Hi. I am looking to buy a hard drive as I have nothing backing up externally. I was planning on a large 3 TB one and have that for Time Machine. But the more I look , I see that people also use a second external hard drive to place clones of everything on the computer.Which would be new to me also. Then someone mentioned that I should place my Battery 3 sample library & any other sample libraries onto another drive. Is that necessary ? I'm a bit confused as I thought Time Machine would be enough. I have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad Intel Xeon. 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 fB-DIMM I wanted to get neat and serious now that my projects are meaty and musical. So I'd best be getting back up sorted. Thanks again for the great help : )

Hi logicluvva, As you are discovering there will be Plenty of differing opinions on this... But Being a fan of the KISS Principle (Keep it Simple S...) and never wanting to Loose or totally Discard anything... the following, with slight variations, has served me well over the years. Currently I have 3 matching 1 Terabyte Ext Drives, Daisy Chained from my Firewire 800 port. 1st Drive is where I Manually Back Up and keep Copies of Everything I want to save... 2nd Drive I use to Write Logic Projects to... 3rd Drive is for Time Machine. Also, once a week or after a particularly rewarding Mixing Session, I connect and Back Up to a 4th Drive using SuperDuper. Helps me Sleep at night... I find it best to leave All Applications and Libraries on the Internal Drive where the OS can, and is expecting to find it. Hope this Helps Cheers, Bj ( iMac 27" )

+1 with what Bj says. Also check out Carbon Copy Cloner (free/donation-ware) as an alternative to Super Duper... although both are fantastic cloning apps. Keeping backups is soooooo important! Also, maintaining your Mac to keep it running in tip top condition is a good idea: [url]http://www.macprovideo.com/forum/general/general-general&id=13874[/url] Cheers Rounik

Thanks, Bj and Rounik for the replies. Yes I hadn't realised the depth of my needs.. I take it I have to get one hard drive for Logic Projects to be written onto...So does that mean I will no longer be using the internal hard drive for doing this ? Then...I'll need another drive for the projects to be saved manually onto.. And also a third for Time Machine.Which I understand can't be bootable without the installation Dvd. I have to think of what capacity storage they will each have to be. Would partitioning a drive be considered a no-no ? ( I was thinking of getting one big drive for Time Machine & another partitioned with Volumes to hold copies of Logic Projects along with Carbon Copy Clones. Whilst keeping my original folder for my Music on the Mac Pro ). Why is it better not to keep my Music/Logic folder ( that I write on ) internal ? My songs and music are good enough to be sufficiently paranoid over.But only recently. So I am sorry for any dumbness on my part. I really appreciate the help. I have to sort this out soon Cheers

Hi logicluvva, [i]"I take it I have to get one hard drive for Logic Projects to be written onto...So does that mean I will no longer be using the internal hard drive for doing this ?"[/i] Yes, Reading from the Internal Drive and Writing to an External Drive means less, overall strain on the system... and so you don't have the one drive trying to read and write large chunks of information at the same time... Therefore everything tends to run Smoother and Faster. [i]"Then... I'll need another drive for the projects to be saved manually onto.."[/i] Correct... [i]"And also a third for Time Machine.Which I understand can't be bootable without the installation Dvd."[/i] Correct again. [i][i]"Would partitioning a drive be considered a no-no ?"[/i]/i] Not necessarily a no-no, but Drives do, will and can Fail...! And these days, Good quality Ext Drives are not that expensive. Also I like to think of my Cloned Back Up Drive as a [i]Spare[/i] Internal Drive... [i]"Why is it better not to keep my Music/Logic folder ( that I write on ) internal ?"[/i] Keep your Music/Logic folder Internal as well... and just Copy your Projects to it from the External you are Writing to before you close any Sessions. Once you get the hang of it, it all just becomes part of a natural work flow... With Plenty of Back Ups and (hopefully) peace of mind. Hope this Helps, Cheers, Bj

Bj. That all helps immensely. I especially like the external drive explanation regarding copying the Logic folder into internal , before closing any sessions. " ...but Drives do , will and can Fail ! " It being Halloween...I heard the " Duh ! Duhh ! Duhhh ! " suspense/ horror chords... Thanks, Bj, for the wisdom which I am sure many others in my situation will appreciate, next time they Google their problems.I like your workflow advice.Quality Big thanks for the time , patience and clarity of your replies

Hi logicluvva, Thanks for the appreciation... Just to clarify one point: There is no need to Copy the Complete Logic folder to the Internal every-time... Just the Projects you have been working on... Happy Music Making... Cheers, Bj