Hi, I have a 1TB external hard drive that I will use to make a Backup Image. I'm going to Use Symantec Ghost to make a backup Image.
Should I partition the External hard drive first? I would also like to use it to store other files and folders. If so, how big should the partition with the backup Images be?
How large is a typical Image backup file? I also plan on backing up 2 other linux machines.
A separate partition isn't needed unless you will be booting a Linux distro from the external drive. I've imaged my system and it was 28GB in size. Yours will be different depending on how much data you have.
If you have video or music or other real large collections, I would suggest not including those in the image. Save them to the external drive and the just copy back when needed.
So the backup Image files will appear on the drive as any other file, and I just point Ghost or Windows/Linux to the location?
A separate partition is completely unnecessary. I'd just make a folder called C-image-111711 or something like that to date it.
Most here would frown on Symantec Ghost, but it's your choice.
An image of C is probably going to be between 40 and 60 percent of the size of the occupied space on C. That can be adjusted a bit using different compression levels within the imaging program, if available.
Partitions are useful for organizing your data, but they are a personal decision and not necessary for any computer functional reason.
Most imaging programs have a default 2 to 1 compression ratio (the image file will be 50% of the actual size of your data. But they all allow you to increase the compression if you need to.
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