reformat fat32 or ?
 

Hi all,
I'm new to this site and Superduper - I got it on recommendation from many Mac users, and because the free Retrospect that came with my MyBook firewire drive was annoying.

I want to use my MyBook mostly for photo storage and backups, but I didn't realize until now - now that all my photos are moved over and organized - that the drive is a Fat32 instead of HFS (these terms are still new to me, so please bear with me as I try to figure it out). So I've been dreading having to empty my MyBook just so I can reformat it so Superduper could backup to it (I have an old usb drive that I would have to reformat from PC to take the photos temporarily, but it would probably take all day!). Sorry for the long story!

However, I've been reading on the forums about partitions and disk images (although I only understand them as vague concepts so far) - is there a solution there that would work for me instead of having to reformat my MyBook? I would like to make a bootable backup (?) as well as do regular back-ups, but I'm not really sure what I'm getting into, so I'm hoping for a simple solution which is also best for the long run... Any advice is welcome.

Thanks!

Not really, no. Since your drive is FAT32 (which has various limitations, and isn't Mac-native), you'd need to reformat it anyway. HFS+ (aka Mac OS Extended) is a native Mac format that supports all the various goodies Mac files have, including the potential for sizes over 4GB.

Of course, you could get another MyBook (they run about $100 for a large one) and use that exclusively for backups -- that way you could backup your photos, too! That'd be the way I'd go...

Thanks for the prompt response, Dave. I've actually been wondering whether I got too small a MyBook (250G), since my photos are filling it up fast. So now I"m thinking if I got a 500G MyBook, I'd move my photos over to it, and back up on the 250G... after reformatting it, that is. Or is 250G overkill for a back-up - how much room should I have to do the backup and bootable whatever (since I haven't run superduper yet, I'm still vague about the details)?
Thanks again for your help.
Gillian

You'll want the same size as the original volume. But remember: if your photos are only on one drive, they're not backed up either!

Oh yeah, good point Dave! Actually, I'm planning to set up DVD archiving for the photos, but it looks like storage space is still going to be at a premium.

Thanks again!
Gillian