G'day,

So, as per:
[Merged] Recommendations for external hard drive
I now have a 320Gb external "M9" Seagate hard drive.

Basically, I'm wondering how to make the best use of my new "toy".

In the immediate future it will solely be used to house "my" (my group's) final film at University, but after we've finished, I am wondering what I should do with it...

Given that in my life I have never had a proper back up of any of my data (!), I figure now I have the opportunity to do so, I should avail myself of it. My eMac has a 160Gb drive, which has about 10Gb free. (Much of the data is video files from projects/home movies etc)

I'd also like to be able to use it occasionally to plug into my DVD player to watch avi's...

So... I realise I at least need 2 partitions - a Mac, and a FAT32... but should I break that down further? Should I have a partition for the "eMac Back Up", and another for the "FAT32"... as well as another partition just for storing excess files? Should I thus also have another partition to back up that partition?

Am I over-analysing as usual?

Backing up a partition on the same volume defeats the purpose. If your HD dies you could lose the original AND the backup!

Best to have a dedicated backup drive.

*lol* I must be tired! My Yr 10 IT teacher would be shaking her head at me...

I have been trying to follow the Back Up threads of late.. and gather I'll nearly need a 1:1 ratio to back everything up... That leaves 160Gb free though, so I guess I could then look at using part of that as the FAT32 drive, and the rest just as normal storage... (though I guess for things that I can handle losing...)

(I've said this elsewhere before but) I use my external drive in 2 partitions, one to clone my HD with SuperDuper and the other mostly to keep EyeTV files.

I found backing up my "important" files was taking much too long when I started recording video and a FW400 drive is plenty fast enough for recording editing & playing the video files.

Ah yes, mirroring! That's another option I'd thought of... So, by the sounds of it, Apple doesn't have built in mirroring options?

My f-i-l (PC user) has mirror drives... he also has partitioned his drives to put all his Apps on one partition, and his "files" on another...

Now that I have the large xternal, I could certainly look at reformating my eMac's drive... but would it actually improve performance?

You could do a clean install with Leopard once it ships - that'll clean out the crap.

Then just use the new-fangled Time-Machine backup with the new drive.

As for playing AVI's - I'd just get a cheap'o thumb-drive and use that.

Al

Question: Do I need to shut my external drive down when not in use? (ie over night)

It certainly appears to go to "sleep", as if it's not used for some time, and then you do access it, it clearly wakes up (suddenly makes noise after being silent... light flashes...).

I never turn my eMac off... but have been turning the M9 drive off at night... but is there a need to?

cheers
cosmic