Multiple Hard Drives: one for system & applications, one for backup

Question

I am planning the upgrade of my hard drive setup. Presently, I have only the original 74.53 GB internal drive that came with my June 2004 G5 1.8 dual CPU. I have two goals for the upgrade. First, more hard drive space. Second, a drive for automatic backup. Since I am running OS 10.4.11 and not intending to upgrade to 10.5 at this time for application reasons, I will be using something like Carbon Copy Clone for the backup software (not Time Machine, which requires OS 10.5). My thinking, so far, is to install a 1 TB internal drive for system and another internal or external 1 TB drive for the backup. In perusing the discussions here, it looks like an external drive is always used for the backup. Is this true or would an internal drive work just as well for backup? I want the backup to be as free as possible from any corruption or problems that might arise on the system drive or other computer parts. Does the Firewire or USB connection of an external drive offer a greater amount of freedom from potential corruption as opposed to the direct SATA connection of an internal drive?
I realize that burnt DVD’s offer the greatest amount of freedom from corruption but one doesn’t burn a DVD hourly, daily, weekly or so on. Hopefully, if a problem arises my work underway is residing on the backup drive unaffected. I’m not sure how close in time this can be. I imagine this probably depends on the backup software used and how often the backup is run. I’m not yet fully aware of the options.
For the internal system drive is there any good reason to partition it? I f so, why, and in what way? Do the OS and applications need to reside on the same partition? If not (or better that they don’t), how should a 1 TB drive be partitioned?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on the best configuration of my hard drive upgrade.

Answer 1

1) The backup drive is best to be external (security from computer failure).
Yes. I am not sure about the "in some ways" my esteemed colleague qualifies.
2) The external backup drive should be connected by Firewire (ability to be bootable & greater speed).
Yes. Just beware that some of the Western Digital models have presented problems. Not the drives themselves but the enclosures. [List of Western Digital bootable and non bootable models|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9022456#9022456]
Is a Firewire connected drive any less vulnerable to damage by computer hardware failure than an internal drive?
Yes & no. The yes: I don't know about G5s (they use a different connector from the G4s and earlier with which I am familiar) but in some computers the drives will share the same controller. If the controller goes then all connected drives can be corrupted. The no: Then too, I have had two Firewire drives be corrupted. One was by trying it with a PCI card (not what you're using) that was incompatible with my model computer. The other was when the power source in the enclosure went bad.
This is almost leading me to think that 3 drives would be the best! One internal for OS system & applications (1 TB), one continually connected for auto backup (my original 74 GB), and one (a bootable clone) attached only during occasional backups (2 TB).
The more the better. I usually buy drives in size increments that make sense for my configuration. I have two 120GB internal drives so I bought a 250GB external drive for backup and partitioned it into two so I could just back up one internal to one partition and the second to the other.
I'm perplexed with both your feelings about burnt media. I was not aware of this and fortunately have not experienced problems. However, it is only recently that I gravitated from 700MB CD's to 4.7 GB DVD-RW's for backups. I've been using Maxell
There's backup and there's archiving. Backup is for having a copy of what you're actively using. Archiving is storing stuff that is unlikely to change. Optical media is lousy for backup because files are constantly changing. Backing up a 120 GB onto 4GB media either requires a super organized person or you're spending a day sticking DVDs into your computer.
Optical media is less lousy for archiving, but still not great. Where's the floppy drive on your computer? Where will the DVD drive be in 15 years? It's also a lot faster archiving onto hard drives, and the cost of drives has come down to where the per GB cost is about equivalent of less than high-quality, archival-grade DVDs. Yes, drives change too, but it is also easy to copy from drive to drive. I have items archived on drives that are over 10 years old and as long as I make sure I keep on top of being able to connect those drives to a computer they are usable.
BTW: I tried to quote your messages for this reply, went to "Help" to learn how that is done and found this: "If you want to quote specific text from the original message, click Quote Original to add all the text from the original message to the Message box." I could see no such button "Quote Original". Can anyone please tell me where it is?
There's a '"' icon in the compose window when you type a reply. If I'm doing a lot of quotes (as I did here) I use that, then edit out the bits I don't want. Otherwise I copy and paste the text and add a > before the line to get it to appear in the special format.