HD Backup

[flyin3d]

Hello,
I want to move up from Jaguar to Panther and was told to backup my HD and install it clean. About half my hard drive is used now and I was wondering if I should partition the drive, and back up to there in order to perform the clean install or is there a more preferred method?

Thanks,

Justin.

[mklos]

Hello,
I want to move up from Jaguar to Panther and was told to backup my HD and install it clean. About half my hard drive is used now and I was wondering if I should partition the drive, and back up to there in order to perform the clean install or is there a more preferred method?

Thanks,

Justin.

If you partition your drive then you will loose all of your data. Right now there is no way to partition an HFS+ drive (which is what Macs use) w/o loosing the data. You'll need some kind of external source like a LOT of blank CDs or an external hard drive.

Yes I would certainly do an erase and install when you upgrade to Panther otherwise you'll run into a ton of problems down the road. It may be a good investment to get an external hard drive for back up. It generally not a good idea to backup your data on the same drive. If you do and the drive goes bad then your data backup is kinda useless.

[cb911]

If you partition your drive then you will loose all of your data. Right now there is no way to partition an HFS+ drive (which is what Macs use) w/o loosing the data.

well... that's not true. :) you can use GNU Parted (http://freshmeat.net/projects/gnuparted/) with the HFS+ patch which will allow you to do everything you have to so you can make a second partition on your HD and keep your data.

there's a thread right here (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=66470) about using Parted on HFS+. have a read. although you will still have to back up your important stuff. there's alot of people who have had sucess with Parted, but there's always the possibility that something goes wrong.

if you're feeling confident, read up on the Parted manual and go for it! :D

i'm going to resize on of my partitons soon, but i haven't done it yet, so i can't really help you.

[flyin3d]

[QUOTE=mklos]If you partition your drive then you will loose all of your data. Right now there is no way to partition an HFS+ drive (which is what Macs use) w/o loosing the data. You'll need some kind of external source like a LOT of blank CDs or an external hard drive.

Wow, I wasnt expecting that for an answer, but thank you. Looks like I have some money to spend or a lot of work to do.

Thanks,

Justin.