two computers and an external hard drive

I have a desktop with two 120GB hard drives. I have a notebook with one 80GB hard drive. Each is using up-to-date WinXP Pro and NTFS. I have an NTFS 300GB external hard drive. If I have two copies of TI8 can I somehow configure the external hard drive to have two secure areas so each computer will have its own secure area for TI8 backup? BTW, I do full backups on my own schedule. What are the potential problems in recovery, should I need, in selecting a backup for a specific machine? I do not want to go through the hassle of loading a copy of windows first and then restoring. I want a one button solution (as much as possible) to recovery. Thanks for any input.

 

Hi, donpiet

No you will not be able to have two Secure Zone on the same HDD.

Best to give each OS their own Partition for Imaging on the Ex-HDD.

As to what problem might you have is impossible to say without knowing your level of Knowledge or skills.

Have a read of mike_wells thread:- MyBackup/Restore Procedures With TI Very good advice.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Thanks for the reply TheQuest. As to my level of proficency, I have over 40 years in the industry and a well rounded hardware/software experience. From your answer I would ASSUME you are suggesting partitioning, probably four (giving each hard disk its own area), so another area would be available for other uses and this would suffice to isolate potential problems. Will that in any way impact the recovery or either system? I would guess - not. BTW, I have read and printed that article.

 

From what I gather, the benefit of using the Secure Zone is that it prevents against accidental deletion of the backup images. Because the images aren't on a partition/filesystem that your OS is aware of, they're "safe"

If that is not an issue for you, then just standard partitioning should be fine. Even then, I'm not sure that partitioning is even necessary. The only advantage that would give you would be with regard to filling up the filesystem. i.e., if a partition totally fills up, it's only going to stop backups going to that partition. The other partition will be unaffected.

I see no reason why you couldn't just use a single partition (with subdirectories for each system being backed up if you want more organization).

P.S. If you are concerned about preventing the users from dumping their own files on the backup drive, perhaps you could check into setting NTFS and/or Network Share permissions such that the users do not have write access to the backup drive. When scheduling the backup to run over a network, you can specify an administrative or backup account to authenticate as.