Possible to back up three HD boot partitions on a single external drive?

[AnitaPeterson]

Hello guys and gals,

I have a new twist on the old "How to best back up my data" question, but this one is a bit of a dilemma:

I have three computers.

- Machine A has a 4 GB partition dedicated to the OS and programs, on a HDD totalling 100 GB;
- Machine B has a 24 GB primary OS partition on a 200 GB drive.
- Machine C has an 80 GB C: drive.

I have a newly-formatted 80 GB external HD, and I want to use it to back up all three computers.

I am not sure, however, what the best procedure is.

* First of all, I don't know which is the best program for backing up selectively (the 80 GB HDD in Machine 3 would otherwise gobble up all my space)... and I need a GUI, not DOS prompts.
* Second, I'm not sure if I should partition the back-up disk in three, assigning each partition to a certain machine.

How would you go about it?

 

[Matthias99]

Use Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage (I've used both; there is also Dantz Retrospect, but I haven't used it.) You can back up individual partitions (or whole disks) to image files, and optionally compress them. The image file will only be as big as the actual amount of used space on the partition (and will be smaller if you compress it and the data is not compressible).

You can do backups either from a bootable CD or within Windows, with relatively simple GUIs. If your hard drive blows up, you just replace it, boot up from the Ghost/TrueImage CD, then restore the latest image/images from the external drive. Reboot and you're back in business.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

So, I don't need to partition the back-up HDD? cool!
I'm still a bit concerned about the procedure, but I guess I'll get to it, and post questions along the way, if anything happens.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
So, I don't need to partition the back-up HDD?

Nope.

Well, you'll need to create one big partition on it to hold all the image files.