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rogerthat

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
35
2
I have a PowerBook G4 and I back it up using SuperDuper. Since I originally partitioned my external HD my circumstances have changed and I now want to backup 2 laptops with PowerPC processors and 2 Macbooks. I originally partitioned the HD into 4 equal areas. To back up all the computers I'm not sure if I need to reformat for the MacBooks, if I need to repartition and start all over or what. I'm happy with SuperDuper and was planning to use that but am open to suggestions.
The HD is a 500 GB WD that says the Partition Map Scheme is Apple Partition Map and the 4 separate partitions are formatted now as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)...whatever that all means!!!
Any tips or help is appreciated.

Rog
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,198
12,361
If you want to go from 4 down to 2 partitions, fastest way to do that is to re-initialize the drive with just 2 partitions. They don't necessarily have to be equal in size; one might be larger than the other, if the drives on both laptops are not of equal size.

If your current partitioning scheme (Apple Partition Map, Mac OS Extended) is working well for you, just use that again.

Then, just do a "fresh clone" of each drive to the partitions using SuperDuper.

From that point on, you can switch to incremental backups, which will go much faster.

- John
 

-tWv-

macrumors 68000
May 11, 2009
1,583
2
Ohio
You don't need to reformat or anything for the macbooks. You just need to make sure that the partitions on the external are at least as large as the corresponding internal hard drives of the computers. If there is not enough space, then you will need a bigger external hard drive. All 4 partitions don't need to be the same size, just make sure they are large enough so that the entire HD of the computer can be cloned to that partition.
 

rogerthat

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
35
2
Ok, I'm starting with one of the macbooks now. I'll report back and thanks to everyone who helped.
 

plinden

macrumors 601
Apr 8, 2004
4,029
142
Hold on, you have PPC and Intel based Macs. Any bootable backup has to be partitioned GUID Partition Table for the Intels, and Apple Partition Map for the PPC Macs.

So you need to format the MacBook backup partitions with GUID Partition Table, if you want them to be bootable (you'll be able to read/write to APT partitions).
 

rogerthat

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
35
2
plinden,
this is exactly what I was trying to figure out...but I had already started the backup and it worked! I even tried booting from the external hd to insure that it would and it did. I can't explain it. I ended up backing up both of the PPC and dual core without changing anything on the HD......thanks to everyone for the advice.
 
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