Hard Drive Partitions

[Bob Gir.]

> But if you want to do the backups by a simplistic cloning
> process that fills the target volume, eg with zeros, so there
> is a strictly 1_volume-to-1_volume backup and nothing else, to
> give an exact copy of the source volume, then you want separate
> partitions for each hard drive you want to backup, each target
> volume the same size as its source volume.

    Yep.  This is what I want to do, so that I have a backup clone from
which I can boot.  

    I have been using Disk Utility's Restore tab to do my backups and it's
been working perfectly.  I had been using Carbon Copy Cloner and still have
it around on my HD since I paid for it.

    Still not completely clear, however, on one item.

> The 1 for
> backups would be the size (real size, not advertised "GB") of
> the total of the iMac and the iBook, + maybe .1% - 1% for
> various OS admin overhead stuff.  The 2nd would be whatever
> is left over.

    Let me give you a for instance.  The boot HD on my B&W G3 is 12GB in
size.  Of that, 4.2GBs are being used.

    The iBook we are getting comes with a HD of 60GB.  I suspect it will
turn out that about 4GBs are actually being used.

    Would then, three partitions seem a wise allocation???

    One of 20GB to back up the new iMac.

    One of 20GB to back up the new iBook.

    The rest for photos, music files, downloaded OS updates which I save in
case I have to an Archive and Install at some future date?

    Many thanks,
    bob