Can't use the other Hard Drive

A few days before that incident I had two hd showing up in System preferences (Startup Disk) but now I have only one hd. I used Disk Utility to erase my 2nd hard drive as MS-DOS (FAT) to run Windows 7 and since then, Only one HD is available but on my desktop I still had my second hard drive icon. I tried to re-erase it as Mac OS extended (Journaled) but still doesn't show up in the (Startup Disk) window. By accident in the (Disk Utilty) window, I think I merged the memory of my 2nd hard drive into the first hard drive and now when I try to split it into two partitions, an error message pops up saying '' The target disk is too small for this operation'' . Can someone help me please One HD showing up As you can see I've got 2 memory slots installedBut one HD is available Just under the second ASCBC, I had my other HD but since I merged it, it disappeared, How can I get my other memory slot working ? PLEASE

The top image indicating memory slots has NOTHING to do with your hard drive. That image illustrates the installed RAM. It appears that you have a single hard drive (STORAGE) with a capacity of 250GB on one partition that is full. You only have 16mb of storage left on that hard drive which is dangerously low.

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Can I use the same hard drive to back up my photos and also do Time Machine backups?

I bought a 1T external hard drive today for my MacBookPro with the intentions of backing up my iPhoto library, and then deleting it to make more space on my hard drive.
I also tried and failed to install Time Capsule because my Verizon modem won't let Time Capsule run with it unless I use Time Capsule as my wireless.
That said, I want to back up my computer, and even though I copied my iPhoto library already, I have plenty of space to do a Time Machine backup as well.
Is this something I can do? Please let me know. After two hours on the phone with Apple only to learn Time Capsule was a waste of money, I'm hoping I don't need to buy another external HD yet…

If you want to use the drive for both TimeMachine and storage, attach the drive and then open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Choose the new hard drive from the left sidebar, and then in the main panel choose Partition.
Choose the number of partitions to be two. Click the first partition and change the size if you do not want the default half of the drive. Name the partition (such as Backups), then accept the default format Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and the partition table as GUID. Click Apply and confirm you want to erase the drive.
Then do the same for the second partition, but of course, give it a different name.
When finished Quit Disk Utility.
Turn ON TimeMachine in System Preferences and direct it to your backup partition.

Can I use the Macbook hard drive in a PC notebook?

I've decided to join the Apple community by getting the unibody Macbook very soon (probably after I see whats new at WWDC). I see that its cheaper to upgrade the hard drive and memory on a 3rd party website but I want to know if the 250gb macbook hard drive will work in a PC notebook? I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 with a Serial ATA connector for the hard drive and I see that the Macbook also uses a Serial ATA hard drive. Just wondering if this technique worked for anyone that tried it out.
Message was edited by: JustinJ198806

Yes, but you will need to reformat the drive for your PC which cannot read/write a Mac formatted drive. There's nothing special about the drives used in Macs. They come from the same manufacturers as any other notebook drive.

How can I use an external hard drive to both back up and free up storage on my macbook?

I've used a hard drive to back up my 2012 Macbook Pro via Time Machine, but I'm not sure how to use it as external storage to move things like video and music off of my Mac to free up memory and then how to move the same things from the hard drive on to other devices like my iPad or iPhone. For instance, I have a ton of movies and would like to store most of them on an external hard drive so that they aren't taking up all of my memory on my Mac, but want to be able to move them easily back onto my phone or iPad. Also, can I use the same hard drive to both back up my computer and use it for external storage? If so, how do I do that?

Always use two drives for this: one for backup; the other for storage. Don't mix the two uses on one drive. There's a greater risk of data lost without that redundancy.
If you plan to backup using Time Machine, then be sure the backup drive's capacity is at least twice that of the drive you are backing up.

I have two hard drives on my mac 10.5.8 power pc and hear the clickking sounds of the first hard drive and think that it may be dying, can I install everything on the other hard drive also and wait for the first drvie to die before i use the other drives

I have two hard drives on my mac 10.5.8 power pc and hear the clickking sounds of the first hard drive and think that it may be dying, can I install everything on the other hard drive also and wait for the first drive to die before i use the other drives? Or, what is the best way to handle this?

I do not know what you are waiting for.
I'd make a backup of your important stuff before cloning the entire disk.
Carbon Copy Cloner will copy your startup drive to an external firewire drive. You can boot from the external drive to verify that you have a good clone. When you upgrade your existing startup drive, you can at any time boot from your external drive and go back to your existing system.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

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?

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.

My iMac suddenly can't read the backup hard drive I've been using for Time Machine. I did NOT just upgrade the OS or anything. The external HD is an OWC Mercury Elite All Pro. It's worked fine since I got the iMac 4 years ago.`

My iMac suddenly can't read the backup hard drive I've been using for Time Machine. I tried unplugging the cord that connects the HD to the iMac and plugging it back in, but I still get "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" below which are buttons for Initialize, Ignore and Eject. I was using a cord that went from larger square plug to larger square plug. So then I tried one that went from smaller square plug to what I think is USB (thin rectangular plug) of the sort that connects the keyboard and mouse. It's the type that my printers and scanners use to connect to the iMac. I did NOT just upgrade the OS or anything. The external HD is an OWC Mercury Elite All Pro. It's worked fine since I got the iMac 4 years ago. What else can I try before just trying to initialize and

Thanks, Michael! I do hear it at times spooling up and running. Just after I bumped the thread I looked for troubleshooting for this drive online and found the manual which suggested using Disk Utility which I've seen before accidentally (if I hit Command Shift U instead of Shift U to type "Unit" on a new folder for a student's homework ) but had never really noticed. Disk Utility does see it and also a sub-something (directory?) which might be the Time Machine archives on the disk, called disk1s2), sort of the way that my iMac's hard drive shows up as 640.14 GB Nitachi HDT7... and has a sub-something titled DB iMac, which is what I named my iMac's hard drive.
Anyway the owner's manual just shows the image under the formatting section, not the troubleshooting section, but as soon as I saw it in the manual I remembered seeing it accidentally a few times, went to it, and am now verifying the disk. Right now it's telling me that it will take 2 hours to complete the verification, so I guess I have a bigt of a wait. :-)
Does that fact that Disk Utilities can see it mean it's not failed, or just that it hasn't completely failed?
I can see the virtue in having multiple redundant backups, or at least two backups. What do you suggest? Two external hard drives? I had this one linked by ethernet, and but I also have a cord that could link it by USB (like a printer), so if this one is reparable I could get a second one and link it by USB. If this one is not reparable I could get two and do the same thing. I do have an Airport so I suppose it's possible to get some sort of Wi-Fi hard drive (my new printer/scanner uses only the network and not a cable, although it has a cable that I used for the initial installation), but I'd suspect a Wi-Fi hard drive might have a higher price.
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.

Can you unplug the external hard drive you are using for time machine

can you unplug the external hard drive you are using for time machine and then plug it back in and it work normals because i have a mac book and don't want to always be carrieing the external hard drive every where i go so can you ?

Yes, that will work fine. It will back up normally once you plug it in again. I do this with my MacBook.

Can i use my ext hard drive USB 2 on the the new macbook pro laptops with a USB3

can i use my ext hard drive USB 2 on the the new macbook pro laptops with a USB3

stephan ach wrote:
but i read that there are lots of problems with the new macbook pro. i have all my data on ext. la cie hard drive. i wont have a problem reading them?
What problems specifically? If you have a problem you should start your own thread and explain the problem in detail.
External USB devices including hard drives and DVD work fine on the new Macbook Pros.

IMAC 24" screen went dead. Can I buy a mac compatible monitor and still use the IMAC hard drive?

IMAC 24" screen went dead. Can I buy a mac compatible monitor and still use the IMAC hard drive - which is still working? I took it to the Apple store and they quoted $500+to replace the monitor. No help as usual. Can I buy a MAC compatible monitor ($189) and use it as a primary monitor? Can I set it up if the screen on the IMAC is dead? Any other solutions?

The only negative to not having the original drive will be the work needed to reinstall all the apps and reconfigure to your liking. You will also have to decide whether to stay on Lion (which you should update to 10.7.4, BTW) or bite the bullet and take a leap of faith on Mountain Lion.
In either case, to simplify matters you would do well to concoct a Lion or ML bootable installer on a USB stick. In either case, you need to get the corresponding installer downloaded onto the hard drive and, instead of running it to execute the install, extract the coveted InstallESD.dmg image from which you construct the bootable installer. See here for details: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17782820#17782820 The procedure applies the same to both of the latest cat flavors.

New iMac. Flash drive is primary for OS and apps. I want to use my HD 2 (1 TB hard drive) for my bulky photo and music files. Can I direct iPhoto and iTunes to use the larger hard drive as the primary target when importing?

New iMac. Flash drive is primary for OS and apps. I want to use my HD 2 (1 TB hard drive) for my bulky photo and music files. Can I direct iPhoto and iTunes to use the larger hard drive as the primary target when importing?

Yes. Unfortunately, I don't know the specifics because I don't use iPhoto anymore and I completely copied over 15 years of MP3 files recently when I installed 10.7. Needless to say, I have not opened iTunes since and probably never will again - not because of iTunes but because of my stupidity. I did have some of the files backed up but I hadn't backed up in a while.......anyway....
When I imported my CD's, I had them go directly to my external firewire. I can't remember exactly how to set it, but in the preference section of iTunes you can specify an import destination to any drive that's available to your machine. I did this with iPhoto as well way back at one point when I was using Tiger, but I don't remember the specifics on that either. I can't imagine they would have discontinued support for that feature since then.
Sorry I couldn't help more.

Can I use one external hard drive for 3 of my Macs?

I have a 2007 white MacBook, a 2011 MacBook Pro, and a 2013 MacBook Air.
I want to be able to transfer all of my precious family photos off of my MacBook and Macbook Pro onto an external hard drive and then wipe those computers clean, and then I want to be able to backup and wipe clean my Macbook Air so that I can update it to Mavericks.
Can I use one external hard drive to do this for three of my Macs? Will it be compatible with all of them? And will I still be able to use the hard drive with my Air once it is updated to Mavericks?
Which hard drive do you recommend?

1. Yes. Note that anything you want to keep should be on at least two drives in case one of them fails.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
(110959)

How can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory?

i don't know if this question has been asked before: how can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory? just like itunes all my song are save on my external hard drive. make sense?

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Can I disconnect the External Hard Drive?

Can I remove the external hard drive after using Time Machine to back up my information? I am going to use Boot Camp but I want to be sure my memory has been properly backed up. Also, if it works I was going to clear the external hard drive and use it with the Windows so I have memory for games and videos. Can I do this or is the external Hard drive now Mac only?

Mac Gamer wrote:
Can I remove the external hard drive after using Time Machine to back up my information?
Yes. Just make sure you eject the drive first (drag its icon to the Trash.)
I am going to use Boot Camp but I want to be sure my memory has been properly backed up.
I think you mean files, right? Memory and hard drive space are not the same thing.
Also, if it works I was going to clear the external hard drive and use it with the Windows so I have memory for games and videos. Can I do this or is the external Hard drive now Mac only?
By "clear", you mean erase it and reformat it for Windows? Sure you can do that. Again, try not to confuse hard drive space with memory.

Can you use a external hard drive to keep all your iTunes info on it

Can you use a external hard drive to keep all your iTunes info on it

Yes.
The easiest way is to copy the whole iTunes folder out to the external drive, then press and hold down shift as you click the icon to start iTunes. Keep holding shift until asked to "Create or choose a library". Choose the library on the external drive.
tt2

Can't use the other Hard Drive

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