Partion external hard drive?

[fmbighair]

Just wondering if anyone recamends using "Partitions" on an external hard drive?

I have a Apple Power Book G4 w/Mac OS 10.2.8., 768MB of ram, 40GB internal HD and in the middle of installing my new Seagate 300GB firewire external HD. I'm going to be using Digidesign Pro Tools for audio recording/editing, iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie.

The directions for the external HD says I have to format the drive first because I'm using a Mac. I'm just wondering if anyone thinks I should divide it up into partitions and if so, what size for each one? I've heard it's easier to organize/find files by partitioning the drive since it's so big? Is there any pros/cons to partitioning?

The external hard drive also came w/"BounceBack Express" backup software for one button back up. Should I install this software or does my Powerbook already come w/backup software?

please help

any thoughts would be very appreciated, thank in advance!!

[musicalavtech]

I use an internal 250GB seagate drive partitioned for audio and misc backup with no issues.

[carlos santana]

yes to partition


1- 9gb partition for recording

2 all the rest for backing up the data

[randyT]

If you make 2 partions you can use one for audio and the other for making ghost image copies of your Macintosh HD for recovering your system in the event of a catastrophy. Using a ghost image instead of the backup software you are mentioning is preferable in my opinion because of the high risk of needing to revert back to your old configuration after upgrades or loading new software that kills your system. If you want to use the backup sofware every day and only do a new ghost image after major changes that would work also but i would choose the ghost image if I were only going to do one or the other. You can do the ghost image by using the "Resore Disk" feature in the mac disk utility but you need to do either the entire disk or an entire volume (partition).

randy