Using an external hard drive for backup

Question

I admit to knowing nothing about this so I need someone's advice. The wiring for the backlight in my iBook fried 2 nights ago and I have to send it back to Apple..very expensive problem add to the fact that I did not extend my apple care OUCH!! Anyway I had to buy an external hard drive to back it up in case they have to reinstall software..well that was a precautionary they suggested. Can I use my new 300 gig HD to back up both my laptop, desk top and iBook on the same drive or do I need to partition the hard drive to do this. I have close to 2500 photo's in iPhoto and about the same in iTunes. So I could use some expert opinions. I do have most already on CD's but I am hoping to solve back ups for all 3 computers on this.
Thanks.
Wendy

Answer 1

Hello again Wendy.
For your 'for now issue' I would go down the route of starting your iBook in target mode, as described above, plug both it and your external drive (you will need to format this first - go for zero all data as this maps out any bad sectors) into your other Mac. The iBook and the hard drive should mount on the desktop. All you have to do is open a finder window and drag you files from the iBook to the external. If your files are all organised in you home folder you can just move that over and all the contents will be backed up.
In terms of using the drive to backup everything I would post a more complete question in the relevant part of the forum when you have worked out what you want to do (Dr Smokes book holds very good advice on thourough approaches). A word of caution though, most people who bother to backup never rely on just one location/medium. For instance, in the cast of the photo's of my son/family (which are once-only memories) I have them on a seprate drive on my G4, backed up to an external drive every time I add more photos and every few months (depending on how snap happy I've been) I back up the whole lot to a DVD. Some I know go a stage further and store a copy of the DVD/CD with relatives or freinds just in case. It all come down to your level of paranoia or how much you will miss your data (do you really want to have to re-write all those power point/worksheets etc.) if your house burns down or, more likely, if the external drive and your computers are fried at the same time!
Hope this helps (even if it is a bit of a essay).
S.
G4 Dual 1.25, iMac G3, iBook G4 1.33,   Mac OS X (10.3.9)