Backing up Mac system

[enucho]

Good morning,

I have no idea why it is so darn complicated to backup my Mac system (or parts thereof). I am a lay person and not a super duper computer whiz, much less a Mac whiz. All I know is what I see on the screen:

Here is what is happening when I tied to backup my system in order to be able to reformat my MacBook (running Leopard not installed as clean install)

1. I installed Carbon Copy software. No problems there;
2. I opened the program and chose DRIVE as the source;
3. When I tried to select “My Book” (I am using a Western Digital 320Gig external hard drive formatted as FAT32), the name was there, but it was “grayed out” which meant that I could not designate as the target;
4. I asked a friend who knew a lot more about Mac than I. She went straight to the My Book logo on the screen and clicked on GET INFO because she figured that I had to change the permissions.
5. There were no options(details) for changing anything. The system showed the My BOOK as read only and unchageable.

Would you have any ideas? (By the way: I also tried it another way, by creating a folder on the desktop, copying the stuff to it and then try to drag it or copy-paste it into My Book. Either way, it would not allow me. Reason? The warning said: “My Book” cannot be modified. I tried different and simpler files and got the same answer each time.

Thanks very much

Emile

 

[edesignuk]

Probably the fact that your external is FAT32. I think it'll need to be the same file system as your source drive (probably "HFS+ (Journalled)") to work.

 

[crees!]

^^ agreed. You'll probably need to reformat the My Book drive. Use Disk Utility in the Apps/Utilities folder to do so. You can use Time Machine to backup your computer after that. Just go in System Prefs for that.

Edit: And if you're a "lay person" then Time Machine would be for you, not CCC.

 

[enucho]

mac backups

Thanks for your help. let's see how it actually pans out.

emile