and now I have learnt the hard way that I need to back-up all of my data. I have a MacBook Pro (320GB internal HD) and three firewire Lacie drives (250, 320, 320 GB), each with only one partition. I would like to back up everything, say, once a week, giving a bootable backup of the MPB HD and copies of the 3 Lacies. I know nothing about RAID, but would like the backup to be backedup, so the Drobo seemed right.

When I upgraded my internal MBP HD and made a bootable copy, I am certain that nothing else was allowed in the volume. Does that mean I need to partition the Drobo? Do I need a partition for each drive, or one for the MBP and one for all of the three Lacies? Or am I going in the wrong direction as I have a suspicion that Drobo cannot be partitioned?

I am on Tiger, so don't have Time Machine, but was impressed with SuperDuper for the MBP HD upgrade and want to stick with it. I'm assuming SuperDuper will be able to work out which files have changed since the last backup and only update those.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

cheers hoek

[dnanian]

Yes, you need to partition the drobo into at least four (internal + 3FW) partitions, but more likely five if you want to do another. And then you back up each source to its corresponding destination. Note that you can schedule all of them.

[Hoek]

Thanks, Dave. I was hoping that I could have two partitions: one for the bootable MBP HD, and one with a folder for each Lacie. That way I could easily add another folder if I get another Lacie drive that would need backing up. If they all need a partition, I don't think it's very future-proof - is it? Only the MBP partition needs to be bootable.

cheers h

[dnanian]

If you want you can use sparse images for each of the other drives.

[Hoek]

Thanks again, Dave.

One last question. Does the full version of SuperDuper only backup files that have changed since the last backup?

cheers h

[dnanian]

Yes, Smart Update does that.

[davep]

So Dave -- If you had a Drobo with two 500GB drives and a couple of LaCie Quadra 500GB drives, would you use the Drobo as your boot drive or use one of the LaCie drives as a boot drive and do a SuperDuper! backup to the Drobo?

Thanks!

Dave P.

[dnanian]

I'd probably use the Drobo as the backup, since it's not designed for speed.

[davep]

I didn't read your answer until today and have already set up the Drobo as my startup volume. It's formatted as a 2TB logical volume but right now it holds 2 physical 1TB SATA drives. Finder's Get Info says the capacity is 2TB, with 1.77TB available and 238.25GB used.

Now I want to back up the Drobo with SuperDuper! Can I specify the Drobo as the source and one of my external LaCie 500GB Quadra drives as the destination?

Thanks, Dave.

Dave P.

[dnanian]

Sure; I don't see why not.

[davep]

Just to provide a conclusion here... Drobo support has informed me that the Drobo should not be used as a startup drive. That configuration is totally not supported! It was working for me but I was told that when I update the Drobo with new firmware or update Mac OS X then I will run into problems.

So I used SuperDuper! to clone the Drobo back to my LaCie Quadra and I'll be using the LaCie as my startup drive and backing it up to an identical LaCie with SuperDuper!