[Millenniumman]

I have a 500 GB Triple Interface LaCie HD coming form Smalldog. I want to make a clone of all of the compuetrs on my signature. How should I best go about this? The only one I might sync regularly is the iMac G4. Should I partition? What software should I use? I'm going to use most of the drive for other things I only want to use 150 GBs or less for the backup. My total HD space for all my computers is 120GB.

[spire]

Definitely partition your drive. This way if something goes wrong, it will likely be limited to a certain volume and it will be easy to troubleshoot.
If you're wanting to clone each of your computers, you've got a couple of options.
If you want to clone each computer as backup only, you may prefer to create one partition dedicated specifically to store each of your computer clones. Clones can be created with Carbon Copy Cloner.
If you'll be accessing the clones on a regular basis and need them live, you could create a partition (aka volume) for each computer specifically. Size will depend on how you use each computer, if you'll be adding much to them, or just using the clones as backup.
Create one volume for the computer you want to sync regularly, again - size will depend on how you use that computer.
You may want a separate volume free to restore a clone or bootable system onto in case you need to troubleshoot a computer or run Disk Utility or DiskWarrior from. But you may wish to skip this since you have portable Macs you can do this with.
How many partitions you create will depend on how you want to divide your information, how you think, and how you like to organize your data.
It is preferred and recommended to journal your volumes. The exception to this is for audio and video data which are best on non-journaled volumes. The OS is best on a journaled volume. So anyone working with audio and video production should have dedicated volumes for audio and video files.
More info:

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Mac OS X: About file system journaling
"Journaling" is a feature that helps protect the file system against power outages or hardware component failures, reducing the need for repairs. Journaling was first introduced in Mac OS X Server 10.2.2, then to the non-server OS in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. This document explains some of the benefits of using this feature and how it works.
Journaling for the Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) file system enhances computer availability and fault resilience, which is especially noteworthy for servers. Journaling protects the integrity of the file system on Xserve and other computers using Mac OS X Server in the event of an unplanned shutdown or power failure. It also helps to maximize the uptime of servers and connected storage devices by expediting repairs to the affected volumes when the system restarts.
Journaling is a technique that helps protect the integrity of the Mac OS Extended file systems on Mac OS X volumes. It both prevents a disk from getting into an inconsistent state and expedites disk repair if the server fails.
When you enable journaling on a disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the disk to a known-good state when the server restarts.
With journaling turned on, the file system logs transactions as they occur. If the server fails in the middle of an operation, the file system can "replay" the information in its log and complete the operation when the server restarts.
Although you may experience loss of user data that was buffered at the time of the failure, the file system is returned to a consistent state. In addition, restarting the computer is much faster. Always remember to back up your data as frequently as necessary.
Why is journaling needed?
A power outage or system failure interrupts read and write processes, which can cause discrepancies between the file system directory and the actual location and structure of stored files. In an unjournaled file system, drives are in an unknown state after a failure, meaning that there is no record of their activity just prior to the shutdown. Before the server can restart and resume services, it must perform a consistency check that requires going through the entire file system, block by block. This process can take hours on a multi-terabyte volume, resulting in an unacceptable period of server downtime.
Journaling accelerates the recovery time after an unexpected shutdown, significantly improving the availability of server and storage systems. When journaling is turned on on a storage volume, the server automatically tracks file system operations and maintains a continuous record of these transactions in a separate file, called a journal. The operating system can use the journal to return the file system to a known, consistent state after a failure. This eliminates the need to perform a consistency check on the entire file system during startup. Instead, when the server is restarted, Mac OS X simply replays recent transactions in the journal, bringing the system up-to-date and resuming operations that were interrupted during the failure. With a journaled file system, server restart takes just a few seconds, regardless of the number of files, or the size of the volume.
Backward Compatible
Journaled file system is part of a set of incremental enhancements to the Mac OS Extended file system, and it is backward compatible with the Mac OS Extended file system. Users can read, write, and access journaled Mac OS Extended volumes on computers that do not have a journaling feature.
Most disk utilities designed to work with the Mac OS Extended file system can also be used when journaling is turned on. You should check with your disk utility vendor before using earlier disk utilities with a journaled file system.
When Should Journaling Be Used?
Journaling is best suited for servers requiring high availability, servers containing volumes with many files, and servers containing data that is backed up at infrequent intervals (nightly, for example).
If a volume contains read-only data that is not mission-critical, it may not be necessary to turn on journaling if performance is more important than safety.
If your server contains high-bandwidth usage data files, such as large video, graphics, or audio files, you may want to weigh the benefits of using journaling against the performance needed to access your data. In most cases, the impact of journaling upon data access performance are unnoticeable to users, but its implementation may not be practical for servers where data access demands outweigh its benefits.
http://docs.info.app...l?artnum=107249

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[spire]

More information you may find useful for your endeavor:
[HFS]
HFS is the preferred filesystem on Mac OS X. It supports journaling, quotas, byte-range locking Finder information in metadata, multiple encodings, hard and symbolic links, aliases, support for hidin file extensions on a per-file basis, etc. HFS uses B-Trees heavily for many of its internals

[Similar to HFS]
HFS is architecturally similar to HFS, with several important improvements such as:
- 32 bits used for allocation blocks (instead of 16). HFS divides the disk space on a partition into equal-sized allocation-blocks. Since 16 bits are used to refer to an allocation-block, there can be at most 216 allocation blocks on an HFS filesystem. Thus, using 32 bits for identifying allocation blocks results in much less wasted space (and more files).
- Long file names up to 255 characters
- Unicode based file name encoding
- File/Directory attributes can be extended in future (as opposed to being fixed size)
- In addition to a System Folder ID (for starting Apple operating systems), a dedicated startup file that can easily be found (its location and size are stored in the volume header in a fixed location) during startup, is also supported so that non-Apple systems can boot from a HFS+ filesystem
- Largest file size is 263 bytes
http://www.kernelthr...sx/arch_fs.html

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I'm a post-production consultant to a variety of broadcast and film production studios throughout Hollywood. In dealing with my clients, their number one concern is maximizing the performance of their equipment, while maintaining the highest level of data integrity.
New to most of us with OS X 10.3 is File Journaling. First released by Apple in OS X Server 10.2, this new feature has a direct impact on how we get maximum performance with maximum safety for our editing systems.
According to Apple's web site: "Journaling is a technique that helps protect the integrity of the Mac OS Extended file systems on Mac OS X volumes. It both prevents a disk from getting into an inconsistent state and expedites disk repair if the server fails.
"When you enable journaling on a disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the disk to a known-good state when the server restarts.
"With journaling turned on, the file system logs transactions as they occur. If the server fails in the middle of an operation, the file system can 'replay' the information in its log and complete the operation when the server restarts."
Basically, Unix, in order to get improved performance, keeps disk directories in memory and only periodically writes them to your hard disk. If you crash, your directories are, in almost all cases, out of sync with the files recorded on your hard drives.
Many of us, faced with a system crash, will use FSCK (or, if the situation is really bad, Disk Warrior X) to rebuild our directories. However, with OS X 10.3, FSCK no longer works the way it did in 10.2. In fact, it doesn't work at all. This is because file journaling is turned on by default in OS X 10.3.
When journaling is turned on, every time you write a file to your hard disk, or modify an existing file, the operating system writes an entry into a transaction file. This is MUCH quicker than writing out the full directory structure.
Journaling is also much safer for your data because if you crash, the operating system uses the journal to update the directory structure, which means far less lost data and far faster reboots.
The problem is that journaling takes time. Enough time that it is worth considering turning journaling off on all your media drives. The benefit is that you get faster performance. The disadvantage is that in the event of a crash, you don't have the protection journaling provides. On the third hand, hard drives with journaling turned off are in no worse shape than hard drives running under OS 10.2.
In my experience with a wide variety of media clients, disk directory problems almost never arise with secondary drives, they are almost exclusively the domain of the boot disk.
As Apple writes: "If your [computer] contains high-bandwidth usage data files, such as large video, graphics, or audio files, you may want to weigh the benefits of using journaling against the performance needed to access your data. In most cases, the impact of journaling upon data access performance are unnoticeable to users, but its implementation may not be practical for [computers] where data access demands outweigh its benefits.
My recommendation? Leave journaling turned on for your boot disk and turn it off for all secondary drives (both internal and external) that are used to store media files. For external drives that store data, not media, turn journaling on.
Journaling is controlled using Disk Utility. And there are two ways you can turn Journaling on (the default) or off (better for media drives). First, is when you setup your drive by selecting the appropriate option in the Erase tab.
However, you can also turn off journaling in the Disk Utility by selecting your hard disk then going to File->Disable Journaling, which doesn't involve reformatting your drive and erasing data.
Author:
Larry Jordan is an Apple-Certified Trainer in Digital Media with over 25 years experience as a producer, director and editor. Based in Los Angeles, he's a member of both the Directors Guild and Producers Guild. He's been using Macintosh computers since January 24, 1984, and Final Cut since version 1.0.

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[Millenniumman]

Ok, so if I want the clone to be bootable then I should make a partition for each computer? I've never dealt with partitions so I have a few questions. First of all, when you partition a volume do you delete it? Does a partition show up as a different HD on the desktop. If so, will I have 6+ volumes showing up on my desktop or can I choose to only have the partitions I desire on the desktop. Perhaps the ideal would be for all of the partitions only showing up seperately inside the main volume. If I want the HD to have a fresh installation of OS X should that be on a seperate partition from the main storage?

[dougster]

Yes, you'll want to make partitions for each bootable Mac OS, and maybe even a partition for video/audio. And you'll be able to Name/size/format each partition when using Disk Utility. After you name it you'll have the option of formatting the partition, ie. HFS- (Journaled). Then when you plug in your LaCie all the Named parititions will show up on your Desktop, along with your main HD. I don't know if there is a way to hide some of the partitions or not. And if you want a fresh install of OSX I'd think you'd want it on your main internal HD, but you could install it on any of the partitions after re-formatting. For cloning you might look into [SuperDuper] ,or [Carbon Copy Cloner] ..but its not up to par for Tiger quite yet. I wish they'd hurry up tho /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[Millenniumman]

Thanks. Can I clone with Disk Utility? I have tried CCC but it doesn't work on Tiger. Can I make all of the partitions show up in one volume? I prefer not having much on my desktop. Do you know any way I could make each partition icon look like the compter I backup? I know how to copy paste icons and have copied thumbnails from pictures to make custom icons but they are always square. Also how could I sync the backups occasionally without recloning? Isn't that some addable feature of CCC? Why is a seperate AV partition better? Will apps work just as well from this external HD as from my external HD (Mainly small apps). I'm cluttering up my computer with freeware I like to test. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[lkalliance]

You CAN clone with Disk Utility, which has fewer feature than CCC (or, I assume, Super Duper) but will create a perfectly reasonable clone.
Last I checked, there is no version of CCC for Tiger, though there are workarounds.
Something else about partitioning: in general, once you've partitioned a drive, that's it, you can't resize the partitions or eliminate partitions without wiping the entire drive and starting over. BUT there are applications out there that allow you to do such actions WITHOUT erasing. Macworld recently did a review of one such app whose name escapes me at the moment.
pause for Google search
It was iPartition. Macworld had not a review, but an article on partitioning that you might find useful.
Hope this helps!

[Millenniumman]

Thanks that was helpful and I might buy iPartition in the future. How can I sync the backups occasionally without recloning? Isn't that some addable feature of CCC? Why is a seperate AV partition better? Will apps work just as well from this external HD as from my external HD (Mainly small apps). I'm cluttering up my computer with freeware I like to test.

[lkalliance]

Syncing is a feature of CCC. Or, rather, it's a feature within UNIX that CCC taps into. Or, rather, it's a UNIX addon ("psync") that CCC access. OK, I'm not really sure which of the three. Anyway, yes, CCC can sync its clones.
(aside: I keep referencing CCC; that's what I used to clone Panther. CCC has not yet been updated to work with Tiger, and I've not yet downloaded SuperDuper. I'll continue to refer to CCC vis-a-vis its Panther functionality, and perhaps someone else can comment on SuperDuper, which I understand is a great program, too)
CCC is also scheduleable; it creates a cron task in UNIX so it doesn't even have to be launched; only your computer needs to be running and awake when the cron task is scheduled.
I don't generally run apps from my FW hard drive, I only use it to back up. BUT as a test I have run off of my cloned system on the FW hard drive, and I'd say the speed is reasonably comparable on things like web browsing, mail, text editing and such. I didn't do any real stress tests on things like Photoshop, but it sounds like that's not what you're after anyway.

[dougster]

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Why is a seperate AV partition better?

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The only reason its better at this end is I don't clutter up my internal HD with video footage which uses TONS of storage space. So I use the LaCie as the target storage area for videos, and fine tuning audio CDs and snippets. Just saves space on the internal HD, and I can't tell any difference in speed when burning DVDs either.
I'm also waiting for Mike Bombich to release a version of CCC to create a bootable HD of Tiger, and haven't used SuperDuper either. Bombich does mention "Disk Utility application to clone one disk to another as well as to create a disk image of your hard drive." ...until his new version is ready. Some folks are indeed making disk images of their HDs for back up until CCC is updated for OSX 10.4.x

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Wow!..A lot of advice. Well, I'll chime in.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Should I partition?

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As far as a backup layout goes, you have a few choices. If you want a bootable, full copy, your best choice would be to have a partition for each computer the same size as that systems internal drive.
If you don't need bootability, you could use CCC to make a full clone to a disk image. You'd have to mount the disk image every time but it would reduce the mounting of separate partitions and the like.
If you don't need bootability or a full clone, you could make folders for each system and backup only the data (documents). This would also cut out the need for numerous partitions or the need to mount disk images.
Macworld OS X Forum FAQ - Opinions - Should I partition my hard drive?

Originally posted by Millenniumman

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What software should I use?

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I wonder if I'm just missing it but I could've sworn the Macworld OS X Forum FAQ had something on this.

Anywho... There are a handful. To name a few...

Bombich Software's Carbon Copy Cloner
Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper!
Propaganda Productions' Deja Vu
SoftoBe's Folders SynchronizerX
Dantz Retrospect
Lacie's Silverkeeper
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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First of all, when you partition a volume do you delete it?

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The drive's contents will be destroyed (erased) when you partition. Unless, you use something like Coriolis Systems' iPartition (as mentioned earlier). I haven't tried it but thought about getting it. Except, I got out of using partitions. I don't seem to like them but sometimes one is forced to use them.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Does a partition show up as a different HD on the desktop. If so, will I have 6+ volumes showing up on my desktop or can I choose to only have the partitions I desire on the desktop.

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Yes. But you could use Disk Utility to unmount the ones you won't be using for that session. Somewhat of a pain but I don't personally have enough experience with such to know if there is a solution to choose which will mount and which won't.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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f I want the HD to have a fresh installation of OS X should that be on a seperate partition from the main storage?

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That would be the recommended method.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Can I clone with Disk Utility?

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Yes. In my few attempts with it, it has been unreliable. It will fail during very long (large) copies. But this is in no way some factual analysis.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Can I make all of the partitions show up in one volume?

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Not to my knowledge.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Do you know any way I could make each partition icon look like the compter I backup? I know how to copy paste icons and have copied thumbnails from pictures to make custom icons but they are always square.

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I don't really seem to understand the complaint. The 'squareness' is a limitation of icons. I don't know of any OS that lets one create non-square icons.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Also how could I sync the backups occasionally without recloning? Isn't that some addable feature of CCC

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Some of the software I linked to above offers full, differential, and incremental backup options.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Why is a seperate AV partition better?

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It isn't really. It may help to contain things and might help reduce fragmentation. A separate AV hard drive is what is preferred / recommended. Unlike a different partition, a different hard drive will reduce the amount of access to a single drive. Your computer can access the AV files separately from when it accesses the OS / program files. This helps to improve performance as a drive, obviously, cannot access more than one item at one time.
Originally posted by Millenniumman

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Will apps work just as well from this external HD as from my external HD (Mainly small apps). I'm cluttering up my computer with freeware I like to test.

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As far as this goes...It would depend on whether you'll still be running (booting) your computer from your internal drive. If you do, you'll still be cluttering up your boot drive with preferences (.plist) files, etc. If you are booting from these clones than it would be just fine. Performance wise, it should be about equal but there are numerous factors to consider.

[Millenniumman]

Thanks. All of my questions have been answered but the one about icons.

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I don't really seem to understand the complaint. The 'squareness' is a limitation of icons. I don't know of any OS that lets one create non-square icons.

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Maybe I should clarify. The Mac OS X icons don't look square. (Drives are rectangular, optical drives are round, garageband is a guitar ect.) Whenever I get a picture and try to use the thumbnail for an icon for something else the icon looks like the picture but has a square white background. is there anyway I can solve this? I'm using photoshop.
I'm now ready to set up my HD when it gets here on Wednesday /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
You know, it seems I've forgotten how. I could've sworn I've done it before but just attempted and failed. Someone care to jump in that remembers how to do this. That is, keep the transparency of the image when pasting it.

[dougster]

-Cheetah,
In PShop we can 2x click the Background to give it Layer 0, and use the Magic Wand to delete the background into a transpareny, but I can't find the right file format for -M to paste into the Get Info window. Thats as far as I got, and you've posted in the past how to do this I'm pretty dang sure. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Now this is driving me koo-koo...only because I've done this also in the past. Maybe it'll poP up in one of my brain cells in the near future. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif