[X4U] how long to clone drive?

[zapcat]

On May 11, 2010, at 11:52 AM, alexandre wrote:

> as a second back-up, i'd like to clone the 1TB drive (with almost 1  
> TB of data on it…) in my iMac on a nightly basis. using superduper  
> or carbon copy cloner, how long does it take to complete a clone  
> using a FW800 external drive?

couple of thoughts. 1 is that, with ever-larger drives available at  
affordable prices, it's a slippery slope, because people tend to fill  
them. Just like desks and bookshelves. Problem is that when a 1 TB  
drive pukes, you have to scramble to come up with that much space  
among your surviving drives in order to house that refugee data.

What I do is to treat these larger drives as though there were 500's.  
I keep about 300 - 350 GB on them, and no more. If the data swells  
closer to 400, I move things around to drives with more free space,  
or I see what can get tossed, either redundant or obsolete files.

Thought 2 is I believe that there is a rule to go by as to how much  
to max out a drive, and I believe is that it's recommended to keep  
20% or so free. I'd never take a drive right to the edge of 100%  
full. I have heard of heinous problems resulting from that.

As to the other part of your question, I have had great luck with  
CCC. Took me a few tries to understand it, but that's just me. It's a  
must-have tool for OS X, IMHO.

cheers!

zc