About using external bootable drive on an imac

Hi
I have made a bootable external hard drive for my imac. On that drive I am running 10.6 and on the internal imac drive 10.7.2. Now is it ok to use a usb drive rather than a FireWire?
Also is it necessary to make a portion on the external HDD? I have got some big film files on the drive but I just put them in the movie folder of the OS 10.6. I couldn't make a portion as I have no storage to put the film files on.
Another problem I had is that when I booted up in 10.6 there where no other drives mounted on the desk top. The time machine drive was mounted but the internal drive did not mount nor did the bootable 10.6 drive. They where in the window on the side but did not mount on the desk top, so I could still access the other drives. I don't know why this would happened does anyone know why?
Thanks for any help

...when I booted up in 10.6 there where no other drives mounted on the desk top.
Re the drive icons not appearing on the desktop - open Finder Preferences (Preferences in the Finder menu), go to the General tab in that window. In the "Show these items on the dekstop" section, checkmark the items for "Hard disks" and "External disks".
Also is it necessary to make a portion on the external HDD?
By "portion" I assume you mean "partition".
No, it is not necessary to partition the external drive, although doing so can be of advantage.
Now is it ok to use a usb drive rather than a FireWire?
You would do well to not consider using USB. Firewire is stabler and much faster than USB. Even USB 2.0 is usually too slow for a boot drive except in emergencies.

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Using external hard drive with both iMac and PC

I own an old Dell PC and an iBook, and will soon replace the Dell with an iMac.
I recently bought a 250GB Western Digital external hard drive to back up my data. I would like to use this hard drive to back up all of the files that are on the PC (which I will soon be getting rid of) and also use it for backing up the files on the iBook and, when it arrives, the iMac. In other words, neatly back up all my info onto the back-up drive.
My question is this: can I do this? If not, what is the best way to consolidate all of the data from all of these computers into one place? Will the fact that some data comes from a PC and some from a Mac be a problem? Can you move back-up drives fromone computer to another? The photos on my PC are saved in Picasa, whereas the photos on the iBook are in iTunes. My iPod music files are all on the PC in iTunes.
Any advice about backing all this stuff up in a user friendly way would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I have heard that there are ways to reformat external drives, to partition them, and to "raid" them. Can someone explain what this all means?
Thanks.
iBook G4

Hello,
Your best option would be to store the files from your PC on the drive with the drive in the FAT32 format. Then, copy the files to your Mac's Internal hard drive.
Now, once the files are stored safely on your Mac's internal hard drive, you can safely reformat the external drive as a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) drive. That will be the best format to use for long-term purposes with your Mac.
Many OS X file types (such as many PKG files) cannot be stored / written to a FAT32 volume. So, a FAT32 drive would not be suitable for backing-up an entire OS X hard drive (or even many of the system updates that you might download).
So, that's how I'd do it. Use the drive as a FAT32 just long enough to get the files moved to your Mac.
Once the drive is re-formatted in the Native Mac format, then you could copy the files back to it, and any other Mac files that you wanted to back-up to it for safe-keeping.
Personally, I would re-partition it in at least two pieces on the Mac. One to hold data / personal files for safe-keeping, and a second bootable partition for a full system / OS X backup.
You can read a bit more about this in some of my previous discussions here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2536703&#2536703
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2597825&#2597825
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2632566&#2632566
Read through each of those three discussions and you'll see how they all come together and provide you with a good solution for backing-up your hard drive.
I hope you don't mind my linking you to those other discussions, but it just seemed more practical than re-typing what I had already said all over again
Also, if you are getting one of the new Intel iMac systems, and you want to be able to create a bootable backup as described in those posts, be sure to format your external hard drive using the new GUID format. That will provide you with the best solution.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

How can I get computer to use external DVD drive?I have a HP dvd640 plug in play drive I want to ude but my iMac dosen't see it as connected.

How can I get *computer* to use external DVD drive? (1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 Version 10.3.9)

Place cd/dvd in drive. cd/dvd icon will show on desktop.
How can I get computer to use external DVD drive?I have a HP dvd640 plug in play drive I want to ude but my iMac dosen't see it as connected.
What is ude?
How is it connected? firewire or usb?
When connected it should appear in system profiler.
blue apple > about this mac > more info button. Click on the hardware line. It has a little triangle in front of the work hardware.
look for firewire or usb.
Robert

Using external hard drive as both a boot drive and time machine backup

My internal 1TB hard drive on my iMac is dead and I don't have the money to replace it at the moment.
I have everything backed up on an external 1TB drive using Time Machine. As a workaround for the time being,
Is there any way I can install the system on the external drive and use that as the boot drive without erasing the Time Machine
Backups? It seems to me I would have to have two partitions for the external drive, one for the system, and
one for Time Machine. But is there any way to add a partition without erasing the existing one with
Time Machine only on it?
Sorry if line breaks here are weird. Doing this from iPhone.

Neil , I have a mid 2010 27" imac running 10.6.8 and i want to install Lion , when i purchase Lion from app store will it give me any install options as I would like to be able to dual boot using SL and Lion , I have 500 gigs left on my 1 tb drive (should I do this) or would I be better of using an external bootable drive as I also want to use Ubuntu and or Linux down the line.
Any and all support , help and advice will be appreciated.
If you would like to e-mail me you can find it on my profile page.
Thanks

I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. i have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done?

I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. I have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done? or is it possible?

As I said, I don't use Time Machine, so it'd be best to wait for an "expert" answer, but, with my very limited knowledge, I'd say: probably not - so, for now, I'd suggest you read up on Time Machine:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&src=support_site.home.search&local e=en_US&q=time%20machine
And, you might be attracting more knowledgeable answers if you were to post this question in the Time Machine Forum (part of the Snow Leopard forums).

My final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help

my final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help me. I have a 13 inch mac book pro 10.6.8 8gb 2.3 gfz intel core i5

What did Apple tell you about what they did (or did not) find here?
See if working on the main disk is any faster.
USB2 is glacial, as I/O interconnects go. And USB2 disks have been known to fail, or sometimes to drop back to USB1 speeds, too. FireWire 800 is substantially faster than USB2, but still not as fast as the internal drive connections can provide.
Put another way, start varying your configuration, and see which configuration changes (still) have the problem, and which don't.

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1. Drag the library to a volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, launch Photos with the Option key held down, select Other Library, and choose it. Alternatively, drag it to the Photos icon in the Dock.
2. iCloud storage space is separate from that on the computer.
(126243)

HT203167 Moved iTunes library from one computer to another using external hard drive. Cannot play many files. Says they are missing but locates them in an archive file but still won't play them. Are the files themselves part of the .itl files?

Moved iTunes library from old computer (PC Windows 7) to new (PC Window 8) using external hard drive. Library listing shows all music but can only play a fraction of it. On the ones it cannot play it asks to locate, then refers to an archived version (an .itl file), and still cannot play them. Do I just need to copy the archived .itl over, or is that not where the actual media are (do the actual media files even exist on the new computer?)? Any advice or information on this would be helpful.

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iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
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I know there is a micro-sd reader for additional storage but can you use the usb for external hard drives like a regular pc?
I tried looking at the spec's for this tablet and it said the usb port was host only. I'm not sure what that means exactly.

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How to use external hard drive and iTunes together?

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Yes I did get to that part.... I went trough external to retrive itunes folder... When I selected the folder, it said that it was locked, choose another folder... I then went to my external again to my itunes folder and and used command I to see if folder was locked and it wasn't.... it was suggested on another forum to reboot.. which I did and still same problem... All I want to do is link my external hard drive that has my itunes playlist from another Mac to my new one.. and to also use the external as the main source for adding new songs to my playlist...

How do I install Canoscan film scanner on macbook using external disc drive?

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Looking to move data from OSX 9 to Mountain Lion using external hard drive?

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HT2518 can i just plug in my old external hard drive into my imac

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Badunit wrote:
Csound1 wrote:
If the OP only wants to read from the drive that would be OK, do you know that is what he wants?
No, do you? The OP asked if the drive can be connected. It can but there may be limitations. Saying you cannot connect an NTFS drive is not correct, it is only partly correct. I know you know that.
Have a nice day.

About using external bootable drive on an imac

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