I guess I can live with having to manually delete old backup folders. And since the folders are named with the dates it should be very quick and easy.
For backing up my two drives though, would it be possible to back up the external Firewire drive (which only contains files, no operating system like my Powerbook of course, which means I really don't need to clone that specific drive) to a folder on the backup drive, or do I have to partition my backup drive into two?
The reason I ask is because this might result in a lot of wasted space, depending on how much new stuff I write/change on the Powerbook or the external drive, while a single partition would leave equally much space for either backed up drive. Besides, I've already cloned my entire Powerbook drive (and then copied the contents of the external drive on to a folder on the backup drive simply by dragging the files over in the Finder).
In other words: would it be possible to back up the following on to my (single partition) external backup drive:
a) Powerbook 80GB drive (cloned first, then incremental backups)
b) external Firewire drive (copy all files first, then incremental backups)
I'm not sure if you've already answered this or not (in case I haven't quite understood), but is there a way I can do the incremental stuff for both drives easily, without having to remember a complicated procedure?
Something like clicking on a script or whatever.
OK, well yes you could both backups onto one partition- BUT (there had to be a but right?) but that would complicate the backup procedure which I see later in your post would probably not fit well with your desire to simplify it.
Since a clone is by definition a 100% duplicate of a drive, a single partition with a cloned drive and then other backup files added to it is no longer a clone. When the clone was updated by the incremental update process, it would want to remove the "other files" on that drive since they would not represent anything currently on the drive being cloned. There
are options within CCC anyways to tell it not to remove files from the backup drive that don't exist on the source drive when doing an incremental update, but then items that
had been removed from the source drive would not be removed from the clone either, so it would no longer be a true clone.
SO- the only way around this with a single partition is to use another option in CCC to "clone to a folder" on the backup drive which would work ok but takes away the ability to boot from the clone in case of a failure of the original disk which is a great advantage of having a true clone in the first place!
So what it comes down to in the interest of the simplicity you desire is to make a guess as to which backup would be most likely to grow the largest over time and make two partitions with those relative sizes.
With that, cloning the first time as well as doing incremental updates could not be much simpler-- simply start CCC, choose the drive you wish to clone in a pull down menu under "Source" then select the appropriate partition under "Target" and click "Clone". When that is complete, select the other drive under "Source" and its appropriate partition under "Target" and press "Clone" again. Job done!
In case I have misunderstood the number of external drives you have (it seems to me that you have two) then most of the above would be invalid. I am assuming you have one drive specifically set aside for backups as would be recommended (since it could be removed in between clones to isolate it from the system for safety).
Sorry this is so darn long- but it is far easier to know how this stuff works than to explain it many times!
