Backing up multiple computers to one drive
First of thanks, maybe this isn't the place but i just wanted to say i really love SD-thanks for all your hard work!
I have a 300 GB drive that i was about to partition so that i can back up 2 computers an imac G5 (powerpc) and a macbook (intel). Is it possible to format partitions on the same drive differently (GUID and Apple)? If so, how? Or am i asking the wrong question? Stated another way: I would love to be able have 2 bootable partitions (one intel based and on powerpc based) on the same drive using SD. thanks for any help! |
You'll need to use "Apple Partition Map" to partition if you want to do this; note that Leopard really does not want you to do this with an Intel Mac, though... it's probably better, in 10.5. and later, to use separate drives.
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So if I were to have 3 x 1TB FireWire drives connected to my server.
Both RAID'd together to form 3TB worth of accumulative data storage. Then have the 3TB Drive Partitioned into: 2 x 750Gb (GUID for Intel Mac) 2 x 250Gb (Apple P Map for PowerPC Mac) 4 x 120Gb (GUID for two Intel Mac Laptops) 1 x 80Gb (GUID for Intel Server) As you may or may not be able to tell, I have 5 Macs here. I'd like to have two backups of each. One SD! Clone, and one Time Machine. Could this idea be Achievable do you think? Do I even need to do a full backup clone using SD? Could Time Machine suffice enough as a Backup (is it bootable / fully restorable in the case of total data loss on the Mac?) Thanks, -Van |
I don't think you can partition a RAIDed drive, Van... and you certainly can't use different partition schemes on a single drive... you'd need to use sparse images.
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Ok, Sparse Images are fine then. I thought about not using them, because of the load it takes to mount a large sparse disk image before anything can be actually done with it.
The reason I wanted to partition is because of all the different drives sizes not fitting together very neatly. Still, do you think an SD! Backup and a Time Machine backup at the same time are worth while? Can both be used to fully backup and restore a system? |
I do think redundancy is a good thing, and the two applications are good at different things as well. Of course, without having a bootable backup (due to the RAID), you lose out on a significant advantage of SD.
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So if I was to put SD!'s backups in Sparse images, would that get around the Partition type problem?
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Yes, but as I said, you lose out on a significant advantage: namely, you can't boot from the backup until it's restored.
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Well, that's not too bad.
I could have one Dedicated GUID Drive to backup and have bootable volumes on there for say, the laptops and server. But for the bigger, desktop machines, which are a mix of PowerPC and Intel i'll have Sparse Disk Images, as there's no Partition Map to supporting the boot-ability of either type of mac. |
Well, you can use Apple Partition Map, but as I said, Leopard strongly discourages users from doing this (unfortunately).
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Dave
You have said the same thing here two or three times very recently. Could you explain/state just what this "discouraging" from Leopard entails? How is it manifested? I think (but am not sure, running from Tiger just now) that Disk Utility under Leopard still says of the APM option, " ... or to use the disk as a non-startup disk with any Mac." I guess my question is, is the discouragement in a help file somewhere, or does Leopard shall we say "actively" resist doing this? |
Two obvious things:
- You can't install Leopard to a drive that's partitioned as "APM" on an Intel Mac, which makes archive-and-installs difficult. - If the drive is partitioned as APM, you can't select it in the Startup Disk preference pane. |
Thanks. Sure, I see #1 now. Hadn't really focused on that. Number two I was/am well familiar with.
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