Best backup strategy for internal and external drives

[marmich]

Hello. Trying to come up with a simple, reliable, scalable approach to backups. Here's the current set up and thinking:

Mac Mini with internal 120G HD, External HD #1 500G, External HD #2 1TB, both connected via firewire. My photos, music, movies etc. currently take up ~ 350G on External #1. External #2 is dedicated to backup.

1) I was hoping to back up the internal drive AND external #1 to external #2 (and ultimately mirror #2 to remote, if Carbonite or Mozy ever starts supporting external drives).

2) I have currently set TM to back up from Internal to HD#1, and Super Duper to clone HD#1 to HD#2. This has been problematic but after reformatting seems to be working as expected. (Knock wood.)

3) Ideally I would like to have a bootable back up solution. Perhaps a better to set up as follows:

a) Partition HD#2 into 620G/380G. Partition 1 becomes bootable clone of HD#1.

b) Partition 2 becomes TM target volume.

I'd be very surprised if what I want to do is an unusual situation. Has anyone got a better approach to work?

Thanks!

 

[gatepc]

I have a mac mini as well 80gb internal and then I have a 320gb external and a 1tb external and what I do is i put everything on my 1tb and setup time machine to backup just a couple REALY important folders from my 1tb ( i would do the whole drive but you cant fit 1tb on a 320 drive ) and then call it a day I mean 2 backups in the same location thats good enough for me I mean if I had more important data I might think about off site backup but for me this works fine!