Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - New MAC user. I have a couple of easy questions.

**shuuhen** · 07-28-2008, 09:39 PM

Depends on how the user will use the drive. Backups only would be fairly safe. The more the user experiments with the drive, the more chance for something to go wrong. Personally I have one drive dedicated to backing up my MacBook Pro, but the drive is the exact same size, so it works out great.

Having separate drives is generally a good idea when multiple operating systems are involved, especially since Windows tends to only support what it uses. However, if the OP had two drives for backup, both could be partitioned and the data would be in two places.

For example. My tower I built a while ago has two 320 GB hard drives in. Now for about what I paid for the two drives, I could get a drive that could back up both (internal though, haven't looked for cases). If one was Windows and the other Linux (only Gentoo's on the machine at the moment, but for illustration purposes) I could parition the drive and easily back up both drives.

07-28-2008, 09:39 PM	#9 (permalink)
shuuhen Moderator Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Colorado Posts: 762 OS: Mac OS 9.1, Mac OS X 10.5.5, WinXP Pro, FreeBSD 6.0, Gentoo Linux	Re: New MAC user. I have a couple of easy questions. Depends on how the user will use the drive. Backups only would be fairly safe. The more the user experiments with the drive, the more chance for something to go wrong. Personally I have one drive dedicated to backing up my MacBook Pro, but the drive is the exact same size, so it works out great. Having separate drives is generally a good idea when multiple operating systems are involved, especially since Windows tends to only support what it uses. However, if the OP had two drives for backup, both could be partitioned and the data would be in two places. For example. My tower I built a while ago has two 320 GB hard drives in. Now for about what I paid for the two drives, I could get a drive that could back up both (internal though, haven't looked for cases). If one was Windows and the other Linux (only Gentoo's on the machine at the moment, but for illustration purposes) I could parition the drive and easily back up both drives. __________________ Has it been a few days since I replied to your thread? Don't panic! I'm a busy college student and may forget a post if I'm extra busy (or it might just take me a while to be able to do a decent reply). If you still need help and are awaiting my reply after a few days, PM me about it. When posting what errors you get, please give the full message. It makes helping you much easier.