2 external hard drives with iTunes and Time Machine

Hi folks.
My 160gb hard drive on my iMac is full so I've bought 2 x 1tb external hard drives, my plan being to move my iTunes library to one of them (as this uses the majority of space) and run it from there and use the 2nd hard drive with Time Machine.
My question is this, will Time Machine backup any changes to my iTunes library if it isn't on the computer's internal hard drive?
Thanks!
Brian

Just be sure the iTunes volume is formatted +Mac OS Extended (Journaled).+ Most drives come formatted for Windoze, and TM can't back them up.
See #1 in [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Using Snow Leopard+ forum) if you need to reformat and aren't sure how.

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Cannot Find Photos on External Hard Drive Using iPhoto and Time Machine

Hi everyone,
This is my first time posting on this forum and am really hoping for some help! I have a 2006 PowerBook G4 that is running iPhoto and Time Machine, and I've used an external hard drive to backup everything on the computer via Time Machine. When I plug the external hard drive into my newer 2010 MacBook Pro, I follow this path to try to access the photos:
     External Hard Drive > Backups.backupd > PowerBook G4 12" > Latest > Macintosh HD > Users > Me > Pictures > iPhoto Library
When I click "iPhoto Library", I get the following message:
     "The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library."
So, I do as the error message says and I hold down the "option" key and iPhoto launches and says:
     What Photo Library do you want iPhoto to use?
In this case, I choose "Other Library..." and again follow this path:
     External Hard Drive > Backups.backupd > PowerBook G4 12" > Latest > Macintosh HD > Users > Me > Pictures > iPhoto Library
When I choose this, I again get the following message:
     The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library.
So as you can see, I'm feeling a bit like I'm chasing my tail in trying to open these photos. I did follow another user's advice and confirm that all photos are infact on the hard drive by using the "control" button and clicking "iPhoto Library" under the pictures folder, and choosing "Show Package Contents". All looks to be in tact in the "originals" folder when showing package contents, however, I just can't find a way to actually view the photos in iPhoto. I really don't want to import all the photos to my current MacBook Pro, because I'd like them to live on the external hard drive (which is formatted for Macs) so that I can browse the photos on the external drive, rather than housing it on my computer.
One other thing I tried was opening iPhoto on my MacBook Pro and going to File > Browse Backups... which essentially opens Time Machine and shows me the photos on my MacBook Pro but gives me no option to view them from my External Hard Drive.
Any super users out there willing to lend me some help?
Thanks!

The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library.
You can have an iPhoto library on an external drive and use it from different machines
and you can have a Time Machine backup
The two can not be on the same volume - and iPhoto can not access the TM backup - it must be restored to use it
LN

My external hard drive for backup and Time Machine is full. I bought a new HD. Can I just begin using it, or must I transfer old BkUp and TM to the new HD?

My external hard drive for Back Up and Time Machine is full. I bought a new HD. Can I just begin using it and rely on the old HD for past Time Machine versions, or must I transfer the old Back Up and Time Machine files to the new HD?

It is your choice.
If you don't want to be able to far back into the time slots covered by the old disk then just start using the new disk.
If you want to retain the ability to go back into those time slots then copy it.
Allan

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos.

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos. I wanted to see if I could view them from the hard drive. Thanks

Hello, eco1.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like you are wanting to move your iTunes media folder to an external drive and have iTunes this folder from this location. If this is the case then I would recommend taking a look at the article below.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Cheers,
Jason H.

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up. I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up.
I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?
When I bought the new (used) iMac, I also bought an external hard drive for backups. It worked fine, but my husband stole it.
Then I bought a new external hard drive (Seagate) and it worked fine for three weeks, then died.
So I just got a new external hard drive, which was put together from an internal hard drive and a hard drive enclosure.
Time machine did the first backup today, and it should have taken 9 hours like it did on the previous first time full back up. Instead, it took 30 minutes. That can't be right. I want to start over and do a full backup to make sure everything gets onto my new external hard drive, but I can't figure out how to do that. Please help.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

How do I find my photos on my external hard drive backed up using Time Machine?

How do I find my photos on my external hard drive backed up using Time Machine?
My hard drive died so this is my only storage. The hard drive was from an early 2008 Macbook Pro.
I had recently installed Snow Leopard.

If they’re in an iPhoto library, look in the Pictures folder of your home folder first. Otherwise, they’ll be in the location corresponding to the one you saved them to.
(111765)

Using the same external hard drive to host a Time Machine partition + a test recovery partition: no longer possible?

In 10.7, I used to have one external hard drive with two partitions:
1) a Time Machine partition that I used to back up my internal hard drive;
2) another partition that I used once a month as a target partition to test the restoration of my Time Machine backup (because having a backup is a good first step, but regularly making sure it could be usable for a full recovery in case of a failure of my internal hard drive is important as well).
After upgrading to 10.9, my first backup restoration test failed with the error message "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk." I found the following discussion:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4370294
which suggests that I need to make sure my external hard drive is formated using GUID and/or that I need to install 10.7 on the target drive. I checked in the Disk Utility, and indeed my external hard drive is formatted using Apple Partition Map rather than GUID.
I also found the following KB article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5911
which suggests that, to be able to install 10.9 on the external hard drive, I need to configure it to have only one partition.
Can anyone confirm that it is no longer possible to perform a backup recovery test on the same external hard drive as the one hosting the Time Machine partition? Do I now need a second external hard drive if I want to perform such a restoration test?
Thanks in advance for your insights.

Answering my own question: I managed to perform the restoration test on a second external hard drive. The trick was to make sure it was partitioned using GUID. I didn't even have to first install OS 10.9 on the second partition (I had an old restoration of 10.7 on there).

From External Hard Drive to Itunes and back...

Hello I have a external hard drive with 2 main folders Music 1 Music 2, each folder has about 6-8 sub-folders labeled with the genres am in to , and those sub-folders have the artist I believe correspond to that genres, to many artist with genres was a mess on my PC so I figured this was the easiest solution for me.
Still with me? Ok, Great Here is part one of my first question, How can I guide Itunes to my E.H.D music folders and telling it; here is my music, Fix it with albums and correct file name just don’t copy in to my Mac Hard Drive and take the 90 GB space your taking on my E.H.D. Second part do I need to prepare the music folders in any way, meaning can I leave it the way I have it set up or do I just put all the music, no labels just as is on main Folder and let Itunes label it and set it up the way I tell it to on ITunes.
Second question, since this has taken nearly a day and a half trying to find the answer, till I finally decided to ask. Should I just put all the music with out sub-folders on my E.H.D. on one main folder and transfer the 90 GB to my IMac H.D. and Itunes, correct everything on ITunes and let it label it the way ITunes, ipod, and Ipad, can read it with no problems of missing files or artwork. Then when that is done I can transfer it back to the E.H.D. and save it again, the ITunes way. If this is the best way then, I still need to figure out how to tell ITunes the music is here and perfectly labels and in its corresponding Sub-folders use it but dont take it to the IMac H.D(or something is getting back handed real quick). Hope this explains my frustration or am just over thinking it to much and making it harder for my self . again thanks for all the help.

Have a look at these 2 Videos...
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-library.html
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html

How can i use external hard drive with mac and pc!

I've been using a Lacie external hard drive with my mac to keep the itunes library and other things since day one. Since i have a dvd with files for windows and an old pc without a dvd drive, i decided to copy and paste the content of the dvd to the external hard drive. The only problem now is that when i plug the external hard drive to pc, it won't open. I know it has to be formatted in a different way, but i need to find out the best solution!
Any idea?

You can format the external drive in Fat32 (which I don't recommend but is the most compatible between both platforms), or NTFS (which requires some work to get your Mac to recognize), or HFS+ (which requires special software on your PC so your PC can use it).
If you use this drive mostly with your Mac, get MacDrive for your PC:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive
If you use this drive mostly with your PC, here's some software for you Mac. I haven't tried this myself, but the professional reviews have been good:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Trouble with itunes and time machine

i am having trouble with my iphone and thought it may have been itunes, so i went into time machine and tried to replace my current version of itunes with the last one. Everything went fine until i got right to the end of replacing it. it said i didnt have the authorization to do that...or something along those lines... now i cant even open itunes, ill click on it and it just bounces once and thats it. can anyone help me!?

I haven't been able to back up to my FreeAgent external hard drive
The TM disk is your backup destination and I assume it is the Seagate FreeAgent disk. The source is your Mac.
Wireless. I have a Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive plugged in by USB to the mac.
You say it is connected via USB, yet your are saying backups are done wirelessly.
From Terminal, can you post the output of tmutil destinationinfo (remove any personal information as you see fit)?

External hard drive not recognized after time machine locked up

I was backing up to an external hard drive (300GB Western Digital) and time machine locked up. I had to shut down the computer and restart. Now the external hard drive does not show up on the desktop?
I can see it in disk utility but I am not able to mount or unmount the disk, I keep getting an error that the disk is in use. I tried to erase/reformat the disk and no luck.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the help

KTM450rider wrote:
Do I need to boot from the install DVD?
this is often the easiest and eliminates any "busy drive" problems. what's wrong with booting from the install DVD? takes a couple of minutes.
My main hard drive is OK... the drive that I am having problems with is an external hard drive that I was using to back up my lap top. I just want to get the external drive reformatted, but disk utility will not erase it. I get an error that disk utility shut down, "please check the drive and make sure that the drive is not in use or programs are still running"
Is their a way to do a hard or forced reformatting of an external hard drive, I don't care about the information on the drive
I also tried disk warrior to recover the info on the disk and all it does is crash my mac pro????
Thanks again for the help

Using an external hard drive with iTunes...

My library has gotten so large that it really no longer fits on my computer. I'd like to move my music to an external hard drive. Unfortunately, I didnt realize the whole, "your music can only be moved 5 times before its frozen" deal until recently, on my fifth move, so does anybody know how iTunes will react to being moved to an external hard drive? I just need to make sure that everything will still be accessable and work with my iPod and all.....

As far as moving your music to an external drive is concerned, have a look at this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.
the whole, "your music can only be moved 5 times before its frozen" deal is not the case. You can authorize no more than five computers at a time to play your purchases. But when you deauthorize one, you can authorize another in its place.

Backing up one external hard drive to another in time machine?

I have a 1 tb external hard drive I'd like to keep backed up to an identical external hard drive. Can I do this using time machine?
I'd like to do this separately from the standard time machine backup I'm doing of my internal hard drive, which backs up to another external one.
Not sure how clear this is but any help would be appreciated. I'm on a MacBook Pro.
Thanks!

I'd like something that'll only move over the files that are new. My guess is Disk Utility.app doesn't do that. Maybe Retrospect?
You're right - Disk Utility doesn't - it will do a full-disk copy, not just an incremental change.
I can't recommend :: shudder :: Retrospect, though. it used to be the bees-kness in Mac backup but it has seriously lost its way, with too many users complaining of it being a resource hog and not being able to restore data, which is kind of important for a backup utility.
Given your requirements, your best bet may be Carbon Copy Cloner. It will do full-disk as well as incremental backups to create a bootable clone of your system.

Using an external hard drive with iTunes r

Hi there.
I just bought a new mac book pro and would like to link my itunes to an external hard drive that I have consolidated all my mp3's onto so that I don't use all the memory space on my computer.
I tried holding down the alt key when starting itunes and linking it that way but it said that it didnt recognise the folder as an itunes library.
Could anyone help me please? Many thanks.

Hi... Thanks, your idea sounds good. I've seen the other places where you've shared this tip. I still have a couple questions to make sure I understand.
You say: "One way (and in some the best) is to copy the whole iTunes folder in your user Music folder to the external drive. Then the alt/option key thing will work.
Another is to move just media to the external drive. The external will always have to be up and fully mounted before starting iTunes."
If I use your way and copy the whole folder I will also have to have the external always on, correct? The whole folder will be on the external, right?
Then when I want to upload a new CD to my iTunes it will all go automatically to the new folder on my external? iTunes won't try to put anything on my laptop hard drive anymore, right?
I'm copying my iTunes folder to my external then I will point my laptop's iTunes to the new folder. And that will be it. Right? Then I can delete my bloated iTunes folder on my laptop.
You also say "if you use the default preferences." Actually, I'm doing this for my teenage son. I don't know what prefs he uses. Are you saying that if we've changed any defaults that this method won't work?
Well, thanks for further explanation. I've always had difficulty with i-Products. I don't regularly use or rely on any myself, due to the synchronization issues. It seems that something like iPhoto wants to take over my photos and things start going wrong and multiplying when I use it. So I don't.

HT1751 How can I copy only music to an external hard drive from Itunes and not video?

I only have 32 GB worth of space and 54 GB worth of itunes. I only want to transfer the music on to a drive for back-up. Please help!

Drag and drop the music from your Itunes to your desktop - to the external hard drive.
- Works for me, Works for you.

2 external hard drives with iTunes and Time Machine

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