Simultanious use of 2 partitions on the same HD

[BENI]

Is it possible to back up a bootable copy of ones system with, say, superduper to one partition (of an external hd) and use time machine to archive to the other at the same time?

or in the case of an emergency (internal hd failure) boot from the superduper partition and access the time machine backups?

is it even just possible to use 2 partitions at the same time for any purpose?

thanks

(sorry if this is a repeat of another thread - i did search and couldn't find anything but i would have expected this Q to have been asked before...)

 

[Makosuke]

Yes and yes. For nearly every end-user purpose the two (or more) partitions behave as if they were in no way connected to each other.

You can have two Time Machine partitions on the same physical drive, a Time Machine partition and a data partition, or a Time Machine partition and a cloned boot partition.

At home my server's main drive has three partitions, one for data and two network Time Machine ones, and there's never been so much as a hiccup.

 

[BENI]

excellent! i am very glad about that. thanks for answering (twice i think lol)

would these appear as two different disks on the desktop at the same time? - as if u had put two disks in? or would one have to enable the second partition after the first has been recognised?

 

[Makosuke]

would these appear as two different disks on the desktop at the same time? - as if u had put two disks in?

Yes.

Like I said, in almost every way the computer will behave as if the two disks are completely unrelated to each other, and are independent physical disks.

The ONLY differences are in Disk Utility (of course) or similar low-level utilities, where you'll see both physical media and volumes on said media, and in Snow Leopard (maybe also 10.5--I forget) when you eject one partition the Finder will ask if you want to eject other partitions on the same physical drive while you're at it (since obviously you can't disconnect the drive cleanly until all partitions have been ejected). You don't have to, though--that is, you could "eject" one partition and the other would continue to appear and behave normally.

 

[BENI]

great! thanks for your help