1.5TB external HD - partitioning?
 

I have just bought a 1.5TB external hard drive that I intend to use to store the contents of my hard drive(s) as backups for when the inevitable HD failure occurs.

I have a device that will accept hard drives, and I want to 'archive' the contents (data) as well as cloning my current hard drive including the Operating System and installed programmes (if possible) so that I can, if necessary, install a new HD and retain my Operating System settings.

My question is:-
Should I partition the 1.5TB so that I can have various locations for the various backups? If so, what software is recommended (ie Windows Vista)?
I think I still have a machine using XP, and, somewhere (not sure that I can find it after all these years) I've got a ten-year-old Partition Magic (which might not work with Vista).

That's all, folks (for now, at least).

If this topic has already been covered, please refer me to the thread.

Partition Magic 8.0 won't work with Vista, XP was the last.

I have used Norton Save & Restore and Norton Ghost 15.5 which do a good job of backing up a complete hard disk. I'm not keen on Norton 360 which budles anti-virus and backup together with anti-spy ware etc.

Windows7 (and I believe Vista) have a Disk Management facility that may do the partition job for you. Suggest you put this in the computer forum where I've always had great results.

G-CPTN,

First, as parabellum pointed out, I think this question would have probably been better suited to the Computers forum rather than Jet Blast. However I'm sure one of the mods can wave a magic wand and teleport this thread there, so don't worry. :cool:


Are you sure you really want to clone the drive ? It's an easy way to eat up a lot of storage space. Personally I'd look at only backing up user profiles plus user data stored in partitions/disks outside the profiles.

In this day and age, 1.5TB is not that big. In legacy operating systems, you would have had issues with large partitions, but these days it's not much of a problem ....XP/2003/Vista are I believe limited to (2^32)-1 clusters (so between 16TB and 256TB depending on cluster size. With GPT on 7/2008, I believe the limit is even higher.

So basically, you're probably wasting your time partitioning down a 1.5TB disk. If anything, it will likely only come back to bite you when you run out of space on one of your mini-partitons.

Vista has built in backup tools. If you're insistent on cloning, take a look at Acronis.

If you're using Win7, it does pretty good disk images itself. The images are also compatible with programs such as Acronis. But you mention Vista. Ah, well.

Acronis does very good backups: full images, incrementals, differentials, and also real time continuous backups.

For free, there's Comodo Backup which always seems buggy. I've tried liking the company, but I don't trust its products now. There's a Chinese clone of Partition Magic called Easeus. The company also has backup tools. I've used Easeus a lot, but its backup stuff seems unreliable in my environment.

There are a bazillion tools out there. I change from time to time, but right now I'm basically using Win7 and Acronis for image backups (that's paranoia for you) and Allway Sync to make sure my most important data is not only in many places (internal drive (RAID1), external drive, network RAID, cloud), but is also simply files 'cos I don't trust backup formats :-)

Personally, I'd go for one NTFS partition.

I have been involved with computers from the days of 20MB drives in the early 80's through to my present 2TB drives. I have never partitioned a drive. If I want to separate one set of data from another I just name them as different files or place them on separate drives. But then I have rarely used automatic backup systems. I tried for a while on a Samsung 1.5TB Storystation but gave up when the backup system malfunctoned. I generally just drag and drop files from my computer drive to external drives every week or so.

If you are worried about hard disc failure then the only secure method of partition is having separate drives.

I use 2 back up drives. One's fully auto - a branded maxtor, the other is just a dumb drive, (seagate) where I drag and drop. Both seem OK without any partitioning.

Thanks for your replies.

If you are just using it as a backup there is not much advantage in partitioning the drive, it just adds more layers to hunt through when reinstating data.

As to cloning, yes! And yes again! I keep my program and system files on the first (small) partition on my C drive and clone that regularly to my external usb disk using Acronis True Image. I keep the last 3 clones and delete the earliest ones when adding a new one. Doesn't take long and will work in the background. Can be useful if you have installed a program which gives problems. Saved me once when I caught a virus which I couldn't shift - just restored the last clone. Because I keep all my data on the second partition on drive C the inconvenience is minimal.

You can also use Acronis (or similar programs) to create clones of your data folders but, to me, the slight saving in space is not worth the extra time taken to clone/ recover the files. Just drag the folders onto the external drive. If you want a file you can go straight there and use it directly without having to run a recovery program.

I use DriveImage XML (free) to image my C drive and that is on a partition on an external 1TB drive. I image every 2 weeks or so.

To backup data, I use SyncToy 2.1 (free) to backup to the bit (no that's not a joke) that's left.

Re backups
 

OK - I'm a long time user of Acronis - The current clutch of hardware being a mis behaving clone Clevo 900T motherboad. A Dell Vostro 1300 Series - a 14 Yesr old Compaq (now a Internet Radio ) and a little Acer netbook.

The Clevo - The motherboad is 6 Years old and very tempremental - A poor design heatwise - I run a two spindle setup the main drive a new Samsung 160 Gb and the secondary a Futjitsu 80 Gb. running under XP SP3 - My primary backup Drive is a USB seagate 160 GB sata - Acronis image backup - every two weeks.

On the Clevo I use the schedule to backup every night via Acronis to the secondary - It takes 12-15 Mins -

The origional 80 Gb on the Clevo failed three months ago - no sweat - Boot disk prepared previosly, from Acronis - restored from secondary HD to new HD - Windows spotted the differences on first boot of the 160, and Bob's your Uncle - Up and going in three days - New drive took three days to arrive from a well known internet store and 15 mins to restore image backup.

The Dell single spindle, so a bit more time to restore. - The Unix box Netbook - has its own 32 bit fat, old 20 Gb ext drive - Simple backup for the Ubuntu group - It works too.

OK I was "Lucky" - the 80 Gb on the Clevo failed "Gracefully" - but If you are lucky enough to own a PC that has room for a second HD use it - drives are cheap - I have no connection with Acronis and I'm sure other software does the job verry well - but haviing a second HD on your computer is well worth the trouble..- Its backups out of the age of the Ark - but it works - The cloud is another matter.

CAT III

As long as only one OS is accessing the drive, I'd create just one partition. For Windows, it would be NTFS.

I would then use Acronis TrueImage to make full-disk backups.

In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing today, except that the backup drives are only 500 GB for the moment.

With this arrangement, you can be up and running again in under an hour after a disk failure, once you've installed the replacement disk.