Backup hard drive..

Hello. I'm looking for a backup hard drive to keep everything on my macbook pro safe etc. My hard drive's capaciy is 250Gb and the cheapest hard drive i found was for £28. It was also 250Gb. I was going to use time machine etc so is 250GB enough?
Thank you,
Thomas.

Time Machine's backup drive should be at least twice the size of your hard drive - 500 GBs or larger.
Basic Backup
Get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Carbon Copy Cloner
Deja Vu
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete external drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets especially for Firewire drives (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

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Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

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I haven't done this with an external drive, but I would imagine it works the same way as if you have multiple internal drives. Also hopefully it works with less headache in OSX than in windows.
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No backup is not good.
You can transfer itunes purchases from an ipod. File>Transfer Purchases

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Does that fact that Disk Utilities can see it mean it's not failed, or just that it hasn't completely failed?
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What hard drives, if any, do you recommend? I seem to recall that when I was looking at external hard drives 4 years ago, Apple's were substantially more expensive, which is why I got the OWC Mercury Elite All Pro.

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Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.

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The only way to limit the size of the backup is to exclude data from the backup, which you can do in Time Machine preferences.
If you use multiple browsers, have you tried clearing your browser caches? However, that's just a stop gap if it works. You either need to limit what you backup or get another drive.

Which Backup Hard Drive for Time Machine?

I ordered a new iMac from Apple. I need to order my backup hard drive and someone from here on the boards recommended http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/400+USB2/. I was going to get the 750 GB backup drive (I got the iMac with 640 GB), but I see there's a 1,000 GB backup drive that's basically the same price ($2 cheaper) but has half the cache (16 MB vs. 32 MB). I'm guessing that the cache stores information as it transfers from the main hard drive before the backup records it, so that the bigger the cache, the more it can store, and probably the faster the backup goes from the perspective of the main computer (i.e. the backup slows the computer less). Do you think that having twice the size of cache outweighs have 3/4 the size of hard drive? Would you go for the 750 GB with 32 MB cache, or the 1000 GB with 16 MG cache?

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As for the rest, I do want to keep all my Safari and Firefox settings, but as I'm using the current versions, there's not problem with them. I'd prefer not to have to take the time to reinstall everything of course. As for Office, I am using 2004 for Mac, but I've ordered 2008 for the Mac with my iMac because Apple and Microsoft have a 50% off deal for back to school, which cuts about another $35 off the usual 40% educational discount that Microsoft offers. (Apple used to offer those big discounts too, back in the 1990s, when I got my G4, but these days they offer only $50 or $100 off as an educational discount, which is one reason I haven't bought a new computer in 9-10 years!) I have the latest Acrobat too, as Adobe also had a good educational discount.
A buddy of mine who does programming for the federal government said that it's a real testament to Apple's quality that my 10-year-old G4 still performs. He said that a PC would have died about half way through. I did get the top-of-the-line model thanks to both the educational discounts of the day and to the Apple student loan program (I was in my first Ph.D. program then), and expanded the RAM, so that 10 years later I'm still able to use the G4. I do all my teaching at two colleges online now, and the computer has gradually gotten slower as it encounters more and more information it was never designed to handle. Ten years ago every website didn't have fifty dancing babies or whatever. Now every website seem to have an embedded video or three all insisting on playing at the same time. I'm looking forward to that sort of thing not bringing my computer to a halt.

Transferring LR catalog to backup hard drive for travel?

I plan on taking a photo vacation and want to take along a laptop with Lightroom for processing on the road.
I currently use and process my images on my desktop. LR and the images are all on desktop.
What is the best way to transfer my catalog (with all keyword and collection data) to my backup hard drive for the trip?
Images are not really a problem transferring just takes time.
Do I use the "backup" mode in LR? or, drag and drop the LR folders from my desktop to my backup hard drive?
thanks,

Please note:
When we talk of the "catalog" in Lightroom, it means the database where Lr stores everything. It does not mean your photos.
The catalog (i.e. the database, i.e. the file with the ending < .lrcat>) does not have to be on the same drive where the photos(the image files) are.
So you can move your photos to an external hard drive and leave the catalog where it is now. Where is it? Go >Edit >Catalog Settings ? General tab. It tells you the name and location of the catalog.
Before you do any moving of your photos, please note: Lr stores - among the many other things - in its catalog also the location of each one of your image files. This has the consequence that if you move the image files in Win Explorer / Mac Finder Lr does not find the photos in the location stored in the catalog and sends you the much feared "?". How to solve this, see here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS3BC0B0A1-D48C-4271-891D-DA04EF388E29.html
So, there are two ways to move your photos to an external drive:
a) do it within Lr and Lr will keep on top of the moved files;
b) If you want to move the image files in Win Explorer / Mac Finder it is best you create one (1) parent folder that contains - in various sub-folders - all of your images. Do this in Lr.
Then - in Win Explorer / Mac Finder - you move the parent folder with all its sub-folders to the external drive. When you open Lr again it will show - in the folders panel - a question mark besides each folder. You then have to do the <Find missing folder> routine:
Locate missing folders
If a folder is moved in the operating system instead of in Lightroom, the link between the catalog and the folder breaks, and a question-mark icon appears on the folder in the Folders panel.
To restore the link, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) on the folder and choose Find Missing Folder from the context menu.
Navigate to the file path of the moved folder and click Choose.

Why are the files I migrated over from a backup hard drive locked and inaccessible on my new used Mac Book pro? I used the migration assistant. Running Snow Leopard on a core duo.

My laptop got pinched and I bought a used Mac Book Pro, put a larger hard drive in it and performed a clean install of Snow Leopard on the new drive, after which I used the Migration Assistant to bring over my applications, settings, documents, etc., from my backup hard drive. This hard drivekis not a Ti e Machine drive, it's one I use to clone my computer to regularly with Carbon Copy Cloner. When the migration was complete all my documents, the desktop,and other folders are locked and won't allow me to access them. What to do? Thanks for the help.

Graham Giles wrote:
Have you seen this type of problem before? I think it could be a serious issue for anyone in a similar position.
No; but then, I've not had occasion to use TDM. I've been using firerwire drives for over 10 years, both FW400 and FW800, with no issues except a bit of instability using a B&W G3 machine.
TDM should be safe. Using cautious, manual copying of files from the Target machine to the Host machine should not result in unexpected loss of files or damage to the Target drive's directories. It should behave exactly the same as if it were an external (to the Host) firewire drive.
• I don't suppose there is anything I can do to 'put back' lost items from a separate Time Machine drive which has an up to date backup on it.
There is probably a way to do that - seems to me that's one of the reasons for a Time Machine volume.
On the other hand, if the Time Machine volume is rigidly linked to the now-absent OS on the original drive, there may be no way to effectively access the files in the TM archive.
I know that using a cloned drive would work well in this instance.
I have no experience with Time Machine, so perhaps someone who has will chime in with suggestions.
With the machine in TDM with the other machine, have you tried running Disk Utility to see if you can effect repairs to the drive?

I started the OS system from a backup hard drive. Now My Adobe products doesnt work. "the licensing does not work for this product" Error code 150:30. Help me please!!

I started the OS system from a backup hard drive. Now My Adobe products doesnt work. "the licensing does not work for this product" Error code 150:30. Help me please!!

Reinstall the software properly. migration/ backups do not work due to the specific requirements of the activation system.
Mylenium

How do I install programs and files from my backup hard drive?

I had my computer reset to original settings after I backed it up to an external hard drive and now I'm not sure how to reinstall everything from there.

Time Machine is not a application installer, it is a backup and restore app. If you erased or lost an App then open Time Machine, navigate to a time when you know you have the app and then restore it.
Have you done any backups using the Seagate drive or is it a brand new external HD? Remember we are not there to see what you are attempting to do so we are relying on you to be as descriptive as possible.

Apple TV Backup Hard Drive

ok i have been searching around for the answer to this and couldnt find it anywhere. I have an apple tv. a mac book. and an iphone. as of right now i download lots of movies and stream them to my tv via apple tv. however to prevent from it taking up tons of room on my computer i keep most of my movies on my time capsule. the thing that *** about this obviously is having to move things over into my itunes account off of my time capsule everytime i want to watch something. i did some research on a synology diskstation that looked like it could be what im looking for because it allows you to stream things right from the hard drive to thinks like xbox and playstation but no apple tv. does anyone no a solution where i can keep all my movies on a wireless hard drive somewhere and stream them directly to my apple tv?

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Regarding BCfind's comment:
"Nope, and nothing about ATV should lead you to think this should be possible, so don't complain about it not doing something it is not supposed to."
BCfind, you're just a sheep.
Intel makes computer chips from... SAND by removing oxygen from it. You get silica and it makes chips for computers!
It's not because things are a certain way that they can't be changed.
Apply a bit of creative thinking and don't accept the status quo. Apple TV has a massive hard drive. Time capsule has a massive hard drive. Both have wireless Antennas. I'm sure a skilled CScientist could make it happen (partitioning the ATV disk in 2 halves, allocating them to time capsule and Apple TV. The TC half could even backup it's ATV half. That would be the essence of it.
Think Different ™

Backing up Itunes library to external backup hard drive

May have missed this... but I just bought an external hard drive for use as a backup. It didn't come with backup software. For now, I just copy and paste personal folders. What do I copy to backup my itunes library? Itunes internal backup apparently only backs up to CD or DVD. Can I not back up some weird voodoo protected version of my music to an external hard drive wthout having to copy to DVD? I mean, that would go through a lot of DVDs over a year wouldn it?
Mike

Hi, Mike.
Assuming you haven't changed any of iTunes' default settings, everything you need to back-up - the iTunes Music folder, the Album Artwork and the iTunes Library files - is found in the iTunes folder at C:\Documents and Settings\ user name \My Documents\My Music\iTunes .
So, again assuming you haven't changed the defaults, all you have to do is copy the iTunes folder to your external.
If you've changed the defaults, it can be a bit more complicated.

Backup hard drive..

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