looking at backup softwware

[DrDan in MA]

Originally Posted by cmdrspidey

... I then fumbled through a reformatting my orignal HD and just copied everything back to the HD when i was done. I was worried about backing up and then erasing my boot HD...

Hi -- new paid SD! user here. I too have read thru the User Manual.pdf file a couple times and am graaaadually coming to grok the notion of the benefits of having a sandbox on my PowerBook's HD. I'm thinking I'd do it straightaway, if I had more free space on a larger HD -- but my Ti-PbG4 has 60G and about 47 of it are already taken. Time for a slim-down before I can install a sandbox, I guess. Meanwhile I guess I'll use SD! to backup to a new LaCie ext 160Gb FW drive.

Reason for my barging into this thread is to ask: Is there any advantage in (A) creating an ext HD backup file, (B) making it bootable, (C) booting from it, (D) reformatting my PowerBook's internal HD, and then (D) copying back all the ext HD stuff to the internal HD and making it bootable once more? Does doing all this this sorta brute-force optimize the internal HD by laying down all the files in order, or something? If not, why would I do it?

Can someone point me to step-by-step doc of how I would do this last (the reformatting of my PbG4's internal HD and sending ext HD backup info to it)? I know it's gotta have been written already!