Can I move an external hard disk off the finder window, to the Dock or menu bar, for instance?

I use a couple of external hard disks, one with Time Machine for every day back-ups and another for occasional back-ups of large work files and videos I have purchased. It bothers me to see them sitting up there in the top right hand corner of my screen. Can I move them permanently somewhere else, into the Dock or Menu Bar say, and still have them permanently available?

Yes.
You can drag the drive icon from the desktop into the Dock.
Then you can go to Finder > Preferences > General > Show these items on the desktop > uncheck External disks, and it should stay in the dock but not show on the desktop.
There are third party apps that will give you Finder-like access to things in your Menu Bar, like Download XMenu for Mac - Menubar item lists/launches apps, and more. MacUpdate.com , but I would avoid third party GUI-changing apps like this if I were you, as they tend to be problematic, and install background processes which slow down your mac.

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Can not connect an external hard disk

Hello,
For the second time , I have a problem while connecting a external hard disk. (the first issue was not solved).
Previously, I was triying to connect my external hard disk. But my powerbook 10.4.11 could not see it. I could heart my external disk "running". It was doing a small repeatitly noisy. But in the finder, it was not displayed.
Now I am triying with another one and I am experiencing the smae problem. Finder does not displayed it.
I guess the USB port does not display enough power. But I am not sure.
Do you have a idea how can I solve my proble in order to be able to see external hard disk and copy file in it?
Many thank for your help

I connected the external hard disk to a pc and checked the in disk management management tools. I activate the partition of the external hard disk, then I reconnected it to my Powerbook 10.4.11 and FInder can not see it...

Can I connect an external hard disk to time capsule? I tried but it doesn't show up. What would be the reason??

Can I connect an external hard disk to time capsule? I tried but it doesn't show up. What would be the reason??

The USB drive must be formatted for Mac in Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or if you want to use both Mac and Windows files, the drive can be formatted in FAT32.
A number of drives are formatted for Windows only in a format called NTFS. This willl not work on the Time Capsule.
In addition, the USB port on the Time Capsule is under powered. You almost always have to use a powered USB hub when you connect a drive to the Time Capsule...even if the drive has its own power supply.

After installing Mavericks I can no longer save a new word document or pdf by typing the name of the destination folder in the Finder window. The save button greys out. Solutions anyone?

After installing Mavericks I can no longer save a new word document or pdf by typing the name of the destination folder in the Finder window. The save button greys out. Solutions anyone?

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folders. In OS X 10.9 there are two sandboxes, while in 10.8 there is only one. If you're running a version older than 10.8, this comment isn't applicable.
Back up all data.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder—not just its contents—to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.
Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window.
This action will delete any custom Mail stationery that you have created. If you want to preserve it, ask for instructions.
If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Repeat with this line:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MailServiceAgent
Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Can't put back external hard disk

Hi,
I can never put back my external hard disk (USB). There's an alert it was in use and can't be ejected.
In use by which process?
Thanks a lot!
Peter

Thank you, Mark!
Yes, I meant "unmount". I'm translating this into English.
It must be a background app; even with all "frontend" apps quit, this message persists. When I restart, I have the same problem again if I don't turn the drive off quickly when everything is down. This is no solution.
I tried Disk Utility, TechTool Pro… – no way to analyze it because it can't be unmounted.
I have found a root process called "mds". If I force-quit it, I can unmount the HD.
What is "mds" for?

Can't mount my external Hard Disk

I bought a new mac book. I have been using an external Hard Disk with the laptop i am currently using. I tried to connect the 160GB external hard disk to my mac and it doesnt mount. It worked well for the very first time I connected, but then it showed up some error msg that the disk has been ejected improperly and the data might be lost. It doesn't even show up in the disk utility after I connect it. It works fine with my thinkpad though. Could someone help me with this....
Help is greatly appreciated....

hi there--
try an smc reset of the macbook http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303319 and then see if the drive is recognized then. if not, then try a different port if there is one available, or try a different external device with the same connection type to see if all devices with that connection type aren't recognized. good luck.

I am running iTunes on an IBM comp system Win XP with a 70gb hard disk. I have 4 kids with 4 IPOD Touches. Their apps and album art are eating up the hard disk space. I changed the Media Folder to an external hard disk. How do I get the apps to go their?

I am running iTunes on an IBM compatible system running Windows XP with a relatively small hard disk (70gb). I have 4 kids with 4 IPOD Touches, multiple IPOD Nanos, etc. Their apps and album art are eating up the hard disk space. I changed the Media Folder through Edit, Prferences, Advances, iTunes Media Folder to an external hard disk. The new music downloads and purchases go there but the apps and other items do not. How do I get the apps and other iTunes software and downloads to go to the external hard disk

There is no built in function to make this happen.
Your options are:
Upgrade the existing hard drive.
Try creating a link for the app folder on the external drive... this may or may not work.
Realistically, a larger hard drive is a better solution, then use the external drive for keeping a backup of the ENTIRE iTunes folder and any other personal data on the system.

My user folder has disappeared from my hard drive though if I do a find for it it says it is still there. Anyone know how to restore it. I can drag a duplicate from the find window onto the hard drive but don't want two copies with one hidden.

My user folder has suddenly disappeared from my hard drive though if I do a find for it it comes up as still being there with all its data. Can drag a duplicate copy from the find window back onto the hard drive but don't want two copies there with one of them hidden. Any suggestions anyone?

Did you update to 10.9.3?
If you did then update to iTunes 11.2.1.
That is the fix for that problem.
Allan

Can't write to external hard drive set up by Windows

We have a 300gb Maxtor external hard drive. I had set it up using the Windows laptop I use for work.
The Mini that we have can read, but not write to, this external drive. I just went back and set the Security properties to allow Full Control for the Everyone group. That did not work; the drive is still read-only for the Mini.
Additionally, when it's hooked up to the Mini, the hard drive starts spinning for no apparent reason. When it's doing that, you cannot eject the hard drive. It will whir for several minutes; at times, we've had to reboot the Mini to get the thing to stop.
Is there a Mac OS setting somewhere that needs to be changed to allow the Mini to write to the drive?
Why is the drive spinning for no apparent reason? Is there something we can look at to find out what's happening with it?
Any other suggestions for fixing the problem? I'd like to avoid reformatting it, if possible....

We have a 300gb Maxtor external hard drive. I had set
it up using the Windows laptop I use for work.
The Mini that we have can read, but not write to,
this external drive. I just went back and set the
Security properties to allow Full Control for the
Everyone group. That did not work; the drive is still
read-only for the Mini.
Sounds like the drive is formatted in NTFS. Under OSX, your Mac will be able to read, but not write, to an NTFS formatted drive.
If you format as HFS or HFS+, the Mac will be able to readd/write to the disk, but the Windows box will not be able to recognize the disk.
Since it is a 300gb drive, FAT will not work (FAT does not recognize drives that large).
It must be formatted as FAT32.
It can be formatted as such on either the windows box or the Mac.
You can partition the disk, one HFS+, one FAT32, but the windows box still will not be able to recognize the HFS partition, and the Mac will be able to read/write both.
So...for maximum compatibility and cross-platform usage, format the drive as FAT32.
As for as the periodic drive spin, it's possible Spotlight is updating it's index.

Can you use an external hard drive (G-Tech 1 TB) as both a time machine and for storing extra files?

I just got a new external hard drive and will be getting my macbook pro next week. I was wondering if the external hard drive could be used as both a time machine and to have extra files on it? And if so how would you do that?

Time Machine requires a drive that is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled), so you will need to check to make sure that this requirement is met.
A drive that the manufacturer says will work with both Mac and Windows will not work with Time Machine.

External hard disk drive problem with windows laptops?

my other hard disk drive cannot be read or write on windows and on my macbook pro 13.

If the HDD cannot be read on either machine, it may have failed. Connect it to your MBP and open Disk Utility. Is it recognized there?
Ciao.

Hi there, My Hard Disk space on the Mac Book is running low, I found about 105gigs in Back Ups, after I moved my ballooning Aperture Library to an external hard disk. Can you help?

Just checked on Lion - somehow I have over 100gigs in Back Ups, but much less in pictures. I moved Itunes, Aperture Libraries to my external hard Disk. Still running low on the 250 gigs space. Any tips on how I can free this are much appreciated!
Thanks!

Did you actually move / delete the data on your HDD?
When you click and drag to an external drive, it automatically copies instead of moves.
What are these backups & their location?
You could try and app similar to WhatSize.

Image file can't be opened by windows store app if the file is in the Ext4's external hard disk.

My question is described below:
I have two disks, external hard disk and removable disk. They are formatted with EXT4.
I put the same image in the disks, and use Ext2Fsd to mount the disks.
I open the file in win8, and it will default open by the windows store app : photos.
It will be success to open if the file is in the Ext4's removable disk.
It will be failed to open if the file is in the Ext4's external hard disk.
I don't know why it will be failed to open if the file is in the Ext4's external hard disk.
Does anyone have similar experiences?

Hi hatasum,
Thanks for posting!
Base on my experience, if installed Ext2Fsd, we can read the ext4 file system on windows system. But Which version of Ext2Fsd did you use? From my experience, Ext2Fsd is not spported fine about windows 8 version. Please refer to this software official
website (http://www.ext2fsd.com/ ) . I suggest you could post this issue to the Ext2Fsd discussion forum ( such as
http://sourceforge.net/p/ext2fsd/discussion/143329/thread/7f262ad0/ )for better help.
Thanks for your understanding.
Regards,
Will
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Can't copy files to hard disk

I have been having trouble copying/moving files to an external hard drive from my Macbook Air 3,2. I have moved and copied files from the MacBook Air many times to the external hard disk but this time I am having a lot of trouble.
I tried to move 2 movie files but it was taking an incredibly long time. So I clicked the "x" to cancel the transfer. However, it didn't stop it straightaway. The transfer just remained in limbo. Then I got a message saying something about how I didn't disconnect the hard disk properly and the hard disk just seemed to have disconnected itself from my computer even though I didn't eject it.
Then it caused problems for my MacBook Air. When I went to check on the disk in Utilities, it told me I had to use the installation disk to start it up. Other strange things happened like my desktop picture just disappeared and suddenly I had an extra 10GB on my hard drive.
I repaired the disk successfully using the installation thumb USB drive.
(I also repaired the external hard disk).
But I am having the same problem again when I try to move files onto the hard disk. It doesn't seem to work, as it's incredibly slow and when I cancel it, it says I ejected the hard disk wrongly. And the drive does not appear in the Finder Window.
I don't know why this is happening to me. I repaired the MacBook Air HD and I also repaired the external disk and I can't copy movie files onto the hard disk. I have enough space and both disks are Mac Ext Journal formatted. I copied lots of movies the other day (about three days ago and last night) onto the hard disk without any problems.
I really need to move the movies from my computer as I will runn out of disk space on the computer soon (I have about 12 GB left right now).
I tried copying a jpg picture as a test, and it copied it OK but it took a long time. Much longer than normal.
I got an error message just now:
The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “Elechxxxxxxxxxx.mp4” can’t be read or written.
(Error code -36)
I never got this sort of error message before but now I am getting this message today several times when I try and copy the movies. I don't think it's the files themselves because I copied the same sort of movie files last night without any problem.
And as I said, the jpg file took a really long time to copy, like 2 minutes even though it's only a very small file.

This is not about saving the data on the external drive but I found this information to be helpful in case people have problems ejecting a drive:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1322931
I threw the following:
sudo umount -vf /dev/disk1s1
and the drive umounted. -v is verbose, just in case there were any errors thrown I wanted to know, and -f is force umount, which forces the drive to unmount. Check 'man umount' from terminal to see more info on these.
After doing this a couple times (I was doing some testing with some other things to find a faster solution than having to open terminal and umount) it just started umounting correctly. I have no idea why, but it did. So just keep that command in mind, just in case.
Gryyphyn, out.
This may prevent the drive from being damaged by incorrect ejection. Because I could not eject the drive using force eject, restarting the computer etc, I unplugged the drive, which damaged the hardware of the drive.
If I had known about the command window method, I might have been able to avoid all these problems now that I have with a damaged drive and trying to rescue the data on that drive.
That being said, I think Apple should try and resolve this problem they have with users not being able to eject drives. It seems to be a VERY common problem, and has nothing to do with users' negligence but to do with a systemic fault of Apple's.

Access via a network to an external hard disk ?

Hello,
My wife can access with her PC (vi$ta) my Mac's Public folder through our router but she can not see my external hard disk, an alias does not help.
So each time I have to move files from my external HD to the Mac.
The inverse solution, me dropping files on her PC is "not possible", we can not, I have to work too
What should I do to give her a access to all the external HD or to some specific folders on the external HD ?
To connect to my mac she has to login, I would like to keep this for security reasons.
Thanks a lot.

You can add a share point - for Tiger, a handy utility to use is SharePoints (Leopard has this feature built-in via the Sharing preferences).

Can I move an external hard disk off the finder window, to the Dock or menu bar, for instance?

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