Setting up a new external HD

Why would you want to mirror or back up your internal drive when a lot of valuable data will be on a partition on the external drive? You're far better off storing everything on your Mac and using the external as a backup, using either Time Machine or any number of free backup utilities.

You don't need to install the OS on it at all. When you first plug the drive in, you'll probably get a popup asking you to format the drive. Click yes, and it will open Disk Utility for you.

 

Using superduper to create a bootable mirror image is a great way to make sure you can still work if the internal drive fails. Just make sure the external drive is Firewire if you want to have a bootable drive on the ibook.

As to the external for music, videos etc., unless you've upgraded the internal ibook drive they are too small to store a lot of media files. An external drive fixes this problem, however, there is still the issue of backing up the media partition.

Cheers,

 

Your idea is the exact way I have mine set up, but your 60g external is too small. I have a 250g drive, one partition of which is the same size as my internal drive and the other is whatever is left over. I use CCC to clone to the smaller partition, and keep my music and photos on the other (See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748 and http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93603 for instructions). This works perfectly.

Now, to address what Blue Velvet said about having valuable info on an external. I do what is described above, but twice. I have a second external that I keep at my work and have the exact same scheme on it. I update the home external weekly, and bring the work external home monthly. I figure the chances of my office burning down the same day/night as my home burning down are slim to none -- so I would be covered. It is good to have a backup at home for restoring, holding large files, etc., but a REAL backup in case of tragedy needs to be someplace else.

Just my two cents!

 

I understand that fully, which is why I have an automated bootable network backup both here at work and at home, using Retrospect on daily and weekly scripts.

Personally, with the system the OP describes, I'd be backing up my photos and tunes as well by first dealing with the main problem of insufficient capacity on the laptop.