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External HD Backup question

someguy

someguy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 4, 2005
2,351
21
Still here.
I just received a 160GB LaCie d2 for christmas and I was thinking of backing up my entire PowerBook hard drive just for the sake of having everything backed up.

What I was hoping to do, if possible, is make it so whenever my LaCie disk is mounted, it automatically syncs with my PowerBook to cover any changes that have taken place since I last plugged it in.

For starters, I don't even know how to make a full hd backup, so any info on that would be helpful. My thinking, though, is that there are so many changes made constantly to my PowerBook disk that it would be easiest if my external drive made all of the respective changes as well.

Can this be done?

Thanks in advance. :)
 
I do not think there is any software that will do it automatically, but LaCie has their own SilverKeeper disk cloning software that is free to use.

Personally, I use SuperDuper to clone my disks, but it is not free. The main reason I went with it over either SilverKeeper or Carbon Copy Cloner was that only SD worked with Tiger at launch. It took the others a few weeks to catch up and I wasn't willing to be without backup software for that long.
 
OK, I think I'm all set with that issue for now.

I split the drive into two partitions. Does anyone happen to know if/how I can make one of them read/writable from a Windows machine?
 
Well, I have to HFS+ partitions right now (one of which is a system backup), and I would like to be able to format one of them FAT32. Is this possible?

Would it work if I hooked it to a PC and formated the second partition that way?

I guess I'm kind of asking if one hard drive can have multiple partitions of different formats?
 
mkrishnan said:
Disk Utility should also be able to format that partition as FAT32. Recently some people have suggested EXT2 as another possible alternative -- Windows can't boot from it, but both OSes can read/write to it with extenstions.
Click to expand...
With extensions.. meaning what exactly?

How do I go about formatting in this format? Can I do just one partition like this without affecting the other one?
 
I missed the part about having to install the extension on any computer (Windows or Mac) you wish to use the drive with.

Hm.

Can you (or anyone) tell me why Disk Utility will only let me format the ENTIRE drive if I want to format in FAT32? Is there a reason I can't format one single partition this way, or is it that you just can't do it in Disk Utility?
 
I think what you're doing wrong is that you must release the partition first and then re-format it -- you don't really reformat partitions. Rather you partition un-partitioned space to be used with a certain format. But maybe you can post some screenshots?
 
In Picture 1, you'll see it will allow me to Erase the whole drive and make one large FAT32 partition (and probably several smaller FAT32 partitions, but that's besides the point).

In Picture 2, you'll see when working with the partitions themselves, the option to format this way is not in the drop down menu.

In Picture 3, you'll see it's also not in the menu to erase just the one partition using the same window (Erase tab) as in Picture 1.


So.. yeah. :)

Is that what you were looking for?
 

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Oh, eep, I think the problem is that the disk has an Apple Partition Map. I don't think FAT32 is a valid format for a partition of such a disk. I'm not sure how to resolve that. Let me try to help searching.
 
Wait, I went back and re-read your original post... this is a brand new drive you haven't used yet, isn't it?

Is there any data you need on it? Is it an option to format the whole thing? If so, try create an entirely new partition scheme on it, but this time, click the options button and make sure that, instead of Apple Partition Scheme, you are using Master Boot Record. Then see if you can make a FAT32 and an HFS+ partition.
 
mkrishnan said:
Wait, I went back and re-read your original post... this is a brand new drive you haven't used yet, isn't it?

Is there any data you need on it? Is it an option to format the whole thing? If so, try create an entirely new partition scheme on it, but this time, click the options button and make sure that, instead of Apple Partition Scheme, you are using Master Boot Record. Then see if you can make a FAT32 and an HFS+ partition.
Click to expand...
Yes, new drive.

I backed up my entire PowerBook HD already, so I was hoping to not have to do that again, but I suppose I could if you think this will allow me to use both formats.

Can you explain to me what changes if I use MBR instead of the Apple Partition Scheme? (By the way, I know what the Master Boot Record is, I just don't understand how it has anything to do with my problem. I'm not saying you're wrong because I don't know... that's why I'm asking). :)
 
The MBR, beyond permitting booting, is also the partition scheme that is responsible for defining overall how the disk is partitioned. APS and GPT (what PPC and Intel Macs use, respectively, on their internal drives, from what I understand), are two alternate schemes. I think for whatever reason, the Apple Partition Scheme just does not support non-Apple disk partitions. And so you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, sort of?

I guess that's about as well as I understand it. Sorry... any more and I'd just be googling and regurgitating.

You should be able to define the whole new partition scheme before you actually do it (but you may have to choose "2 partitions" instead of "current" as the partition scheme, so that you get back the option to change the partition scheme). So see if you can do the whole thing and then click the button if it works....
 
I now have one HFS+ partition for backing up, one FAT32 partition for file storage, and a hole bunch of re-backing up to do. :)

I'm going to fire up an old Dell laptop to see that it works like I want it to, I'll post back if I have any trouble.

By the way, I don't think I mentioned my reasoning for this type of setup. I'd like any Windows machine to be able to read/write to the storage portion of the drive, and have no access whatsoever to my backups. That's a Mac-only area. :)

Thanks a bunch for the help!
 
Works great. Just successfully transferred a file from my Dell to my Mac via the drive.

Two quick things if you could:

1) How come the FAT32 drive name is all caps? I can't change it. Not a big deal, but..?

2) Any way to password protect the drive itself, or individual partitions?
 
And, 3: How come I can't add the FAT32 drive to the Privacy list in Spotlight Preferences so it isn't searched? It really slows Spotlight down when there is a lot of data on the drive.
 
Those directions for my number 3 didn't seem to work. I created that file, and even disabled indexing for that volume. Do I need to reboot for it to take effect or something?
 
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