Partitioning bootable external drive.

I just ordered a 2 TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 Desktop RAID setup from Other World Computing (https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T2.0S/) and would like to create a partition for Snow Leopard on this external drive. I plan to use the drive in a RAID-5 configuration, primarily to serve files for video and audio. The Snow Leopard partition that I would like to put on this drive is mainly to use for testing and troubleshooting my iMacs and Macbook Pro, and for a bootable drive in the event of a drive failure on one of my Macs. Can anyone tell me how large the partition should be and the best way to set this up? Thanks

mstrammd wrote:
I am already using a Time Capsule for backups. I have over a year's worth of backups on the TC. Yes, I could clone the internal HD, but it is 750 GB and >would require the purchase of another drive.
I see. The size of a clone is related to the space used on the drive rather than the drive size.
Besides, current iMac is going to be replaced by one of the new i7 Quad core machines with a 2 TB HD. I am buying the RAID solution to have redundancy of important files and primarily HD video, audio, and RAW image files. What is the >advantage of cloning when I'm already using the Time Machine/Time capsule.
You might as well wait until you get the new machine. Personally, I don't trust TM very much. There are a variety of cases where it fails to do the desired job. A clone is much less likely to be a problem.
I suppose clone would allow a rapid rebuild of the internal drive, but only as a snapshot of a given period of time when it was made. I read some recent reports of some Time Capsules dying after 16-18 months, which is really disconcerting. Apparently there are some bad power supplies out there on some units. That is >what got me thinking about additional ways to protect my data.
I like TM because it provides the opportunity to restore to different dates, but, as indicated, I am not impressed with its reliability. A clone, on the other hand, is, IMO, very reliable. And, using, for example, SuperDuper one can make incremental clones (which really shortens the time required for subsequent cloinings) and schedule clonings. The best procedure, I think, is to use both TM and clones (ignoring also having an off-site backup). I use both, but they are on different drives. So, you may want to get that additional drive.

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    coffeecoffee wrote:
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    Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

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    Message was edited by: jsd2

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