my backup strategy

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Need some advice about possible backup solutions. (see my tech specs in the profile)

since my extrenal drive is so much faster than my internal, I've decided to move everthing over to the FW drive. I used CCC to transfer everything and have booted up successfully from the FW drive to OSX and OS9. I have noticed that things are running a bit more smoothly.

I am hoping to use the internal drive as my backup drive. Of course, I know I wont be able to backup everything from a 156 GB drive to a 13 GB drive, but I want to test out my creative solution on you...

I'm going to erase the internal drive and then store the following on it:
1) a disk image that will install my current OSX setup.
2) a disk image that will install my current OS9 setup. (I still use this about once a week for my older photoshop and quark programs.)
3) StuffIt archives of my most important data.

I'm not going to backup my applications, since for most of them I have the installation CDs. I do not have the OS9 installation CD since that came on the computer when I bought it.

Here are my questions...

are the disk images already compressed? would it help to archive these as well?

Does anyone have any experience with archiving/compressing? How much uncompressed data will I be able to put on this drive?

Are there any other precautions I should take to protect the backup drive?

Am I better off partitioning my FW drive and backup to that instead?
 
If you backup to the same drive and something physically goes wrong (which could happen, being on external drive) then you're out of luck, even with a partition, so I'd recommend avoiding that.
 
I agree with Randman. Putting your backup on the same drive as the working volume is not a good idea. I also am a firm believer on the internal drive being the primary boot and working volume.

To answer some of your other questions:
  • Disk images are compressed if and only if they were created as compressed images in the first place. As far as the .dmg files you download, your guess is as good as mine which ones are and which are not. If you try to compress images that were already compressed, they may actually become larger rather than smaller.
  • If you have 10 GB of uncompressed data, it will take 10 GB on the backup drive. No more and no less. If you compress the data, it will occupy anywhere from 5 to 10, or even 11, GB depending on the type of data, the type of compression you use and the multitudinous compression options chosen. All compression tools claim up to 50% compression, but that is only for text and even then, very seldom achieved.

I would also be cautious in assuming your external drive is faster than the internal. No matter what the published specs for each drive are, like the claims of the various compression tools, those specs are very seldom achieved in practice. If you want an accurate measure of performance get XBench and run at least five trials on each drive and average the results of the five trials. That will give you a relatively accurate measure of true performance in your system.
 
professor, thanks for responding.

I will try XBench as that tool may come in handy. However, I can percieve the difference in the speed of the HDs, simply by browsing folders in the finder. Also i have noticed that adobe acrobat loads MUCH faster. I should also tell you that I am running on my original 128MB. My 512MB card should arrive by Wednesday.
 
You'll see a world of difference when you get your new ram. There's a handy freeware called Menu Meters that you may also be looking into.
 
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