Backup Problems

With my new toy LaCie 1TB I have been backing up loads of files and photos.

There are 2 problems at the moment.

1 The Hard Disk in the G4 iMac on OS10.2.8 was happy to be called "iMac Hard Disk" ever since the HD was replaced years ago.
Now it has somehow been renamed " -* " but not by me, as far as I know.
Why?
Can I rename it with the old name, or "Macintosh HD" or similar?
Looking at the HD info. it gives owner as 'system' and group as 'admin' and the lock icon is ON i.e. LOCKED.
Are there any reasons why I should not rename this HD?
If it is OK to do so, how do I rename it?

2 There are nominally 5 different users on the iMac.
Most of the files are for one user, myself.
When I try to backup the whole lot onto the LaCie, I get the little red disk 'No Access' symbols adjacent to the folders and files of the other users.
Full marks to OSX for security, but how do people with more than one user on a Mac go about backup?
Does each user in turn have to login and just copy his folders and files to the external drive?

Have I missed something obvious?

1. Don't know.

2. On a Unix like system, e.g. Mac, they'd run the backup with root privileges. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser

You can name it anything you want, if its on the desktop just click on its name once, then once again (not double click) and you can then type a name. If its not then in Finder goto Finder>Prefernces and click hard disks to show them on the desktop.
I think maybe someone has renamed it by accident.

Use a program called superduper or carbon copy cloner to copy everything. Superduper is very easy to use.
Or better still turn on time machine and it will do the job for you.

Thanks for the replies.

1 I have now renamed the internal hard drive as "Macintosh HD" and that seems to have worked OK.

2 The rules for back up with several different users on the iMac seem to be as follows:

If user A backs up all the user folders for users A,B,C,D using Finder to drag & drop or copy/paste to the LaCie external hard drive, then only the user A folder is accessible, and it is only accessible to user A.
The folders from users B,C,D are NOT copied on to the LaCie and cannot be accessed there even by users B,C,D.

If user A backs up all the user folders for users A,B,C,D using CarbonCopyCloner to the LaCie external hard drive, then all the user folders for users A,B,C,D get copied across.
But only user A can access the user A folder.
And only user B can access the user B folder.
And so on.

That makes sense and seems secure.
But if you use only FINDER and not, for example CCC, then each user must log in and copy across his own backup material to the external drive.


3 One other weak spot I have noticed when backing up photos from iPhoto is that many of the apparently OK photos on the external hard drive are just 4KB Aliases and cannot be opened, as the originals cannot be found.
I don't claim to know why that is exactly, but as a warning, it is good practice to check the size of folders before and after copying.
And try opening a good number of apparently OK backup copies - this is the acid test.

All the above is just based on my own recent experience with OSX 10.2.8 and iPhoto 2.0.1 on a G4 iMac - others may have different views.

You can name it anything you want, if its on the desktop just click on its name once, then once again (not double click) and you can then type a name. If its not then in Finder goto Finder>Prefernces and click hard disks to show them on the desktop.

Good to know - Have 'renamed' an occasional file/folder previously to untitled before.

Thanks for that.