Backing up using an external hard drive.
So I have this really old and ancient computer that only has a hard drive with less than 20GB. I bought a 500GB external hard drive and plan to put all of my file (pics, music, etc.) type stuff on it and just leave the internal hard drive to house the operating system and all programs that I normally run. The main thing I'm worried about is losing all of my music and things associated with iTunes.
I mainly want to know if it is going to be possible to move iTunes or just the iTunes files (music, pix, etc.) to the external hard drive to free up some space on the internal one? If I could just move everything associated with iTunes to the external hard drive that would be perfect but will it run properly? As anyone can probably tell, I'm not a computer genius so please, if you can help, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanx.
This is very helpful.
I'm wondering, the instruction you mentioned, Is it possible to put the itunes (everything related to itune program and not just the music/files)to an external hard drive?
My case:
My songs/files are located in a LOT of directories:
Some songs are in my brother's external hard drive (i'm planning on buying my own), some are in the internal hard drive
Videos are saved in my 80gb ipod (use as disk space)
when i checked my itunes folder it include:
1. album artwork
2. Ipod games
3. itunes music (no files under that. I put all my music in a different folder. I named it MP3, and under that are folders and sub folders)
4. ituneslibrary.itl
5. itunes music library.xml
-------> when i check the "used" memory of this itunes folder, its only 68mb
I always encounter this problem:
- Since some of my songs are in an external hard drive/ipod, whenever i open itune and those 2 aren't connected to the computer (sometimes i forgot, or sometimes even if it's plugged in, the computer doesn't recognize, i don't know why), i always get "!" on the itunes. And based on what i read, whenever you quit itunes,plug in the external/ipod, then re-open ituen, you won't get the "!". But mine doesn't! It always has that "!" on the side of the song/video. And i always have to locate each file (it very tedious and frustrating!!!). Do you know why is that?
Since my songs/videos are in different areas/drives... and i'm planning on using the new external hard drive for my itunes. How should i do it? As you can see, i'm not very good in computer. HOpe you can help me. Thanks for reading and i hope you can help.
Similar Messages
-
HT201250 Time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme
How can I setup a time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme? Even better for time managment purposes I want to use the Eithernet Thunderbolt connection for the first back up and then through the wifi there after for daily routine Time Machine back ups.
You can attach a hard drive, but Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port at the AirPort Extreme are not supported by Apple, so it's not possible to say what your actual results might be.
If you decide to try this, it would be wise to have a secondary backup plan in place as well.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html -
I would like to know if you have to back up a macbook hard drive, can I use a external hard drive that has been previously used to back up several pc 's, or is it best to have a separate external drive for the Mac?
In the Mac side of things, backups usually come in two flavors: clones or incrementals.
A bootable clone is a bit-for-bit copy of all essential files in the startup volume. If using the Lions, clones can be made using CarbonCopyCloner or just plain old Disk Utility. These backups represent the safest protection of your info, but take the longest to do. Recovery is an inverse process: you copy the clone back into the internal drive.
Incremental backups start with a complete backup of the startup volume and only copy whatever changed from the previous run. OS X includes the fully integrated Time Machine backup utility to do this. It is extremely easy to do and takes the least amount of time. Recovery is another matter altogether since you have to start with a freshly installed instance of the OS and have to apply all intervening backups to bring the result to the latest saved version.
As for where the backup takes place, the recommended media is an external dedicated drive or drives connected via the fastest interface available on your Mac: Thunderbolt, USB3, Firewire, or USB2. Network-based backups, wired or wireless, are attractive but may not offer the same performance and hence take longer. Also important to note that the entire drive need not be completely dedicated to a single backup. The Mac's EFI firmware infrastructure allows for an unlimited number of partitions on a hard drive and each can be used for either type of backups.
Holler if you need specifics on how to do each. This was just an executive summary. -
I have an older macbook pro and the hard drive is starting to go (making loud noises). i tried to back up to an external hard drive (my passport essential se) using time machine and the computer keeps shutting down. the same thing happens when just trying to save my pictures from iphoto to a flash drive. suggestions to complete backup please?
Sounds like you'll need to access that drive while it is not booted. You need to replace it anyway, so do that, then one way or another (ext enclusure, et), access it and copy files.
If you keep trying to boot it, you might kill it for good and not get your files, so just swap it out first. -
how do you remove back up data from the memory storage? my storage data states that i have over 80gb of data used for back ups and i dont know why as i use a external hard drive as a time machine .now my 250gb flash storage is nearly full.. HELP!
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space. -
I was trying to use my external hard drive to back up my mac computer. It had files on it from my pc computer. Time machine erased all my existing files. (I thought it was only going to erase the duplicate files and rewrite them). Is there anyway to recover these files from my external hard drive. My mac has renamed the hard drive time maching and it will no longer show up on my pc. What can I do?
Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think? -
I back up with an external hard drive using time machine. I am trying to reload my iphoto library but it won't let me get back to a date that I need to. How do I do this?
Try Pondini's articles;
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html - scroll down to the pink box for iPhoto restoation.
Also http://pondini.org/TM/15A.html to clarify how to use the timeline. -
I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.
Hi Clarkett99,
To use an external hard drive for your iTunes library, see the steps in this article -
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
iPhoto can be used in a similar way, follow the steps in this previous discussion -
how do I save photos and their albums...: Apple Support Communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3744259
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L -
I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?
Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there. -
Can you use an external hard drive to back up my movies in iTunes but still be able to access them or is there a device so I don't have to use a pc ??
You can store them on a separate hard drive, you don't need to keep them on your laptop's hard drive. On your computer's iTunes on the Advanced tab in Edit > Preferences there is a 'copy files to iTunes media file when adding to library' tickbox - if you untick that, you should be able to copy the films to a separate drive and add them back to your iTunes library (File > Add To Library) and it should then point to them on that separate drive and not copy them to your hard drive. When you are happy that it is what is happening and that they are safely on your external drive you can delete the films from your laptop's hard drive.
If you plug the external drive into a different USB port next time (assuming that your laptop has more than one) then it might get a different drive letter, so you might need to always use it with the same port. -
Does file vault effect using a external hard drive as back up
does file vault effect using a external hard drive as back up
weird_glasses wrote:
... as you can guess Im still on L plates ... -
I'm need to sell my MacBook and need to back up all my files including itunes will I be able to do so using an external hard drive?
To copy your current hard drive I like the free application Carbon Copy Cloner. It makes a bootable copy of everything on your hard drive http://www.bombich.com/index.html Check that it's set up right by booting up from the external drive.
-
I recently used an external hard drive to back up photos etc from my mac, I didn't do a full system back up. Since then a finder window titled 'client node' keeps popping up every time i hit the spacebar. Can anyone help me please stop this happening?
Click on it, choose Get Info from the File menu, and check the format.
If it's formatted as NTFS, reformat it as MS-DOS, exFAT, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as desired, or install software such as Paragon NTFS on the computer.
If it's formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, use the Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on it; this may also happen for a flash drive which is about to fail.
If it's formatted as Mac OS Extended, click Authenticate and provide your administrator password, or change the permissions on that specific folder in its Get Info window.
(109318) -
Restoring using an external hard drive help
Ok so.. ive recnelty received my mac back from apple, after javing the hd replaced. To prevent the loss of all of my stuff i bought an external hd and used this as my time machine backup, so now its all on my external hard drive. The problem ive got is that ive got no idea how to restore my mac using the extermal hard drive so its like it was before it was sent off. ive been told one option is to launch my mac in recovery mode and choose to restore using. my external hard drive there. however i cant access recovery mode because i have a wireless keyboard, and the only wired keyboard i have is a windows one. also, to make matters worse, i cant use any discs because my optical drive is broken, so until i receive my extermal one, discs are also out. of the option.
any other ways to do it?
thanks!RomeoVersace wrote:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4889?viewlocale=en_US
Try this, your going to be using a program called Migration Assistant to restore data from a different computer's Time Machine. Your computer is a different computer now because of the new Hard Drive, so instead of entirely recovering the Operating System, this will save time and data by allowing you to choose individually what you want to restore and what you don't want to.
Do not use Migration Assistant, instead you will use Setup Assistant (which starts automatically when you first start your Mac) if you already started you Mac and added a user then you will have to use MA, but you will need to remove a user afterwards. -
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.
Maybe you are looking for
-
Help please. Need to access apps that are beyond the last pge so I can put them back in folders. My kids accidently reset the home page and all the apps I use as an slp are scattered or can only be accessed if I can recall the name of the app. I t
-
Broadband speed after phoneline fault fixed.
How long does it take for broadband to get back up to speed after a phoneline fault has been resolved? Our phone fault has just been fixed after being out for more than a week. The broadband remained connected but cripplingly slow. Now the phone is b
-
Extra sort field in LOV with Union
I'm building an LOV that is based on a single table, but the list needs to be broken up into two groups to show preferred vs. non-preferred values. I would like to display the preferred values in the table first (sorted) and then the non preferred va
-
Oracle stored procedure in PHP fetching XML values
Hi, I have the below table created in oracle CREATE TABLE TEST_XML( ID NUMBER(5), DATA VARCHAR2(4000) INSERT INTO TEST_XML VALUES(100,'<student><name>Ruck</name><id>1</id></student>'); I have created a procedure: CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SP_TEST_X
-
I have created and exported a menu bar into my site that works perfectly. The menu consists of a series of rollover buttons and cosmetic images. As I said the menu works as it should, the only thing I can't figure out is how to make the button of the