[igloorex]

I have a G4 iMac running 10.3. I just installed a 320GB internal drive and am wondering how/whether to partition it. I also have a 250GB FW external for backups.

Previously, I had an 80GB internal and had partitioned the external into 80GB and 170GB sections. The 80GB was a bootable backup of the internal, and the 170GB was set up to ignore ownership, allowing me to easily share iPhoto libraries, iTunes and other useful files among several user accounts set up on the machine.

Now that my internal is so much bigger, I have a few questions:
Since the internal capacity is 320GB, will I have a problem backing up to the smaller FW drive or will I be ok until the internal has actually used more than 250GB?

Should I partition the internal drive so that I also have a section that ignores file ownership and move all of the files back internal? Total amount of data between the full backup and the shared data files is currently about 120GB. Assuming I am ok with question 1, this will give me a way to back up my shared files.

When I installed the new drive, I booted on the FW drive, used disk utility to copy the complete backup drive back to the internal & then re-booted. It seemed to work fine -- is it really that simple or is there something else I ought to do?

Thanks in advance!

[P]

Originally Posted by igloorex 

Now that my internal is so much bigger, I have a few questions:
Since the internal capacity is 320GB, will I have a problem backing up to the smaller FW drive or will I be ok until the internal has actually used more than 250GB?

Depends on which backup software you use. Usually it's not a problem until you fill up the main drive.

Originally Posted by igloorex 

Should I partition the internal drive so that I also have a section that ignores file ownership and move all of the files back internal? Total amount of data between the full backup and the shared data files is currently about 120GB. Assuming I am ok with question 1, this will give me a way to back up my shared files.

That's... really up to you. If it had been me, I'd have partitioned the boot drive to have the main partition be the same size of the backup, because I's never notice when the main drive ran over the backup space. I'd use the extra 70 gigs as a scratch disk (you can move the VM swap and /tmp there if you feel like hacking) and then always mount the backup as ignoring ownership for easy sharing.

When I installed the new drive, I booted on the FW drive, used disk utility to copy the complete backup drive back to the internal & then re-booted. It seemed to work fine -- is it really that simple or is there something else I ought to do?

Thanks in advance![/QUOTE]