Tip: Convenient external drive unit + more

I did a search and didn't see this idea listed.
With the introduction of the Mac Mini some time ago, a number of small expansion devices have shown up on the market to enhance it. The reason I bring this up, is that these devices not only work with the Mac Mini, but also with our G5's. This particular idea fits a number of needs that I had, is small, light weight, quiet, and is a great all around addition to my system.
I recently purchased MicroNet's miniMate for the Mac Mini. It's the same size as the Mac Mini, same color, and is as "classy" as the Mini. Why I looked at this particular product is that I could get it in 4 different hard disk sizes (80-400 Gb) and each unit comes with 3 Firewire and 4 USB (all powered) connections on the back, and it is fanless. It was a simple matter to place the miniMate on the top of my PowerMac, hook it up, and turn it on. I now have 250 Gb of external storage, and additional firewire 400 and USB 2.0 ports. And, another nice thing is that this and other similar products stack very nicely and don't take up a lot of room. Like I said, these kinds of products are a great addition to my system.
Just food for thought (and a possible gift request for Santa). Have a happy holiday season.
Jeff Weinberg

Beverly,
Yes it still works great. It mounts on your desk top like a drive, and when you open it I can see all my folders and files. However, I never move stuff around in the finder. I always make folders and move stuff in whatever application I'm using so it can find everything. I have my itunes music folder, imovie events, and projects folders, and iphoto folder.
I have four 1 T drives. I cant see what data is on each of the four drives, it acts like one mounted drive. It has RAID like technology. you can format different volumes if you need to. I just chose one volume 16 T.
There is a drobo dashboard that tells you a lot of information about the drobo. Space used, space available, format, and status of the drives.
I think it cost me around $700 or so for everything.

Similar Messages

Will iTunes 10.4 upgrade (Lion 64 bit ver) Not Work With External Drives Any More?

Since i upgraded my MacBook Pro to Lion today, itunes just cannot play anything without going in to to meltdown. Even short tracks stop and stutter, and movies and TV programs are a no go.
All I get is the dreaded spinning beach ball.
My library is stored on a Firewire 800 external drive as my collection would take up more than my MacBook can hold, but running from an external drive has never been a problem before.
I know the library on the external drives okay, because I was streaming stuff over Airplay to my Apple TV2 half an hour before i did the upgrade, and it was working perfectly.
Does anyone have any idea what this might be or causing it, or how I can rectify it please?
Thank you

Oh yes, I did that several times.
Actually, I think i have found the answer. I think what was happening was that since this was a new iTunes version (and perhaps its moving from 32-bit to 64-bit type program) that it had to re-index it or catalogue it, or something in that vein anyway. I left iTunes open for a couple of hours and the external disk still attached and it now appears to have settled down, and i can report that its now working just fine.
Phew!
Thanks for your suggestion anyway.

Discussion regarding un-unmountable external drives and more..

I have a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted LaCie 2TB external USB 2.0 hard drive which I use for backup and file storage with my MBP running snow leopard. Some times when working extremely large folders at work, I actually work right of the hard drive and it works very well. But I have observed an increasingly annoying problem.
If I keep the drive active and working with whatever for a while and then decide to eject the disk, this almost always causes headaches. Either I get these warnings that the disk cannot be ejected because; Mail is using the drive, Safari is using the drive, Itunes is using the drive...... or some other app. This is annoying but can usually be resolved by simply quitting these apps. My question is; why does this occur? I see no reason for these applications to be using the disk? I haven't found a conclusive response to this question anywhere, always different suggestions/ideas/solutions? Does someone actually know what is causing this behavior and if it can be resolved "permanently"?
On the occasional time, quitting the applications suggested to use the drive doesn't allow me to eject the disc. It is still in use, but no apps are listed and the only way to eject is forcefully. I have tried:
sudo lsof | grep -i <filename>
And yes, I had some interesting results. Although spotlight is not indicating indexing in progress i see that spotlight is using the drive. I know you can add the drive under privacy in spotlight preferences and this eliminates this issue. But there is also "keychain access" using some file on the drive? I just cannot see why this would happen? When this happens, there is no way to safely remove the drive. I have tried relaunching finder, both through dock (ctrloptionmouse click) and terminal (killall Finder), but this does not resolve the eject issue. I have also tried stoping and relaunching SystemUIServer which was suggested somewhere, but this did not resolve the issue. Neither did umount volume or hdiutil eject /Volumes/GusExt/, it only works with -force which I would like to avoid.
Why would anything BUT spotlight use anything on the hard drive? And is there a way to safely kill any and every process using the external drive so that it can be ejected safely?
I find this interesting since it seems to be a common phenomenon but I haven't found a single clear cut explanation or solution to these issues? What makes it more interesting is that I, at home, have my own personal WD external drive with photos and my CD collection stored on it. This drive is NTFS-3G formatted through MACFUSE and NTFS-3G. This drive has never exhibited the same behavior, the only difference between the discs, except the file system, is that the LaCie contains time machine backups. But since I do not have time machine active, I don't see why this would effect the unmount process.
Another topic I would like some feedback on is corrupted files. When this occurs on a NTFS formated disk used on mac, these cannot be removed. And since Mac and NTFS doesn't play nice, I haven't found a way to resolve this. Disk utility wont work, neither will ntfsfix. The only way around this that I have found is plugging the drive into a windows machine and running chkdsk X: -F
Is there any available alternative for this on Mac that actually works with NTFS disks?
Hoping for some interesting feedback on this from anyone interested
Best Regards
Gus

Hi again Kappy. Thanks for your reply.
1. No, none of the files on the drive are being sent by mail, mail should not have any interest whatsoever in the drive.
2. Most files are created by AMBER 10 and AMBERTOOLS 1.4, molecular dynamics simulation packages. These are UNIX based and I only work with these files from terminal, no GUI. They are created on different servers, downloaded to my MBP and transferred (at least most often) to the LaCie for storage.
3. I have applications stored on the drive through "time machine backups", but I do not run any apps from the drive. Only locally on my MBP, all terminal based UNIX programs are "pathed" correctly to my internal drive.
4. As above, time machine backups my apps, but to my knowledge should not run them from the LaCie drive! Only from my local drive...
5. Disk permissions are full read and write for all. Some files come from /usr/local/ and are specific for my account. But I have taken the habit of "chmod 777" them so I can always access them since I'm the only one with physical access to the LaCie drive.
6. It has at some point, I see no indication of indexing being made in OS X, only through "lsof" where I usually can see spotlight and keychain accessing files. But I have now put the drive under "privacy" from spotlight so it should not index at all now.
7. Yes, once a week a manually perform a time machine backup of my local drive onto the LaCie. Between backups I disable time machine.
8. nine times out of ten I can eject the disc without warning if I first quit mail, iTunes and safari. Same goes if I get the warning, exit the app and then try to eject again. One time out of ten it doesn't seem to matter if I quit all the apps except finder, and ever relaunch finder. Some undetermined apps is still claimed to use the drive. Then the only solution of to force eject.
Best regards
Gus

External Drive installed IN MacBook pro?

There are some great prices on Seagate 2TB 3.5" Expansion External Drives. Can anyone tell me if you could pull the drive out and install INSIDE a MacBook Pro? (Is it a 2.5" SATA drive?) I'm out of space and can't update any more!!
I have swapped internal drive into external cases, but don't want to pull an external apart if I won't be able to install internally.
Thanks!
Tom

Yes, it's correct that all MBPs use 2.5" SATA hard drives. All unibody MBPs can use drives up to 12.5mm high, even though Apple specifies 9.5mm drives.
The bare drive units inside some factory-assembled external drives are 15mm high and won't fit inside a MBP, but you generally can't find out what drive unit is inside such a product, or anything about its height, without taking it apart and voiding its manufacturer's warranty. And external drives cost more than bare drives.

External Drive for both PC and G4

Hi-I am new to this, so please explain in very simple terms.
I need to get an external hard drive (looked at Maxtor& seagate so far. Need 300-500 GB. I am in Fashion deisgn and need to downoad programs off the main frame at work. I will do this through my PC at work. Then, I want to be able to take my drive home and use it for both my Gateway laptop and my G4.
I have gotten a hundred different explanations of how to make it work or it won't.
Basically, will a Maxtor one touch III or Seagate free agent Pro work. I have been told that they are both formatted in Ntfs and need to be changed to FAT32, but FAT runs very
Slowly, but this will allow me to use it with both the PC and G4. Others have said that some units already come formatted in FAT. Then I read somewhere on apple support that there is a third type of formatting, HT something, but will this work with both computers.
I like the Seagate because it has a 5 year warranty.
Also, is firewire 800 worth the upcost, is it that much faster?
I also read from apple forums that you need to set up an internal network to use the 2 computers, is that correct? I am not very computer knowledgeable and this seems like a Big deal.
Any recommndations on specific external drive units that work well with both pc and g4 is appreciated.
Thanks

Any external Firewire/USB2 hard drive will work but you have to format the drive as FAT32 using Disk Utility if you want to be able to plug it directly to both a Mac and a PC. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB, so it is not ideal for transporting, say digital movie footage.
If you know how to network your Mac and PC together, then you could just format the hard drive as NTFS, the standard file system for Windows computers, and share it from the Windows PC.
If you right-click a folder in Windows you can bring up its Properties, select the Sharing tab and there you can easily share the entire contents of that folder on the network. You can share an entire hard drive in the same way.
I would play around with this first on your Gateway laptop till you are confident that you are able to transfer files between your Mac and PC.
You connect your two computers using an ethernet cable. Depending on the network interface cards in your computers, you may be able to connect them directly to one another. Otherwise you will need a network device switch, more popularly known as a network "hub".

I removed the original HD and want to use it as a backup with external drive.

HP laptop G71ous win. 7. This forum helped me remove and reinstall original drive. I am using it in an external drive unit. My question is : How can I remove data so i can clear space. It tells me i do not have admin rights, and cannot remove windows folders. I have tried entering properties and changing ownership.Thanks for your help.

Just to add to what mct007 said, I recommend formatting the drive though this will remove all files on the drive.
Another alternate option is to use the command prompt to take ownership of the said folders.
This site has some good information on the commands to do this. Be sure to use the folder commands for folders and the file commands for individual files. Also, don't forget to elevate the command prompt. This can be done by right-clicing the command prompt in the Start menu and selecting Run as Administrator.
Once ownership is achieved, you should be able to do anything you want with the files and folders.
There are many ways to accomplish the same task and I just wanted to add to mct007's statement.
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Cloning os hard drive to external drive

Would like to create a carbon copy of my os hard drive to an newly purchased hd for "safe keeping" in the event the os drive is corrupted or fails.
Existing os hard drive is a 200gb hard drive and is functioning as i would like it to at this point. New drive is a 320gb unformated that i intend to copy to externally. I have carbon copy cloner and have used it.
First of all what is recommended way to do this? Use disk utility or ccc? Anything considerations in regards to the larger drive size? Will I have permission issues when booting the 320gb drive once it is cloned?
What is the procedure to boot the external drive to check the clone?

Prep your new drive:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
To clone:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
2. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
3.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive.
Source means the internal startup drive.
Upon completion quit DU. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon of the external drive and click on the downward pointing arrow button. If all is well the computer should startup from the external drive. To return to your internal drive just restart the computer.
If you plan to use the external drive for more than just the clone then you should partition it during the preparation phase into two volumes. The first volume should be the same size as your internal drive - 200 GBs. The remainder will make up the second volume.

External drives "locked" after restart

My iMac is acting very strangely: after a restart, an external drive (or more) may suddenly become "locked" for no apparent reason. Just restarted and got an error message that it could not complete a Time Machine backup because it is on a "locked Volume".
Running "repair" in Disc Utility fixes the issue, although it never reports any actual problem on the volume.
I have also started having kernel panics, which I think may be related.
Any idea what might be causing this?

Hello, see how many of these you can answer...
See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
In the Memory tab, are there a lot of Pageouts?

Mobile User doesnt work with user directory set on external drive

i'm in the progress of migrating some users from local user accounts to mobile user accounts.
unfunny thing is that creating the local copy of the mobile user accounts works perfect if the user directory is set on the internal drive of leopard server, however if I move the directory to an external drive no more locale login is possible, just "an error has occured" is reported.
I suspect a problem with user rights on the acl, however I havnt got an idea how to set them properly.

I'm having the same problem with Network Homes. When I create then in Workgroup Manager on the main drive with Mac OS X Server it all works great. When I create and share a folder on the second internal disk the client get "an error occurred" message.
Does the name of the folder matter?
Server HD/Users/glimonez - Works like a charm
Same Xserve second drive
Data/Users/glimonez - an error has occurred"
What should the permissions be for the Users folder on Data? What should I use to change them?
Also, is there a way to apply the default permissions to a users home folder? Desktop, Downloads etc for them only, and Public and sites to whatever they should be? I've only seen "apply permissions to folder and everything enclosed" options.
Sorry for long post
Gabe

IPod Shuffle 2nd + external drive

Hi,
I've experienced a problem with connecting ipod to computer while using external hdd. First time it occured when i had my iAudio X5L (with Toshiba 30GB hdd) connected to a computer. Second time when i had my Toshiba 500GB external hdd drive connected. At the moment i plugged ipod in, drive became unavailable and ipod wasnt properly recognised. When i dont have any other drive connected to computer, everything works fine.Any help?

Help! I have exactly the same problem. Recently purchased an ipod shuffle 2nd gen but cannot get it to work.
I have more music files than my computer's internal hard drive has space for so have been using a USB external drive for more than a year with no problems with my 60GB ipod photo. When I plug in the shuffle and try to transfer songs however the hard drive shuts down and no files are copied. I have tried updating ipod and itunes software and resetting, then changing drive letters (external drive now Z:) and switching ports but none of this works.
So far I have been very pleased with ipod / itunes. Hope this issue won't end up changing my opinion.

I want to add more capacity on hard drive of time capsule. Can i add a normal usb driver? I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network? It will work as fast than time capsule? Thanks

I want to add more capacity on hard drive of time capsule. Can i add a normal usb driver? I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network? It will work as fast than time capsule? Thanks

Can i add a normal usb driver?
Yes, but be sure that the drive is formatted correctly for Mac in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network?
The drive will appear as a shared network drive, like the Time Capsule.
It will work as fast than time capsule?
No, the drive will operate at about half or 50% of the speed of the Time Capsule.

Gray screen - no external drive - tips?

Hi. My refurb'd MBA (back from Apple about two weeks after replacement of Airport card, installed 10.6 about 10 days ago, no problems since) froze this morning, now boots only to a gray screen with an icon folder with a flashing question mark. I zapped the PRAM, and safe-rebooted, to no avail.
I've seen the Apple info sheet for the gray screen issue, and there's only so far I can go without an external drive (the info sheet is more geared towards traditional Macbooks). Does anyone have any suggestions?

A flashing question mark normally means that the computer can not find a valid boot disk/system folder. You should be able to connect an external usb drive with a valid system installed on it and boot the computer. If you have a super drive, you should be able to boot from the install dvd also.
Glor

Can I get more speed by using external drive?

Hi All,
I have a very old iMac. Here are the specs:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:          iMac
Model Identifier:          PowerMac6,3
Processor Name:          PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Processor Speed:          1.25 GHz
Number Of CPUs:          1
L2 Cache (per CPU):          256 KB
Memory:          1.25 GB
Bus Speed:          167 MHz
I think if I get an external drive and move all my document onto it I can speed the computer up. Is this a good strategy? What should I get that is reasonably affordable?

It is slow when navigating on iTunes or the web -- lots of spinning rainbows. I am using OSX10.5.8. I cannot increase memory anymore than I have. It's at 1.25 GB. I have used all bu 596 MB.
I'm not convinced adding memory will improve performance that much if you have 596mb free.
I'd try a different web browser. I'd look at activity monitor & see if you can spot a hog.
TenFourFox -- It's a port of the latest FireFox to run on older hardware and software.
"World's most advanced web browser. Finely tuned for the Power PC."
    -- works for me on 10.4. Supports 10.5
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
alternative download site:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37761/tenfourfox
Turn on pipelining. This will allow Firefox to make simaltaneous requests to the server. Chrome has pipeling turned on. Some sites could fail to load with pipeling set on. The site will be old. See "Increase pipelining" in:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/firefox-optimization-tips/
OmniWeb uses the lastest Safari framework. The open source WebKit. Other browsers like Safari and iCab use the OS version of WebKit. The OmniWeb downloaded dmg includes it's own copy of the latest WebKit.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/
Safari 5.0.6 Leopard.
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1422
Some semi-randomn thoughts on addressing performance problems.
Activity Monitor
Look at what is happening with your Mac when you run Activity Monitor.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor
Click on the CPU tab on the lower half of the window. Make sure the little triangle is pointed down. Make the triangle point down by clicking.
With the down pointed triangle, you will see the apps which are using the most of the processor.
You can gain some understanding of Activity Monitor by looking at it every once in a while. Look at the small graph.
Here is how I have my cpu display set up:
AppleJack
"AppleJack is a user friendly troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X. With AppleJack you can troubleshoot a computer even if you can't load the GUI, or don't have a startup CD handy. AppleJack runs in Single User Mode and is menu-based for ease of use."
http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
Console
You can use the console application to examine Mac OS log files. The logs will contain information on various system processes.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Console
File > open console log
this will display the startup messages
and
file > open system log
once the system is started, messages will go into the system log
Other folks
bdaqua advises running disk utility from install disk and performing a safe boot:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2256611&tstart=0
Allan Jones advises running automatic maintenance scripts and checking for free disk space:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10845311#10845311
K Shaffer advises checking for available RAM and checking for free disk space:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10879449#10879449

More than one external drive

Hi folks,
I have a older model 1TB TC that has been running just fine for over three years now. When it was first set up, I connected three additional hard drives to it via the USB port on the back using a powered D-Link USB hub as an intermediary. With the old Airport utility, this was not a problem. I was able to set it up so all three drive's contained volumes were seen and mounted as shared volumes on my network's clients' OSs (mix of Wins and OS X).
However, as time has gone on, the attached drives have become full. I don't want to remove any of the existing drives as they contain various family members' media and destinations for Time Machine backups. What I would like to do is to add an additional 4TB Western Digital My Book drive to the collection.
Problem is, the new Airport utility only shows the TC's internal drive and one of the external drives on the drives tab! I can't tell if the TC sees the new drive or not. It does not appear in any of my network computer's shares, so I am leaning towards not.
So, how can I connect the new drive (formatted as OS X Extended Journalled/GUID) and be able to configure the connection in Airport utility so the contained volume will mount as a shared volume on my network's clients? That is, without downgrading the firmware on my TC to do it!!!
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or assistance.

If these are full sized drives and you are trying to power both from the bus, then more than likely the second drive is not running. Try instead powering the Firewire drives from an external power source or connecting each to a separate Firewire port.
Time Machine will only backup to one backup drive, but can backup any number of attached drives.

How can I make more room on external drive for Time Machine?

I now have Time Machine installed and in use on my external drive, which also still has my previous backup on it which used a different system (Dejavu). The external drive's capacity is 74 GB; 58.22GB are used, my iMac hard drive (backed up with TIme Machine) has 38.12 GB used, which by my calculation means about 20GB of the 58 on the external drive are the prior backup. Is there a way I can erase this prior backup, which now duplicates Time Machine, thereby making more room for Time Machine in the future? For instance, if need be, can I erase the whole thing and reinstall Time Machine on it? Thanks!

James, if you open your TM drive, I'm guessing you see the usual System, Library, Users, and Applications folder along with a folder labeled something like Backup.bkup. (I'm away from a TM backup and I can't exactly recall the name of the TM backup folder.)
The DejaVu backup is just a standard file backup using 'rsync' so you can delete whatever you want by simply dragging it to the trash and emptying the trash. If the drive is bootable, you may not want to lose that ability. But assuming there's nothing in your user folder on that backup that isn't also on your computer, you can delete just about everything in your User folder on that drive. You can delete selected applications too. And if you don't mind losing the ability to boot, you can drag everything but the TM backup folder.

Tip: Convenient external drive unit + more

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