External HD backup

I am trying to be a good computee and use an external hard drive to backup my IMac G5. There are two users; each of us has our own account and we have a folder of shared documents. We’ll be using the hard drive as backup for both accounts and all data.
I am presently planning to acquire an Iomega Silver Series 320GB hard drive. I feel overwhelmed by issues and questions regarding the best way to backup. Assuming my choice of HD does not already send up red flags, can anyone help me with:
1. The HD comes with EMC Retrospect software. I gather from the EMC website, this can be set up to do automatic or regular backups. Would this be the full backup plus incremental backups that people talk about? What would I need to do to “manage” it?
2. Would this backup all applications and start-up as well as data?
3. Consumer Reports suggests ChronoSync software. Would this only backup data?
4. A salesman suggested that I just drag my home folder to the HD, keep previous and latest, delete earliest each time (i.e., drag each of our home folders and the shared folder?) This would also only backup data, right?
5. My IMac G5 currently has 26.3GB in use (total capacity 152GB). Are any of these options going to be much more time consuming than others?
6. Obviously it is most critical to back up data. But isn’t it desirable to backup apps also? Does it add considerably to backup time?
7. Is it worth purchasing an extra cable for Firewire 400 rather than USB 2.0?
8. The Iomega comes formatted for universal use. The online manual says I can get faster operation by reformatting for Apple. Will the difference in speed be significant? Would leaving it as is mean I could retrieve my data on a Windows machine later more easily?
9. I would like to archive some of my photos (i.e., get some of them off the internal HD, once they are on a CD). Can I partition the external HD and use one section for backup and another for archives? Do I need to partition the HD to do this?
10. When I update software on my internal HD, I always Repair disk permissions—and often there are some to repair. Will I need to Repair disk permissions on the external HD?
11. The external HD won’t last forever either… How do I determine when I need to replace it?
Thanks for your help!

Did I hear someone mention my name?
Virg is right on all counts, your number 1,2 and 6. will be taken care of by SuperDuper!
As far as 8 is concerned, yes, if you don't use Windows for anything, by all means, use Disk Utility to format it as Mac OS Extended (journaled)
9. When you format the external, you can certainly partition it, use one for your data and as a clone (which as Virg said, can only be done with a firewire connection) and use the other for your photos. You do not need to do anything to your internal hard drive.
10. SuperDuper! can be programmed to repair permissions on both drives automatically.
11. You won't know till it starts giving you trouble, although you can look to see if it's verified in Disk Utility when you highlight it.

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external to backup having trouble setting up and getting started

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Take a look at this link, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

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Welcome to Apple Discussions.
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Doing this will of course make all that is on the drive unavailable to you.
These are LaCie's directions for their drives.
Some LaCie drives might also have firmware updates available - worth a check on their website.
Note that LaCie seem to have 2 yr warranty on their drives, at least the one I looked at on their website. If the drive is younger than this you might have a warranty claim.

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(50585)

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larry lund wrote:
recently transferred my files and applications to a new computer
What is the new computer, and what version of OSX is it running?
from my iMac5 by using the Firewire cable that went from my iMac5 to the external HD as the conduit between the two computers
How did you do that? Did you use +Setup Assistant+ or +Migration Assistant?+ If not, what did you do, and what did you copy?
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both Super Duper and Time Machine start indexing and searching for viruses.
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During this time I am unable to open System Preferences. What I'd really like to do is turn off both TM and Super Duper. What do I do?
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See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

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I intend to backup my music library (HD and iTunes in AIFF format, ca 800GB) which is located on an external USB drive to another external USB drive. Can I do this with Time machine? The mac book I am using has a different time machine connected to back up th einternal drive.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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George_greece wrote:
After reading the troubleshooting C1 and according to that i reformated both disks to HFS+ journaled with GUID partition table (same partition table as my internal HD uses on my macbook pro) .
So far i managed to do the 1st time back-up pretty fine .
Yay!
Now i m checking why the external hard drives occasionally goes on sleep even when im playing files fm them ( i used to had on energy saver settings the option to disable the disks when possible enabled before -factory default , i disabled that option and the xternal drives seems stable now , sounds a bit strange for me , but works.
Yes, on occasion they won't "spin up" quickly enough from sleep, and even more rarely changing that setting will help. You might also see if the maker has a firmware or driver update for your disks.

External hd backup problems

Hello Apple Maniacs !
i plugged an external hard disc case (icy box ib3218 series 3,5" HDD JBOD subsystem with 2x1,5TB) on my mac . I formatted both disks
in disk utility to JFS+ extended to use em for data storage . the 1st disk i decided to use it for my
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i dont know why my ext HD's keep restarting all the time , and im afraid for my data atm stored there , Maybe i should make something different reformat on disk utility application or ...
Your help would be appreciated

George_greece wrote:
After reading the troubleshooting C1 and according to that i reformated both disks to HFS+ journaled with GUID partition table (same partition table as my internal HD uses on my macbook pro) .
So far i managed to do the 1st time back-up pretty fine .
Yay!
Now i m checking why the external hard drives occasionally goes on sleep even when im playing files fm them ( i used to had on energy saver settings the option to disable the disks when possible enabled before -factory default , i disabled that option and the xternal drives seems stable now , sounds a bit strange for me , but works.
Yes, on occasion they won't "spin up" quickly enough from sleep, and even more rarely changing that setting will help. You might also see if the maker has a firmware or driver update for your disks.

External HD backup

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