So I've got a nice little 500 GB drive I can totally use to backup my MacBook Air's data, but I'm just not very sure which way to go about it 
Please take this into consideration for your replies - When I first setup my Air, I wiped the drive, setup two partitions - 50 GB for OS, 200 GB for Users and followed this fantastic guide - http://lnx2mac.blogspot.com/2010/09/moving-os-x-users-to-separate-partition.html
Ideally, I'd like to be able to format and partition this 500 GB drive into all sorts of little recovery partitions
1. Bootable partition with just the OS on it (copy of my current boot partition (which is just the OS).
2. Partition to keep all the Users backup file iterations (now I haven't every used Time Machine, and I keep hearing about Carbon Copy Cloner etc. What's the go here? Is Time Machine messy at all? Ideally any solution wouldn't need to have to backup my preferences and etc. and be flexible for like when the next OS X version is released (I like clean installs, and usually just manually copy and paste my iPhoto and iTunes folders back onto the fresh install)
3. Partition for just random recovery software etc. (not bootable or nothing, just a random set of software that i'd normally use when re-setting up my OS, installing all my fave programs)
4. Recovery Disk?
5. Lion bootable install
lol whaddaya reckon guys.. what can I do?
Please take this into consideration for your replies - When I first setup my Air, I wiped the drive, setup two partitions - 50 GB for OS, 200 GB for Users and followed this fantastic guide - http://lnx2mac.blogspot.com/2010/09/moving-os-x-users-to-separate-partition.html
Ideally, I'd like to be able to format and partition this 500 GB drive into all sorts of little recovery partitions
1. Bootable partition with just the OS on it (copy of my current boot partition (which is just the OS).
2. Partition to keep all the Users backup file iterations (now I haven't every used Time Machine, and I keep hearing about Carbon Copy Cloner etc. What's the go here? Is Time Machine messy at all? Ideally any solution wouldn't need to have to backup my preferences and etc. and be flexible for like when the next OS X version is released (I like clean installs, and usually just manually copy and paste my iPhoto and iTunes folders back onto the fresh install)
3. Partition for just random recovery software etc. (not bootable or nothing, just a random set of software that i'd normally use when re-setting up my OS, installing all my fave programs)
4. Recovery Disk?
5. Lion bootable install
lol whaddaya reckon guys.. what can I do?