External Hard Drive and Back Ups..

I've been searching the net and getting myself more confused with each website I find. Since I've had great luck with the folks on these forums I figured that I'd try my luck again...here goes...
I thought backing up my MacBook Pro would be easy...get and external drive one half the size of my current hard drive and let Time Machine do the rest. But then I got all twisted trying to decide between external drives, online back up services, etc.
1. Some folks recommend taking video, photo, iTunes files, etc. and keeping them EXCLUSIVELY on an external drive just to keep the computer from running slowly. Problem is...if I do that...there's only ONE copy of those files. Drive fails...bye bye.
2. And what about the system itself? If my comp goes down and I have to reboot the whole system or a new computer...does the external have my system files on it? Some folks recommend having a clone drive all by itself?
3. HOW MANY DRIVES AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE?!?
Basically I'm a paramedic and emergency services educator and I'm always on the move. I also work overseas a lot and am always downloading medical videos, podcasts, photos, e-books, etc. for educational purposes. I don't want my computer to get slow but I have to make sure every thing is copied...one original...and one copy.
Sorry if I sound like I'm technologically illiterate but I could really use a hand here. The more I look...the more confused I get.
Thanks in advance for you time fellas...
-John-

There are many philosophies on backing up, and you will get many opinions.
For safety, it is good to have at least 2 separate drives for backup, so that you have your information on more than one drive. One of these drives could be a portable drive that goes with you everywhere. The other could be a large desktop drive that stays home when you travel, or it could be a second portable drive. I travel a lot myself, and what I have is two portable firewire drives. One goes everywhere with me, and the other stays at home in a fire proof safe. This is so that if the worst happens and my Mac and external drive are stolen or destroyed, most of my data will be safe at home. So if it it feasible, it would be good to have one complete copy of your stuff in a separate location so it would always be safe.
What might be simplest would be for you to have a large enough internal drive to accommodate all your stuff if possible. You will need to keep 15% to 20% of your internal drive free for optimum performance of the OS. As long as you do that, you should not experience the slowness that comes when a drive is too full.
If you want to create a bootable clone for a backup, you will need an external drive--or a partition of an external drive--that is the same size as your internal drive. If you want to have a Time Machine backup, you will need an external drive--or a partition-- that is much larger than your internal drive. I'm not sure that a Time Machine backup would be the best thing for you to have. For one thing, it it's not bootable.
If all your stuff will not fit on your internal drive, then you will need a drive--or a partition of a drive--that is dedicated to that data.
I would recommend that you look at these two cloning utilities:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
You can download either one and run it as much as you like for free. If you want to unlock Super Duper's more useful features such as Smart Update, you can register a copy for $28. CCC is donation ware.
I use Super Duper myself, so I can say that it is very easy to use. I am not as familiar with CCC, but I have heard good things about it.
What I would recommend is 2 external FireWire drives, each larger than your internal drive. A good source would be OWC, where you can select a bare drive and put it in OWC's excellent Mercury on the Go FireWire 800 enclosure. USB would work, but FireWire 800 would be much faster.
You can partition these drives. One partition on each would be the same size as your internal drive, and this partition would be used to create a bootable clone of your internal drive. That means that if your internal drive were to die, you would be able to boot from the external and keep on working. You would of course keep both of these external clones as up to date as possible.
The second partition would be for any data that would not fit on your internal drive--say if you find your internal drive is getting too full, and you need to move some videos off onto the external to create more space on the internal. If you did that, you could clone the second partition of that drive to the second partition of your other external drive, so that you would have 2 copies, one on each external drive.
It's hard to give complete advice not knowing the size of your internal drive or about how many GB's of videos and stuff that you need. If there is going to be a huge amount of videos, you may need separate drives for them rather than partitions.
Hope this will help. If you could post back with the size of your internal drive and the approximate size of your videos etc, it would be easier to make specific recommendations.
Good luck!

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