Partition backup harddrive?

I am going to soon purchase a Lacie 160gb Firewire porsche hard drive. I am going to use Superduper and make a bootable clone of my 60gb Macbook onto the drive...I also want to store some other things on the drive so should I partition the Lacie into 2 and have half for the bootable backup and half for other bits? Thanks in advance for any advice

I also have mine set up partitioned. I have a 500GB drive partitioned into three parts - one for my MB, one for my iMac, and the leftover space for odds and ends.
SuperDuper only needs enough space to copy the data and the clone target does not have to be the same size as the source.

Similar Messages

Filesystem of a backup harddrive

I'll be ordering a big external harddrive soon which will only be there to store backups of my files. Now I have wondered if there is any importance for choosing one filesystem over another on a backup harddrive? Should I choose one of the newer ones like ext4 or stick with ext3? Does it actually matter that my current filesystem, where the files are located that I want to backup, are still on ext3, while the backup harddrive has a different filesystem?

I can't find evidence that any of the Windows tools are capable of reading Ext4 with extents. Plenty of posts about Ext4 filenames being garbled, and a few more about how "read-only" access bricked the partition -- but I'm going to chalk that up to PEBKAC.
For a backup, I see no reason to bother with Ext4 over Ext3 unless you explicitly need the unlimited subdirectories or uhh... more granular timestamps? The major "benefits" of Ext4 are aimed at performance at the cost of reliability (delayed allocation is butt in a power outage) -- which aren't really a concern of a backup.

I have a MacBook Pro 15" and my warranty just ran out! I partitioned my harddrive into two partitions, one with Snow Leopard and the other with microsoft.This morning I turned on my Macbook Pro and it will not boot into Snow Leopard.

Good Morning,
I have a MacBook Pro 15" and my warranty just ran out! I partitioned my harddrive into two partitions, one with Snow Leopard and the other with microsoft.This morning I turned on my Macbook Pro and it will not boot into Snow Leopard. I shut it off took out the battery, reinstalled the battery. Then I put in the Snow Leopard CD and booted up to disk utility and The Snow Leopard partion would not show up?? I do see the microsoft partion.
I also rebooted holding down the shift key and still no Snow Leopard
Could you please tell me what I can do, what keys do I press on restart any advice to get Snow leopard back.
thank you.

Have you restarted holding down the Opt key? That procedure should give you a gray screen with all of the partitions that exist. Then select the SL partition for boot. Also go to System Preferences and Startup Disk, unlock the lock and select the SL partition as the default boot partition, then relock.

Can I re-partition my harddrive?

Hi all,
I'm just trying to get my head around setting up Windows 7 on my Mac with boot camp. I'm actually having the same problem downloading the windows support software through the boot camp setup assistant that a lot of people here seem to be having, but that's for another discussion...
For the moment my question is this: Say if I partition my harddrive for windows use, and then later on I realise I want more space on the harddrive designated for windows (or indeed less), is it possible to re-partition the hard drive? Or is it the case that if I partition it and give windows X gb, I am stuck with that and cannot change it?
Thanks in advance.

You must use Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive. Thereafter use Paragon's CampTune if you need to adjust the partition size without having to remove the partition first.

Partitioning the Harddrive for a scratch disk for CS1 & CS2

Hello all...
I need to see if there is a way to partition the harddrive on the work macs for the use of a scratch disk. We have a dual 2.0 G5 and a Quad.
The only thing is the fact that there are tons of materials on these macs as we are a advertising agency and are in the process of migrating all workable files to a new mac server that was ordered this week.
Can this be done without wiping the HD first?
Our apps mainly CS1 on some machines and CS2 on the Quad seem to run a tad bit slow. Could this be to not having a scratch disk for these adobe programs.
Or should we wait until the server has arrived and then just reformat the machines at that time?
Please help guys.
Dual 2GHz Power PC G5 & 4 x2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Never partition the boot drive. Even if it is used for scratch (and even if you set another drive for primary scratch the boot drive will still be used some). Keep your boot drive free of everything else except the system and applications.
Order some RAM, order a 2nd drive for each system. And a dedicated scratch disk - meaning you would need a 2 or 4-channel SATA host adapter for PCI-X.
You might want to use WD's 10K 150GB Raptor for boot drive (and yes, it works just fine on the DC/Quad G5s). The 10K 74GB Raptor makes a nice disk also and could also be used for scratch disks in a RAID. Use your original OEM drive just for local data.
Photoshop Acceleration Basics (pdf)
about the PS test
The above article and benchmark test utility can help determine what to expect.
I would speculate that you need a minimum of 4-6GB RAM, and 8-10GB of RAM might be in order; along with a 2-4-8 drive RAID as well.
Crucial PowerMac G5 Quad DDR2
AMUG: Sonnet E4P
Barefeats benchtest results
Port Multiplication Guide
G4 MDD 1.25 1.75GB UL3D 15K/10K RAID Mac OS X (10.4.6) SoftRAID 3.5

Can I Partition emac Harddrive?

I have a emac processer 1. 42 ghz power pc G4. I would like to partition the harddrive with os 9.2, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4, Can I do it ? I've tryed to install them but The start up hard drive won't recognize the partition when I do it so I don't know what to do.

10.5.8 is the highest an eMac can install/use/boot.
10.6.x requires an Intel based Mac.

I partitioned the harddrive before reinstalled it, and my system CRUSHED!

I partitioned the harddrive before reinstalled it:
OS X 10G
So i installed my system into this dirve, and before i install it, the system asked me to customize the installation, so i selected those apps that i want, and it says i have 688MB left in the disk.
So i proceed, but it installed half way and stops, and says that there's not enough space to install the OS, and at this point, i can't restart, can't shut down, but can go into sleep mode.
How can i resolve it?!
Please help me!!!!!!!!!!
[email protected]
PLEASE!!PLEASE!!!!!! Kneeling down!!!

+and it says i have 688MB left in the disk...+
OS X needs more free space than this to operate...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301341
Hold the power button down for about 10 sec. and your book should shut down. Then restart holding 'C' and try to install again. Btw, why are you partitioning your disc? If it's for Windows, Bootcamp will do this from a single partition.

[SOLVED] XFS partition or Harddrive failing

Hello
My /home XFS-formatted partition is in different disk (seagate 750G). Lately it has begun failing constantly when doing lots of copying/moving work with following type of errors:
- cannot read first 512 bytes
- mount: special device "dev/mount-by-label/home" does not exist
The last one happened during normal boot. After powering off, waiting a while and booting again all was good - until I tried to backup my data, when midway while copying I got:
FXS metadata write error block 0x403e880 in sdb1
I/O error in filesystem meta-data ("xlog_iodone") error 5 buf count 2560
Filesystem: Log I/O Error Detected
I tried to find solution from several forums, but all I got was to try "xfs_repair". It doesn't find any errors when the partition/drive is working properly, but after I tried backup my data and got those errors above, "xfs_repair" gives following:
[root@golved ~]# xfs_repair /dev/sda1
Phase 1 - find and verify superblock...
superblock read failed, offset 0, size 524288, ag 0, rval -1
fatal error -- Input/Output error
I am currently trying "smartmontools", but at leas now it doesn't work. Maybe after reboot it gives me some sensible output. Meanwhile, can any of you give me any pointers how to find out is the problem in XFS filesystem or in my year old Seagate Barracuda 7200.11/12(?) 750G harddrive? How about getting my data out, is there way to bypass the logging that xfs does? I am thinking about that because of those "Log I/O errors"... Currently, whenever the drive mounts properly, I can do some copying but it halts eventually. Maybe disabling logging and all other non-needed things from xfs would let me backup more data before I/O errors arise?
Last edited by mclang (2009-03-11 06:43:21)

Okay, after couple of boots smartctl gave following:
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Device Model: ST3750330AS
Serial Number: 9QK06CMQ
Firmware Version: SD15
User Capacity: 750 156 374 016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is: Sun Mar 8 18:42:27 2009 EET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 634) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 172) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x103b) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 101 097 006 Pre-fail Always - 52655725
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 093 093 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 26
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 2043
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 070 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 8613925167
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 091 091 000 Old_age Always - 8431
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 26
184 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 031 031 000 Old_age Always - 69
188 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 099 000 Old_age Always - 8590065666
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 070 055 045 Old_age Always - 30 (Lifetime Min/Max 28/32)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 030 045 000 Old_age Always - 30 (0 21 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 047 022 000 Old_age Always - 52655725
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 4
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 4
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 100 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
CR = Command Register [HEX]
FR = Features Register [HEX]
SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
ER = Error register [HEX]
ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 100 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 8426 hours (351 days + 2 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
04 71 04 9d 00 32 e0 Device Fault; Error: ABRT
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:26.893 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:26.887 IDENTIFY DEVICE
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00:27:26.733 NOP [Abort queued commands]
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.427 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.420 IDENTIFY DEVICE
Error 99 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 8426 hours (351 days + 2 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
04 71 04 9d 00 32 e0
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:26.887 IDENTIFY DEVICE
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00:27:26.733 NOP [Abort queued commands]
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.427 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.420 IDENTIFY DEVICE
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00:27:21.267 NOP [Abort queued commands]
Error 98 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 8426 hours (351 days + 2 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
04 71 04 9d 00 32 e0 Device Fault; Error: ABRT
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.427 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.420 IDENTIFY DEVICE
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00:27:21.267 NOP [Abort queued commands]
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.931 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.887 IDENTIFY DEVICE
Error 97 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 8426 hours (351 days + 2 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
04 71 04 9d 00 32 e0
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:21.420 IDENTIFY DEVICE
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00:27:21.267 NOP [Abort queued commands]
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.931 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.887 IDENTIFY DEVICE
c8 00 30 af 05 ae e3 00 00:27:17.797 READ DMA
Error 96 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 8426 hours (351 days + 2 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
04 71 04 9d 00 32 e0 Device Fault; Error: ABRT
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
a1 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.931 IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 02 00:27:20.887 IDENTIFY DEVICE
c8 00 30 af 05 ae e3 00 00:27:17.797 READ DMA
c8 00 40 e7 ce 4a e4 00 00:27:17.774 READ DMA
c8 00 10 a7 44 b9 e3 00 00:27:17.747 READ DMA
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 8428 6574443
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 8428 184053
# 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 8428 6574443
# 4 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 8427 184053
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
All errors seem to be same type, some kind of abort signals... Too bad I don't understand anything of this, so I my bag is out of solutions
That "dd_rescue" could work if I had 750G drive, which I dont. I think now my only option is mount the home partition as read only to prevent more damage, and try to copy remaining data in smaller pieces - maybe then the drive won't bork.

USING A BACKUP HARDDRIVE

Trying to make more room on my iMac. I'm attempting to backup all my photos from iPhoto to an external harddrive. I've done that using Time Machine but not sure how to retrieve them from the external drive. I don't want to delete them off my iMac until I can do this. Any help?

Brof16 wrote:
Trying to make more room on my iMac. I'm attempting to backup all my photos from iPhoto to an external harddrive. I've done that using Time Machine but not sure how to retrieve them from the external drive. I don't want to delete them off my iMac until I can do this. Any help?
You're talking about two very different things:
A backup is an extra copy of something important, in a different place, so you have two separate copies in case something happens to one.
Extra space for your originals is just that -- like an extension of your internal HD.
While it's possible to use the same external HD for both (in two separate partitions), it really isn't very safe -- when (not if) the external HD fails, you risk losing both copies.
Plus, Time Machine protects its backups; you can view some types of files, and restore them, but you can't actually use them with an app.

Do I need to backup harddrives before install lion

Do I need to backup hardrives before installing lion, on mac-pro. I have tons of pictures and video, and 2 harddrives, i have some on external hard drive, but not current stuff, and wanting to upgrade to Lion. Please advise. I am sure most are going to say back up, back up. I guess I want to know if I will lose pics, documents, mail, if I upgrade.

>Do I need to backup hardrives before installing lion, on mac-pro. \
That's a bit like asking, do I need to wear seatbelts? Seriously if you value your data, you need to backup your data, not just when installing Lion, but when installing anything, when making changes to your data, when renaming data. Backing up is not an option, it is a must in the computing world. See my backup FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
>I guess I want to know if I will lose pics, documents, mail, if I upgrade.
You could, in fact in one thread, someone backed up with Time Machine, and still lost pics because they didn't ensure their Time Machine had in fact backed up the pictures they wanted. A clone backup is the only backup that ensures everything is backed up. Anything can be lost in an upgrade too. See what I have to say about other Lion pitfalls:*
http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html

Invalid key length one partition backup drive?

One of several backup drives for my MBP is a 1 year old 2.5" 1Tb external with 3 partitions. It has functioned with no issues, backing up two laptops while traveling (superduper clones, periodic Diskwarrior scans with no errors, a few defragmentations with Drive Genius). About half each partition is empty. After a backup of the MBP, DG 3 indicated the fragmentation stats on the adjacent partition were unavailable. DW4.2 ran very slowly and suggested a hardware problem (100 recovered files, etc.). Screening the drive with Disk Utility the other two partitions passed and the damaged one reported an 'invalid key length'. Rebooting and rerunning DU gave 'invalid node structure'.
I have other recent clones, so reformatting the partition, followed by another clone, is just a matter of time. The question is how best to assess if there is a hardware issue that makes regenerating the content on this drive a waste of time. An ancient option would be to excavate a DOS copy of Spinrite and run it on the drive, but that could take a couple of days. Are there better options?
Thanks for any info,

From all of the random errors you are getting, it's probably safe to say that there's either a hardware malfunction with the external drive or the directory structure of the drive is corrupt. To fix the latter, you will have to format the drive back to one partition, then repartition the drive and migrate the data back over. If it acts wonky after that, then the drive is failing.
As far as getting the data off goes...I would use Terminal. It's in the utilities folder of your Mac. It's very powerful, but if you don't type the following command wrong, then you'll do no harm.
First off, make a new folder on the desktop of your Mac and name it what ever you would like. Then open terminal and wait for the prompt to appear. It will look like -> "Computer-name:~ username$ " when it's ready for action. Then, type: "rsync -vr" then hit the space-bar then drag the icon of the failing partition of the drive into the Terminal window and lastly, drag the folder you created on the desktop into the window and hit enter (Note: after you type "rsync -vr" then hit space, you don't need to type anything else). After that it will slowly try to migrate each file individually from the drive and onto your Mac and at the end it will tell you if it didn't get any files. It will take a while so be prepared to not use your Mac for the duration of the rsync.
Hope that helps!

HELP! HD Partition, Backup and SuperDuper problems

I am in a bind and am not sure how to proceed.
I upgraded smaller HD's to two large (500GB & 650GB HD's).
I transfered all my info from several of my old drives to the 500GB using SuperDuper. One of my most important smaller drives crashed on me and is unrecoverable. I ultimately want to set up a raid system to use as an automatic backup between the two large HD's.
My problem is that all my files are on the 500GB HD and the OS somehow got corrupted and will not start the drive. A random check showed the files seem to be OK. And fixing permissions were OK.
I did an exact copy of one of my smaller drives to the 650GB HD so I would have an updated OS-- 10.4.11
SuperDuper will not copy files to a drive that is the start up drive. I tried to install three drives into my system using a siig card but my system won't work for some reason with three drives. I get the bouncing file thing until I remove third HD.
I did try to re-install my OS to the HD in question but it doesn't seem to help. It still won't boot.
Recap:
So, I have all my info on a HD that won't boot.
I have a bootable HD that I want to copy all my files to but DO NOT want to lose my desktop setup etc.
And SuperDuper won't allow me to copy to a HD that is the start up disk.
Any ideas?
If I could add a partition the drive all my files are on maybe it would boot after adding another OS install-- I don't know.

One solution I can think of is to purchase a copy of Disk Warrior. It can be booted as a CD, and will copy all of your essential files onto another drive.

Child partition backup failled in DPM 2012

Hello All,
Child partition snapshot backup failed because DPM agent unreachable. DPM agent is ok when not taking backup. but when start synchronizing the DPM agent services filled. As a result Protection backup failed after some times. please suggest

Hi
If you do a manual backup or run a consistency check what happens?
after you did the agent install did you do a reboot? Have you tried reinstalling the agent manually and setting the DPM server?

Partition External Harddrive and part format Extended Journaled part fat32?

Hello
I bought a Toshiba NTFS formatted External Harddrive for the safe keep of my files.
I want it to make partition into 2, and one part to format Mac Extended (Jounaled), one part to FAT32.
Is this possible?
Many thanks.

Thank you very much.
Can I have related question?
Is it possible to make 3 partitions on a harddisk?
If it is,
Can I retain NTFS on a partitioned part?
Or does it have to be entirely formated to Mac readable/wrtitable fotmat?
I mean if I partision in 3 parts can I format
part 1 Mac JOurnal
part 2 FAT32
part3 to retain NTFS?
Many many thanks

Partitioning Backup Drive

After messing with Backup for a while and not being happy with the options, I decided I wanted more of a bootable clone.
So I just purchased SuperDuper.
Since I want to use my 250GB external drive to do more than backup a 60GB internal HD, I think I need to partition it.
When I open Disk Utility, I can't find the "Partition" option.
Please help.

Worry not, it is easy to miss. Adding to my comment about SD!, very impressed here and their support is excellent. Your first clone may take some time but if you have paid for SD!, you have the Smart Update feature. Time depends upon how many files you have to update but normally here it is less than 10 minutes. I use on the 1.8 SP G5 & iMac, currently both to Firewire drives. I have a second internal drive in the tower but presently using for another purpose.
Thanks for posting back.

Partition backup harddrive?

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