[X4U] Storage on mirrored external drive

[Wayne Clodfelter]

Tim Collier wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/29/08 12:18 PM, "Said Nuseibeh" <photo at studiosaid.com> I was so excited
> on 3/29/08 12:18 PM, when I received this message from Said Nuseibeh that I
> had to take an extra xanax.
> 
>> Hi Listers,
>>
>> If I mirror my g4 laptop (10.4.11) on a bootable external FW drive that
>> has greater hard drive capacity, and I want to use that remaining space
>> to incrementally store new data, where should I put that data so as not
>> to interfere with system operations if --in the case of mishap-- I ever
>> have to boot from that external disk?
>>
>> I used to put data in the Public folder to (theoretically) avoid
>> Permission problems. Now that hard drives are so much bigger, I have
>> found that the Public folder on my mirrored drive shows a capacity
>> identical to the original drive at time of cloning (SuperDuper). Where
>> did the extra 400GB go???
>>
>> Anybody have experience in this matter? Can I put a folder in the top
>> directory and continue to access these files from other machines AND
>> boot from that drive? Or is there another more optimum solution.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -Said

What I do is create a partition the same size as my boot volume, and 
back up the boot volume to it. Then I use the rest of the drive (one or 
more additional partitions) for whatever I want.

Personally, I don't like the idea of Time Machine. Sounds like a waste 
of processor time and storage space to me.

If you are losing huge amounts of disk space when backing up, you are 
probably using a device copy routine, which is much faster, but 
unfortunately also renders the size of the device copied to the same as 
the device copied.

-- 
Regards,

Wayne Clodfelter
<wayneclodfelter at mindspring.com>