How to Backup & Partition Internal Hard Drive

Question

I have a macbook pro 2.4ghz. I need to partition my hard drive to have a separate volume for photoshop scratch disk. How do I actually back up the drive prior to the reformatting? Do I create a bootable clone to restore the main volume.
Specific steps would be very helpful. Thanks

Answer 1

So, using Carbon Copy Cloner I first do a full copy of my internal drive (the one I will partition). This will copy any data files as well, correct? I then format the internal drive, creating the partition I need (making sure one is adequate to hold my back up/full copy). How do I then restore the full copy from the external drive to the internal partition? Does this include the OS or do I need to reinstall that and run for all of the updates, etc?
The basic thing to keep in mind is if you want to clone a complete, bootable copy of your drive, the +target partition+ (regardless of how big whole drive is) has to be at least as large as the items on the partition you are copying. With this mode of copying it is all or none but you need to use it to get the bootable option.
Cloning will copy your data files, OSX, OS9, updates, etc., everything. It makes a _complete, bootable duplicate_ of your internal drive when used in full copy mode. So you need to start off with the external firewire empty, or not care about anything on it because it will all get erased.
First, repair permissions on your internal and make sure it is in a healthy condition. Then use CCC as I instructed in an earlier post and clone your internal to the external. Run Disk Utility and verify the external drive just to make sure there weren't any problems while cloning. Then go into your System Preferences, Startup Drive, select OSX that should now appear on your external, and restart. This does double duty of making sure that your clone really is bootable, and you are now working off your external drive so you can work on your internal drive from the external drive (no need for startup disks). Things should look pretty much identical to how they looked when you were working off your internal except your external drive will probably be positioned in the upper right hand corner instead of your internal.
Oh, if you have like 90 GB of files this can take quite a while.
Once you have established the external drive is working you can start up Disk Utility and partition your internal drive. Unless you need me to I will have breakfast now instead of doing a blow-by-blow account of that. Just keep in mind that if a "get info" of your external drive says you have xx.xx GB of stuff then you need to make sure one of your internal partitions is at least that size. Oh, it is probably a good idea to make the first partition on your internal drive the one to which you will re-clone (if that is a word) your original drive contents; the one with the operating system.
Once you have partitioned, you run CarbonCopyCloner and again use full copy mode to copy the things on your external onto one of the internal partitions. Run verify on the internal partition just to make sure all looks good. Use Startup disk to choose the internal's copy of OSX as startup and reboot.
At this stage you have one bootable internal partition with everything that used to be on that drive, and an external drive that is bootable. I find the latter very handy because Disk Utility requires you be booted from a different drive that that which you are repairing and using startup disks is slow.
You also now have a backup of your internal drive. If you want to, in future you can use CCC in non-full mode to backup your main internal partition. It will just copy off modified files, but you can read the details in the CCC Readme.
Brian