Backup dilema

I believe it would be possible if you would partition the external HD - a 100GB partition & a 650GB partition.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

I second Texas Mac Man's suggestion. Partition the disk!

Hey tuggers,
Well like Tex says, partition. Here's a good walk through:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
It's fir Tiger but not much is different in Leopard.
Yah I forgot about mentioning partitioning.
Richard

Message was edited by: spudnuty

Don't do it. If the drive fails you lose partitions 1, 2, and 3, and have no other backups of whatever was on partition 2. Never have your original data and your only backup of it on the same physical disk!

I'd try to send your eMac in for a hard drive upgrade. The labour cost from any Apple certified repair centre should be about $65 or so. Get a nice 500GB drive fitted. Then you can keep all of your data on it, and use your external drive exclusively for backups.

If your model is the eMac (USB 2.0) 1.25Ghz, it comes with the Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive bus controller, meaning it can address large hard drives, greater than 128GB for an internal drive.
Earlier models that have the ATA66 are limited to less than 128GB for an internal drive.

With your 1.25 Ghz model, you'll be OK following Király's suggestion

I have a 160GB drive in my 1.25GHz eMac right now, and it works great!

Thanks Király, that's good to hear.

Tuggers, plan B is on. 🙂

$125 is not too expensive, and I'd go for it. It will still be cheaper than buying a second external drive to back up all the stuff that's on your current external drive.

Changing the hard drive in an eMac is not for the faint of heart - I have made two attempts at it myself (with a repair manual handy, even!) and gave up both times. Others here have successfully done it themselves, though.