11-27-2011, 04:50 PM

I just purchased a 1T WD Passport SE. I want to use it as a portable external backup to keep with me away from my office.

I have a time capsule that does automatic backups, so the Passport will be a second backup. Should I use Carbon Copy Cloner? I love the idea of having this be a bootable hard drive.

But I also would like to use it for an external drive to store things outside of my internal drive, since I have limited space. (I'm installing a 320 G internal, but I'm doing work for clients that will be large files that I don't want to keep on my internal drive.) Is it possible to do both? If so do I need to partition the Passport? Or how do I do it?

My computer is a 12" PowerBook G4 running OS 10.5

I would really appreciate any suggestions...

11-28-2011, 09:29 PM

You can use the Passport for both. Just partition it using Disk Utility into two partitions, one for TM, the other for CCC. If you don't partition the drive CCC will overwrite the TM backups. Format each partition as HFS Extended Journaled, GUID. Make sure you name the partitions accordingly so as not to confuse them.

12-01-2011, 01:26 AM

Thanks chscag...

Can I also do other partitions such as:

1) one partition to back up another computer with ccc, and

2) another with Fat32 so I can transfer files between my computer and a client's pc? Or is there risk of corruption? If so I maybe I can use my old 80G hard drive in an external enclosure to use for clients. Any recommendations?

12-01-2011, 05:55 AM

Actually, I would partition it 3 ways. One for TM (HFS). One for CCC (HFS). And a third partition you can read & write to (FAT32).

Check how much data you are actually storing on your HD and allocate at least 2.0 times that amount for TM. If you plan on substantially increasing the amount of data stored on your Mac after the HD upgrade, then double that number and use it instead.

Allocate the total capacity of your new internal drive as the size for the CCC partition. (320 GB)

Whatever's left over is used for the read/write partition.

Obviously, we have no idea how much data is involved, but, for the typical user, a good split might be.
380GB TM
320GB CCC
300GB Storage

12-02-2011, 05:42 PM

thanks, Jaygray...

I just need to make sure I'm understanding correctly...I assume by TM you mean Time Machine? If so, I actually have a time capsule that backs up for Time Machine. But I gather from your answer it would be OK to do 3 partitions and use 2 of them for 2 laptops with ccc. Am I reading you right?

And files in the third read and write partition can't corrupt files in the ccc backups?

12-11-2011, 02:56 AM

I decided to partition 3 ways as Jaygray suggested. But the disc utility on my 5 year old PowerBookG4 only had the Mac options and a free space option. I took it to the genius bar and the guy there set the third partition as free space, then reformatted it to ExFat, since I didn't have that option.

I was happy and went home to do my backup, but now the third partition isn't even recognized. It says the partition type is Windows_NTFS, but says it's "not mounted." Anyone know how I can fix that, or how to format the 3rd partition to Fat32 or ExFat?

12-11-2011, 08:51 AM

Someone who's been around Apple longer than I may know the answer to your Disc Utility issue. How about trying to format the 3rd partition on a Windows machine? Maybe Windows will recognize it...

12-11-2011, 01:40 PM

Good idea, I'll try that...thanks!