Help with using multiple hard drives

Is there a way to install the OS on an "external" (expresscard SSD) drive, but have all of the library and data files on the primary hard disk? I LOVE the speed on my SSD, but it's a pain finding stuff now. Is this something a RAID configuration could help with?

mwmmartin wrote:
I have a 1 TB hard drive; but I have a 500GB and 250GB usb external hard drives.
Wouldn't it be cool if I could make the two external hard drives a RAID drive and use Time Machine to use all the 750GB of external memory to do my backups???
You can, but I would +*strongly recommend against+* it. See +Concatenated RAID+ in the Help for Disk Utility.
There are several potential problems:
Depending on how much data is on your 1 TB drive, 750 GB may not be enough to back it up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
To set up a +Concatenated RAID+ set, both drives will be erased.
When (not if) either drive fails, you'll lose all the data on both.
Both drives must be connected any time you do a backup or want to browse your backups.
Especially with USB, if one drive wakes from sleep, or spins up, quickly enough, but the other one doesn't, the backup may fail and/or your backups may be corrupted.
For now, it looks like my only solution is to go buy a bigger external hard drive and spend more money,,,
That's your best solution +*by far.+* Anything else is taking a large risk with your backups.

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Help with using external hard drive to boot windows on PC

Hi,
I'm not sure if this is in the right place, so apologies in advance if not. I've looked around the internet for a good while now, and I haven't found anyone in my exact position.
My PC's hard drive (running Windows 7) recently died; long story short, I am attempting to reinstall windows. The only other computer I have is this MacBook Pro, on which I have an .iso file of Windows 7. So I want to use my external hard drive (WD 500GB "MyBook") as a boot device so that I can install Windows onto my new internal hard drive.
The problem I am having is that, well, nothing seems to be working. Every time I try to load the .iso onto my external hard drive and boot my PC with it, either a blank screen appears or it says "missing operating system".
I have made sure that the BIOS is running the external hard drive as its boot priority.
I have tried using Disk Utility to partition the external drive, then using 'Restore' to load the .iso onto the partition, to no avail.
I have tried simply dropping the extracted .iso files onto the hard drive, this doesn't work.
I have also tried changing the file system of the external hard drive using the 'Erase' feature (NTFS-3G (using an addon), FAT32, exFAT, all of the others), but I notice that whenever I use Restore after doing this, the file system seems to return to Mac OS Extended, which might be why it isn't booting up on my PC. Is there any way I can succesfully partition the external hard drive in a format that will allow Windows 7 to boot (such as NTFS?), and is Disk Utility even the right program to do this?
If you want any more information from me, please let me know and I'll do my best to provide it - I'm not the most advanced mac user in the world, but I've spent days trying to fix this problem and nothing, no combination of anything, seems to work at all. So any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

Here is a quick suggestion for you:
Download Virtual Box (free PC Emulator for Mac) and install Windows 7 on your Mac (don't worry about activating it yet, as you don't need to keep it more than a few hours). You can tell Virtual Box to use the ISO file as the DVD drive for your virtual Windows computer, so no need to burn a disk.
Search Google for creating a bootable USB installer for Windows 7. I found a link that gave good instructions on how to do this using DiskPart.
Follow the instructions to make the bootable USB stick for installing Windows 7 using your virtual machine you created above.
Use the USB stick to install Windows on your new PC.
Remove the virtual Windows machine from your Mac.
Remove Virtual Box from your Mac.
I found a set of instructions and built an installable USB stick last night that worked great for installing Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) onto my older ThinkPad I had sitting at home. The USB installer also installs in about half the time as a DVD install. The only reason I have you create the virtual Windows PC is that all of the instructions for makeing the Windows install USB stick are written assuming that you already have access to a running Windows PC. By doing this install, you have up to 3 days before you would need to activate it and you can build the installer USB stick and remove teh virtual computer long before that.

HELP with using external hard drive

Can anyone please help? I have been using Windows based PCs for a majority of my life. I recently purchased a Macbook. I have thousands of songs saved on a Maxtor external hard drive. I recently connected the HD to my Macbook and was able to successfully copy over all of the photos I have saved and only few of the audio files but not all. I checked the audio files are saved in itunes format. Why can I not copy all of my music over? Please help! When I connect HD to PC I see the missing files that cannot been seen when I connect my HD to my Macbook. Bizare, don't you think?

Any chance that the files not showing up on the Mac have file names starting with a period (.)?
Patrick

Is it possible to use multiple hard drives with iphoto?

I am pretty new to Mac's so bear with me, I used to use multiple hard drives on my pc with my photos seperated by catagory in different hard drives. Is it possible to run iphoto with multiple hard drives without the photos loading onto my Imac? If so, How do I set it up. I have tried importing to a external drive, but when I check the file path of the photos it shows my Imac hd in the address. I seriously dont know why I cant just add the external hard drive as a library and have Iphoto work, Help

There are instructions - and not the caveats - on how to do what you want below.
However, you'e not quite grasping iPhoto:
I used to use multiple hard drives on my pc with my photos seperated by catagory in different hard drives.
When you do this, you're using the Finder (or file manager) to categorise the photos. All well and good, but why? That's exactly iPhoto's job. iPhoto is a database designed to help you manage your pics - including categorising them.
Anyway:
*How to do it:*
Simply go to iPhoto Menu -> Preferences -> Advanced and uncheck 'Copy Files to the iPhoto Library on Import'.
*What Happens:*
Now iPhoto will not copy the files, but rather simply reference them on your HD. To do this it will create an alias in the Originals Folder that points to your file. It will still create a thumbnail and, if you modify the pics, a Modified version within the iPhoto Library Folder.
*Some things to consider:*
1. Importing and deleting pics are more complex procedures. You have to to put the files where they will be stored before importing them. When you delete them you'll need to remove the files from the HD yourself.
2. You cannot move or rename the files on your system or iPhoto will lose track of them on systems prior to 10.5 and iPhoto 08. Even with the later versions issues can still arise if you move the referenced files to new volumes or between volumes.
3. Most importantly, migrating to a new disk or computer can be much more complex.
4. *Because iPhoto has no tools for managing Referenced Files, if, for some reason, the path to the photos changes then you could find yourself resolving aliases for +each photo in the Library+ one by one.*
My own opinion:
I've yet to see a good reason to run iPhoto in referenced mode unless you're using two photo organisers
If disk space is an issue, you can run an entire iPhoto Library from an external disk:
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
If you're concerned about accessing the files, There are many, many ways to access your files in iPhoto:
*For Users of 10.5 and later*
You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Command-Click for selecting multiple pics.
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
You can access the Library from the New Message Window in Mail:
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
*For users of 10.4 and later* ...
Many internet sites such as Flickr and SmugMug have plug-ins for accessing the iPhoto Library. If the site you want to use doesn’t then some, one or any of these will also work:
To upload to a site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. However, if you're using Gmail you can use iPhoto2GMail
If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
*If you want to access the files with iPhoto not running*:
For users of 10.6 and later:
You can download a free Services component from MacOSXAutomation which will give you access to the iPhoto Library from your Services Menu. Using the Services Preference Pane you can even create a keyboard shortcut for it.
For Users of 10.4 and later:
Create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use this free utility Karelia iMedia Browser
Other options include:
1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
If you really want to spread your photos across volumes like this, Aperture would be a better fit.
Regards
TD

Wiki: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption

I have lately found myself with the issue of having multiple hard drives and wanting to do LVM stuff & encryption with while retaining maximum flexibility. After scanning through wikis, manpages and forum entries I came up with a solution for myself. The only thing I don't cover with it is mounting while booting as I don't need and can't test it.
I want to share the knowledge I gained and help other people find a solution faster and so I wrote a Wiki entry (first on my user page). I would now like to hear the opinion of the community regarding the following questions:
Do you see any security risks with my solution (especially the part on storing the unencrypted keyfile on a ramdisk)?
Do you think this text is worthy for a wiki entry or should I keep it in the forums?
Do you spot any errors (typing or else)?
Would you improve this article anywhere?
Of course, if you have further comments, I would like to here them as well. And now without further ado: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption.
Regards,
javex
P.S.: As a small side question: Is my user page a good playground for article creation or would you recommend some other area where to do this (since here noone else could improve the article while in this early stage)?

mwmmartin wrote:
I have a 1 TB hard drive; but I have a 500GB and 250GB usb external hard drives.
Wouldn't it be cool if I could make the two external hard drives a RAID drive and use Time Machine to use all the 750GB of external memory to do my backups???
You can, but I would +*strongly recommend against+* it. See +Concatenated RAID+ in the Help for Disk Utility.
There are several potential problems:
Depending on how much data is on your 1 TB drive, 750 GB may not be enough to back it up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
To set up a +Concatenated RAID+ set, both drives will be erased.
When (not if) either drive fails, you'll lose all the data on both.
Both drives must be connected any time you do a backup or want to browse your backups.
Especially with USB, if one drive wakes from sleep, or spins up, quickly enough, but the other one doesn't, the backup may fail and/or your backups may be corrupted.
For now, it looks like my only solution is to go buy a bigger external hard drive and spend more money,,,
That's your best solution +*by far.+* Anything else is taking a large risk with your backups.

Help with unreadable external hard drive

I am having problems with an external hard drive and found your Email in yahoo answers.
I have a 'MB' external hard drive with a Mac OS X 4 11. A few days ago I turned off the Mac at the back button, after the screen went dark, I unplugged the HD only to find the Mac came on again. The Mac must have been in sleep mode? Since this time the Mac will not recognise the HD.
I tried another USB, making sure the preferences under finder is checked for all items and tried data recovery, PRAM reset, Disc Utility, which did see the drive (in gray) and it gave me this message; Error; underlying task reported failure on exit / 1 non HFS volume checked / 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error / unable to read FAT (input/output error).
I am hoping I can still use this external HD or could there be bad news ahead? I have not yet tried this on another Mac. Please can anyone help or advise? Thank you.

that was my backup!
If you truly mean a backup then that means you still have the original files on your internal drive, or wherever. You just make another backup. If you mean it was an archive/overflow drive then that's not a backup (and you should start thinking about buying another HD to save both the files on your internal and external since either of those could fail without warning).
So are you suggesting I go to a place/individual that does PC data retrieval? And does this mean I buy another external HD?
I don't know much about file recovery on PCs. If this was a Mac drive then there would be a good chance you could either use Disk Utility on your Mac already to repair it, or perhaps a utility such as Diskwarrior ($100) to do the same. That repair could be done pretty much in-place. It's only when a drive is really seriously damaged, in particularly physically, that you need a second HD. Again, this is if you could do this on a Mac.
There are supposedly Mac based recovery tools that can also recover FAT, but those would likely need a second drive and the results might not be pretty (files, everywhere, maybe without original file names).
I'd find a buddy with a PC and see if they have something on there that can do it for a cup of coffee.

Using Multiple Hard Drives for iTunes Storage

I am running out of room on my current hard drive and want to use a new external hard drive to add space. My problem is I want to use both hard drives for storage (not the same music). Is this possible as I have only been able to direct iTunes to one hard drive? Thank you.
Dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 400GB Raid set

When you change the location in iTunes preferences what you are doing is telling iTunes where ripped music should be put. It isn't changing where iTunes should look for music that is already in the library. So go ahead and change the location to where you want music to be stored from now on. iTunes won't lose the other music. (At one times my iTunes library was spread over 4 drives.)

How to use multiple hard drives with RnR??

I am backing up my T61p's 500GB internal hard drives to an 750GB external USB. I just got a 1.5TB FreeAgent Seagate. I want to use that drive too to backup. I want to keep the backups that are currently on the 750GB. I simply want to *also* make a full backup to the 1.5TB. Is there an easy way to create multiple backups on multiple drives with Rescue & Recovery?
Once you choose an initial destination (USB drive), there does not seem to be an easy way to start backing up to another drive. Did I miss something?
Thanks,
Michel

Hello,
Sorry you're having problems. Assuming you've already mounted the drive so that an external drive icon appeared on the desktop, what DO you see when you open it? ANY files?
Did any of those "weird things" include okay/cancel windows?
Is your external drive fat32, NTFS, or something else? OSX doesn't play nice with all types of partition types, so this information could help us help you.

Help With A Full Hard Drive Partition

I'm hoping someone can help as I've searched previous threads but not found the total answer I need. I have a large external drive that is partitioned. I have completely filled one partition with itunes music and would like to create a second itunes music folder within another partition on the same drive. My goal is to synch both music folders with my 80GB Ipod. Many thanks for your time. BTW I'm using Windows XP.

Thanks very much Toons for the response. Let me make sure I understand correctly. In addition to unchecking the "copy files to Itunes Music Folder ..." option, should I change the Music Folder location to a new one within the empty partition on my hard drive? Since the current music file is located within a drive partition that is full, where will the new music I add be stored without my creating a new folder in another partition that has empty storage space?
Thanks again for your valuable assistance.

Need help with Raid 1 hard-drive replacement

Hello All - I hope someone can help with this.
I have a Raid 1 set-up using two 1Tb external drives (1 Seagate and 1 Lacie) which has been working perfectly - until yesterday that is. I received an error message saying the Raid 1 Set was degraded. On checking I got an error message against the Lacie HDD 'Disk failure'. Following instructions i found on Apple Support i tried to replace the failed drive with a new 1Tb drive - but then got an error message saying that the new drive was too small - on checking the original Seagate Drive reads as 999.86 Gb with the new Drive reading 999.83 Gb. I presume this is to do with formatting of the 2 drives, although one would assume (perhaps naively that as both drives are 1Tb they would be the same size when formatted!!
In light of this I ran 'verify disk' on the Raid 1 Set and this was ok and I am now attempting to rebuild the failed Lacie drive - 10 hours still to go. However even if this works I would want to replace this disk as it is quite old now. The Raid 1 Set is backed up to Time Machine on a separate HDD.
Can anyone suggest a way forward for me to swap out the old drive and replace it with the new drive that I have purchased - I can't see how exchanging this for another make would be any guarantee that the disk would be the same size? I understand that I can't replace the failed drive with a larger drive. The only other way I can see of proceeding is to buy a second new disk (same as I got today) and create a new Raid 1 set and copy everything across.
Thanks in Advance

For an external hard disk drive or other (different) system shared
storage devices to work, they probably should be formatted in a
format seen by both operating systems.
If the WD unit is not seen by Windows computers on your network,
the WD may have been formatted in HFS+ for the Macintosh. That
is OK unless you need a Windows computer to access the same.
The Macintosh can see and use a standard Windows disc format;
so the external drive may need to be reformatted away from HFS+
if that is really what is going on (and archive any data on the suspect
drive elsewhere, since it will be lost to reformatting overwrites)
and then both Mac OS X and Windows should see the files on there.
And Macs set up to run Windows may also see the non-Mac format;
without having to re-boot via BootCamp, if that option is in use.
As to the other question(s) I really have no idea at this point in time.
And since that may be the rub, hopefully someone will follow up here.
Good luck & happy computing!

Need help with networking external hard drive

Hi,
I am working on a corporate network and I have a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition external hard drive attached to a Mac OSX 10.4. i have other Macs connecting through the network to this Mac and accessing the external hard drive and it works just fine for that.
What I need help with is the fact that I also have several PCs on the same network (all XP), that need to connect to the hard drive and access the files. I've been able to connect to the Mac using the XP by accessing the IP address. I also set the Mac up with password credentials so that I had to log in to the Mac to access the files. But when I try to access the Mac, it only shows the main computer drive as the only available share and no external drive.
Does anyone know how to access a Western Digital external drive on a Mac from a PC through a network?

For an external hard disk drive or other (different) system shared
storage devices to work, they probably should be formatted in a
format seen by both operating systems.
If the WD unit is not seen by Windows computers on your network,
the WD may have been formatted in HFS+ for the Macintosh. That
is OK unless you need a Windows computer to access the same.
The Macintosh can see and use a standard Windows disc format;
so the external drive may need to be reformatted away from HFS+
if that is really what is going on (and archive any data on the suspect
drive elsewhere, since it will be lost to reformatting overwrites)
and then both Mac OS X and Windows should see the files on there.
And Macs set up to run Windows may also see the non-Mac format;
without having to re-boot via BootCamp, if that option is in use.
As to the other question(s) I really have no idea at this point in time.
And since that may be the rub, hopefully someone will follow up here.
Good luck & happy computing!

Help with an external hard drive enclosure

I had a Power Mac G5 that had a motherboard which died. The hard drives were still good so I purchased the "EAGLE Consus D-Series ET-CSDU2J-BK JBOD 2Bay SATA to USB 2.0 External Enclosure". I have it on the setting which both of drives show up on the desktop individually. So far it works and everything is great but I would really like to make it so it combines both hard drives (two seagate 160GB of the same model) into one 320 hard drive. I have a macbook pro running OS X. Do i have to reformat and erase everything before I change it to spanning or can i just switch the jumper and have one hard drive image with all my data still on it? Thanks
Here is the online manual if it helps http://www.eagletechusa.com/Download/ET-CSDU2J-BK_UM.pdf

RAIDing the two will destroy the data on the drive. I'm sure that's explained in the manual.

Need Help with my External Hard Drive

Hey Guys, so i bought a 2TB WD Passport for Mac about 2 months ago...It worked great, but then i dropped it by accident. It was connected to my Mac at the time, so when it fell it disconnected from the cable and fell. Now when i connect it, the external hard drive powers on. I can feel it on like always, the little light turns on as well, its flickering as if it was in use. The thing is that it wont show up ANYWHERE on my mac. Any help?

LittleGuy16 wrote:
got dropped........It was connected to my Mac at the time
HEAD CRASH ,    your HD is extremely likely kaput
hard drive moving parts
Some of the common reasons for hard drives to fail:
Infant mortality (due to mfg. defect / build tolerances)
Bad parking   (head impact)
Sudden impact /head crash (hard drive jarred during operation, heads can bounce)
Electrical surge   (fries the controller board, possibly also causing heads to write the wrong data)
Bearing / Motor failure   (spindle bearings or motors wear during any and all use, eventually leading to HD failure)
Board failure   (controller board failure on bottom of HD)
Bad Sectors   (magnetic areas of the platter may become faulty)

Need help with my mac hard drive?

I'm running MacDrive Standard to view my Mac-enabled hard drive on my pc laptop. Worked fine for a year now. Suddenly, Word documents start becoming inaccessible, saying there's something wrong with them, my movies and TV shows on the hard drive lag, as well as viewing photos on it. Today, I take a look at it and Windows says "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable." This prompts MacDrive Disk Repair to ask to check the volume, which it does, only to tell me no errors were found. What do I do? I've got 300 gigs of information (on a 750 Western Digital My Passport hard drive). Any suggestions would be appreciated, because I'm desperate.

I used to use MacDrive from MediaFour. I think I used versions 7 & 8 mostly. I even had 5 or 6 licenses for it so I could use my HFS+ formatted drives on my many PCs. Before I stopped using my PCs I had switched to using the Paragon HFS+ driver for Windows as it did behave a little better under Windows 7 for me.
Now, on to the real issue, your dirve is reporting corruption, but when you run the MacDrive repair option is says there is nothing wrong. Have you tried connecting the drive to your Mac and letting MacOS run a valume check and repair on it? I would think that it is quite possible for MacDrive to not find all the problems that MacOS could find and fix.

Help with reformatting a hard drive partition

A few years ago I let my friend (computer science major at the time) set up my dual boot on my Macbook Pro. He used a program called Gparted live instead of Bootcamp (claimed that "it wasn't working) set up the partition and installed Windows 7. Things worked perfectly. However, he made a mistake and instead of having a 32 GB partition it was made into a 64 GB partition. Which was fine up until now, because I need some more space, and I rarely (if ever now) use Windows. So I erased the partition and tried to bring it back on my start-up Mac partition- no luck. Tried reformatting it from the Windows NTFS (not sure what it's called) format to OS X format and had same error in Disk Utility. Anyone have any ideas?

If you have a backup for your Mac volume, then this can be done using Disk Utility:
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. Click into the second partition that was the Windows partition to select it. Then click on the Delete [-] button below the partition map.
4. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for the OS X partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and drag the bottom of the rectangle down to the bottom. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: This may take a little time, so be patient.)
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.

Help with using multiple hard drives

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