Possible to backup to 2 partitions?

I have a 320GB Seagate Hard Drive. It has 2 partitions and I used 1 for projects and recordings, and the other for backup. Now I have a WD Caviar Blue 500GB that I plan to use for projects and recordings. Is it possible to backup to both partitions on the Seagate hard drive? Someone on OCN told me that you can't already do it with native Windows backup.

Make entries in the Send To Context Menu to back up the files in as many places that you like. It is the fastest way to do so. For this please follow the procedure below.

To get to the SendTo Folder, you’ll need to paste in the following in the “Search Programs and Files” Text Box and click on the SendTo Icon that shows up or paste it into the Windows Explorer's Address Bar.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

You should now see a number of shortcuts that are already there. Let us say you wanted to add an item to the Send To menu to open files in Notepad. You could just drag a shortcut to Notepad into this folder, or create a new shortcut. Now you would see the new Notepad item in the Context Menu.

You could also merge the two partitions on the old 320GB drive and then use the whole drive. :)

Wanchoo, are you sure it's safe to do that?

profdlp said:

You could also merge the two partitions on the old 320GB drive and then use the whole drive. :)

How would I do that?
Thanks for the replies. :)

Read this carefully and ask questions if you're not sure about something:

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

I take it I'll be following Option Three?

What size and how full are the two partitions on the 320GB drive?

There are numerous ways you can do this. Unless you have other backups located elsewhere (and you should!), they all involve at least a little risk.

This is very general - consult the guide for specifics depending on what strategy you choose.

1) Since you have a brand new 500GB drive I'm assuming it's not even close to full yet. Copy everything from the 320GB drive to it, then delete both partitions on the 320GB and make just one new one. This will only take you about five minutes longer than whatever amount of time the data-copying process requires.

2) (This leaves the 500GB drive clear out of the picture. If your main data storage is there it probably makes sense to not mess around with it right now unless you have to. The most critical time when re-doing a backup plan is if you get in the situation where you have to temporarily delete all your backups, like may be the case in Case 1 shown above.)

Look at the two partitions on the 320GB drive, pick the one with the most free space, then move as much of the data from the other partition to the free space as you can. If it will all fit in one shot, delete the empty partition and extend the one that now has all the data. If it won't all fit, keep going.

For example, if it's like this:

Partition 1: 160GB total; 80GB used / 80GB free
Partition 2: 160GB total; 110GB used / 50GB free

I would move about 40GB from Partition 1 to Partition 2, leaving you with this:

Partition 1: 160GB total; 40GB used / 120GB free
Partition 2: 160GB total; 150GB used / 10GB free

At that point, shrink Partition 1 down to about 60GB. At that point what you'll have is a drive that looks like this:

Partition 1: 60GB total; 40GB used / 20GB free
100GB FREE SPACE - Unallocated
Partition 2: 160GB total; 150GB used / 10GB free

Then extend Partition 2 by the 100GB of Free Space in the Unallocated area. Now you've got this:

Partition 1: 60GB total; 40GB used / 20GB free
Partition 2: 260GB total; 150GB used / 110GB free

Then move the remaining 40GB of data from Partition 1 to Partition 2. Now you'll have:

Partition 1: 60GB total; 0GB used / 60GB free
Partition 2: 260GB total; 190GB used / 70GB free

Since Partition 1 is now empty you can delete it and extend Partition 2 to encompass the entire drive.

Obviously, your exact numbers are likely to be different. This ought to give you the idea, though.

One thing I'd recommend is to not be tempted to shrink a partition down to the point where there is little or no free space - give the program a little elbow room to move data around.

profdlp said:

What size and how full are the two partitions on the 320GB drive?

One is 142 (141GB Used; this is the current backup partition) and the other is 143 (9GB Used).

profdlp said:

There are numerous ways you can do this. Unless you have other backups located elsewhere (and you should!)...

Erm... no? I don't understand why I would need to. I just keep an image, and back up a few important files and keep it BitLocked in case I get attacked by viruses. So far I've only used it when I've messed up and the only way I can undo it is by restoring to my last image.

profdlp said:

Copy everything from the 320GB drive to it, then delete both partitions on the 320GB and make just one new one. This will only take you about five minutes longer than whatever amount of time the data-copying process requires.

Copy everything including the backup on my first partition? I could just wipe it. There's only 1 image on there that I overwrite every backup session.

profdlp said:

If your main data storage is there it probably makes sense to not mess around with it right now unless you have to.

Why would I mess around with it?

If all you have on the one partition is an image you would delete at some point anyway, follow the first strategy I outlined.

As for separate backups in different places, hard drives have been known to just up and die on you. For something like an image of another drive I would not worry about it. For other types of data I'd recommend storing a copy somewhere not on your main computer.

As for "not messing around" with the main storage drive, since I had no way of knowing how much and what kind of data you were talking about, I was just trying to keep it as simple and safe as I could.