How should an external hard drive be used?

Question

I finally managed to install my new external hard drive. Now I have to learn how to use it. I didn't see anything at the book store that would help, so I've come here to get started.
First, are there any books, or any other sources, that would be helpful?
Next, what are some of the basic things to keep in mind, what should be transferred there, and what shouldn't?
My first idea was to transfer everything except my e-mail program and my browser. The technician that helped me install the external hard drive said that I should keep applications in the comnputer. He also said that it's recommended to have two external hard drives, one to free up memory in the computer, and one as a backup. To me, that's excessive, but I'm really looking for some guidelines on what to keep and where. Then, there's also the matter of partioning. He had me make one undivided area, but the concept of partioning exists for a reason, and I'd like to know if it's something I should do. Finally, there's the matter of things I haven't thought of and am completely unaware of. You get the picture, I am a complete beginner and I need some guidance. For example, should I keep the external hard drive on all the time or only when I'm using it?

Answer 1

First off, is this a Firewire connected drive or are
you running of slow USB1.1?
FireWire
Second, what are the capacities of your internal
drive and of the new external drive?
13 GB and 150 GB. I've decided to transfer EVERYTHING from my OS 9 and OS 10 files? disks? places? to my external Hard Drive. The only thing I have to think about is which files will I also keep in my internal Hard Drive.
Third, a suggestion for a nifty free program called
Carbon Copy Cloner. You can use it to create a
bootable (Firewire drive required) clone of your
internal drive onto the external. One nice feature of
this program is that you do not have to erase the
external each time you update the clone and you can
tell CCC to not remove anything off the external that
isn't on the internal (you can tell it to remove
stuff from the external not on the internal if you
wish).
Huh? I'll have to read and reread this until it sinks in. I learn alot from this site.
So, here is what I would suggest doing first time
around (assuming a fast Firewire connection and that
your external is at least as big as your internal).
Use CCC to clone your internal to the external. As I
said, if you set it so it does NOT remove things from
the external not on the internal, you will be safe
with the stuff you have already removed from the
internal to the external not being removed.
Now that you have a clone, you can feel a little
safer deleting stuff out of the internal. If you get
to a point where you wish you hadn't deleted
something or actually mess something in the system
up, you can always get it back off the enternal drive
or even clone the external back to the internal tgo
get back to square one. If it is a Firewire drive,
and you told CCC to make the clone bootable, you can
actually boot off the external if you mess your
interal up that badly.
Anyway, the point is now you have a full backup of
your internal so you can have more freedome to clear
up your internal without too much fear of losing
something or messing up your system.
Patrick
Well, I'll study what you say, but here's what I have done. One-by-one I transferred files from my internal hard drive to my external drive. "Transfered" is not the correct word, because the process merely plants a duplicate of the file in the external drive. Anyway, then I one-by-one trashed the original copies that had been left in the internal drive. The result? no backup but more space in my internal hard drive.
If I had it to do over, I would have just cloned (your word) ALL the files and later decided which ones I wanted to keep on my internal drive. However, I forgive myself. After all, I've never done it before, and it's all new to me.