How are you organized?

Relatively new to the board, switched about a month ago.. Dont think Ill ever switch back!! Almost have everything squared away, just a few questions left...

I bought an 500gig external hard drive and created 3 equal partitions.. 1) Time Machine 2) Music 3) Storage.. What I am currently doing is, I have put all music obviously on the music partition and all pics/vids on the storage partition. I got thinking that if the external drive dies, all music/vids/pics are lost.. nothing is essentially backed up. So, How does everyone organize their important files that needs backed up? Should I put a copy of all music, etc. on my imac hard drive and let time machine back everything up automatically on the time machine partition? Or keep two copies of all backed up material, one on the imac AND the other on their correct external partitions?

Seems kind of a dumb question, but I dont want tons of unneeded copies of everything.. especially when were talking about 50 gigs or so of stuff. Adds up quick!

The easiest way to backup is with Time Machine - the music will just be backed up once (because you're not changing it), photos...if you edit really large photos, you may want to manually back those up say once a week instead of the hourly thing Time Machine does.

You should also just have a full hard drive JUST for TM - make sure it's larger than all your other hard disk space.

For me, I'm getting my first Mac on Friday, and planning to do it this way:

It's a Mac Pro, so I have 4 internal hard drive bays:

1. 320 gig - OS and apps
2. 320 gig - photos / music / software backups
3. 320 gig - misc stuff / small windows partition (which *won't* be backed up by Time Machine)
4. 1 TB - Time Machine backup drive

-Bryan

you have all your stuff on your timemachine external and want it backed up! The obvious solution is to put everything on your mac and back up on the (slower) external

no need for two copies of everything, than you just run into everything not syncing up and alot of manual work.

I use a partitioned external -- one partition for my clone (not using Time Machine yet) and one partition holds all my music and photos. The music and photos are not on my internal. I back the internal up once a week. I also have a second external that I do the same thing with, but also clone the music/photos partition to. I keep that at my office and bring it home once a month to update. That way, if, let's say, my house burned down, my full backup would be offsite and safe. A backup kept where the originals are is useless in case of disaster! Think Katrina!