Copying one external drive to another

So I have an aging 350gb external drive that is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I want to copy the entire contents to a new external drive that I've been using as my time machine (although not to back up the external drive). It is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled). I've been reading these forums and there doesn't seem to be a easy or straightforward way.
Or is there ? ! Any help as always is appreciated.

AFAIK, there isn't. BTW, why is the TM disk case-sensitive? For TM things, peruse Pondini's TM FAQs.

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Copying time machine backup files from one external drive to another

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to copy the backups performed by Time Machine on one external drive to another external drive, and if so, how? I am using a company drive and will need to return it. It is a 500GB La Cie Drive. I just purchased a 1TB La Cie drive. A straight and simple drag & drop doesn't work. What should I do?
Thanks!!!

azemel wrote:
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to copy the backups performed by Time Machine on one external drive to another external drive, and if so, how?
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html

How do I move an iTunes library from one external drive to another?

I need to move my iTunes library from one external disk to another, because the original disk is about to fail. So, I went into iTunes Perferences --> Advanced, and set the library to a new, empty folder on the new drive.
Nothing changed. I expected all my music to vanish from iTunes, so that I would have to re-import it. However, all the music remained, still on the old disk. At this point, if I were to recreate the library on the new disk, I would have all of my music twice.
Is it possible to move an iTunes library from one external drive to another, or am I stuck with my original choice until I buy a new machine? If I can move it, can one of you clever folks explain how it could be done?

Paul Seymour1 wrote:
However, those are all dealing with old versions of iTunes that still contained the Advanced --> Consolidate Library command which is no longer part of the app. (I'm on iTunes 10.6.1.)
Consolidate is still part of iTunes.
It is in iTunes menu File > Library > Manage library > Consolidate.
The article you linked to is old and it is (and was) a hacky way of doing it.
Just copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to new location, hold Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) when launching iTunes.

Lightroom - how to restore backed up files (not Lightroom catalogue) from one external drive to another?

How to restore backed up files (not lightroom catalogue) from one external drive to another.
I recently backuped my photo files from one external drive to another. The backup (carbon copy cloner) pointed to some corrupt files on the original drive.
I have deleted those files and am finding good copies of them in Time Machine backups.
I want to get rid of the original external drive; use the recent backup as my main external and then back it up onto a brand new drive.
What I am not sure about is how to point lightroom to the backups so it knows to look on the new drive instead of the old drive and all those exclamation marks and question marks go away.
There are close to 60,000 images in numerous folders all with one 'parent folder.'
My best guess is from Lightroom Help - Create and Manage Folders - Locate Missing Folders
Can I point to the one parent folder and all the subfolders will come back?
Is this the process to recover files into lightroom and will there be a problem with so many photos?

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

How to move Startup Disk clone from one external drive to another?

I thought this would be a question easily answered on the WWW and easily found via search engines, but so far no luck, hence this question.
Prior to upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion I followed some very good instructions from Tom Nelson on ask.com (http://macs.about.com/od/backupsarchives/ss/diskbackup.htm) related to using Disk Utility to clone my internal Macintosh HD drive to an external hard drive, making it a bootable drive. I cloned to a very nice LaCie external FW drive that had far more room than that needed for the clone. This drive booted just fine as a startup disk, so mission accomplished:   I have now a bootable clone of my Lion system prior to upgrading to Mountain Lion.
The upgrade to Mountain Lion went well, and now, before I put any additional apps or much additional data on the original internal Macintosh HD drive, I want to use Disk Utility again to clone the drive so I'll have a snapshot of the system right after the upgrade to Mountain Lion.
Questions:
Is there any way to use the same LaCie drive that now holds the Lion startup disk clone to hold the yet-to-be-done Mountain Lion startup disk clone?
If not, how can I move the Lion startup disk clone from the oversized LaCie external drive to a drive more the size of the Lion clone (approx 140G)?   The LaCie drive is far too roomy and nice to have sitting gathering dust for only 140G to be used in an emergency restore.
Thanks in advance for your advice.

Good info Csound1, and thanks.
So my final question (I think): How does one move/copy a startup disk clone from one external drive to another, and still have it bootable on the new external drive?   I'm still considering freeing this LaCie drive up for more dynamic storage and getting another drive for the bootable startup disk clones IF I can move this Lion startup disk clone to a new external drive.
I guess the summary question is:   how does one clone a startup disk clone? As I think about this, and recall the Disk Utility screens, couldn't I simply select the Lion clone on the LaCie FW external drive and do the same operation I did with the original internal Lion drive? Basically the same steps as before but this time the source is the LaCie FW external and the destination is a new external drive?
Thanks again; wonderful forum here with very smart people.

Moving LR files from one external drive to another

How do I move LR image files from one external drive to another external drive?

Move the photos using your operating system and then re-connect in Lightroom following these instructions: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders
Do not use this as an opportunity to re-arrange folders or move photos from folder to folder. Just move the entire "tree" of folders.

HT2518 how do i or can i drag and drop files from one external drive to another ???HOW

how do i drag and drop files from one external drive to another, i cannt get both drives to open up. only one at a time.. i have alot to learn i know but that is where i am at the time...

You posted here so would assume you are also talking about running Windows.
Are the drives NTFS and use on Windows?
Are they Mac HFS formatted?
You likely will need NTFS for OS X in one case. to mount PC and use under Mac OS Lion
MacDrive to mount and WRITE to HFS drives under Windows

How to transfer from one external drive to another?

I am trying to move files from one external drive to another. I can write to both drive from my Mac. When I do a large transfer using Finder, I only get a few files and an error code 50.
I'm using two Seagate drives, one formatted for Mac only and where I'm writing to, and one formatted for PC and Mac. I have written and read successfully to both drives.

I moved some movies and some seldom listened music (coped the files) into a folder on the Lacie drive. Then I reimported them to the main itunes library while holding down "option". This created a link to those files to the external. the files show up in my itunes but cannot be played unless i have the Lacie connected to them.
See this link.
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_split_your_itunes_library_across_multi ple_locations

Copying video files from one external drive to another

Hello! I am very new to Apple and FCP, so please forgive my ignorance. I have looked through the other topics and have not found one that addresses my question, so please forgive me if this has been addressed in the past.
I am working on a project and have all of my video clips saved to a G-Tech G-Raid 320 GB extenal hard drive. I captured much of my footage using "capture now" instead of logging individual clips for various reasons (i.e.: some tape sources did not have timecode), so if I ever have a problem, simply recapturing the footage does not appear to me to be a valid option.
With this weighing heavily on my mind, I thought it would be best to copy the poject to a second G-RAID external hard drive.
However, the G-RAID uses an 800 firewire and my G5 computer only has one such port.
What would be the best way to copy from the one external drive to the other? Will I have to copy the files to my internal hard drive first? And if so, how do I do that? Thanks!!

Crystal,
Please reply to a specific post, not to your orignial one. This keeps the threaded discussion in order.
To see the format for a drive. Open Disk Utility. It is located in your /Applications/Utilities folder.
You should see all your connected drives on the left side of the window. Click on the icon of the drive you want information on. Select the Volume icon, not the Drive icon ( the volume icon is the one under and slightly indented to the right of the drive icon)
Look at the bottom of the window. You'll see an item FORMAT: it should say Mac OS Extended. If it says MS-DOS, you'll need to ERASE the disk. When you do that, you'll have the option of changing the format.
Do not right click and COPY. Simply drag the icon of the folder containing your media files from one disk to the other. It will copy by default.
good luck.
x

Moving from one external drive to another

Hi,
I've had a lot of difficulty having all my music on an external drive. iTunes keeps trying to localize my files on my local disk's music folder.
Anyway, I have all my music on one external drive, which I've just done a complete copy of to another drive. All the files are in the same place.
Is there a way to get iTunes to see all the new files without removing all the songs from my iTunes library and re-adding them from the new drive?
Thanks

I keep all my iTunes content stored on an external drive myself. Over the last few years, I have swapped that drive out a few times for a larger capacity drive with no problems. With iTunes closed, I copied the contents onto the new drive, then ejected the old one. After doing that, I renamed the new drive to have the same drive name/label as the old drive, so to the OS it looked like it was still the same old drive. One that was done, iTunes just treated the new drive as if it was still the old one. One other thing I have done is that I have moved my iTunes library file onto the external drive as well. This will cause iTunes to give me an error message about not being able to open the library if the external drive is not attached for some reason, and therefore it never writes to the internal drive. I haven't tried this myself, but I would think that you could get similar results by using aliases to point the iTunes folders off to the external drive as well.

.DS_store won't let me move files from one external drive to another

I am trying to move some music files from one external harddrive to another. They are both connected to my mac mini.
In the "from" harddrive I have a folder with a bunch of music files in it and it also has a new file in it called DS_store. When I open this folder and select all, it naturally selects all of my music files and this DS_store file. When I try to drag all of this to the "destination" harddrive I open the folder that I want to drag them to which already has some music and it has the DS_store file too, it won't let me drag the files to it   It says something like there is already a DS_store file there. So I tried deleting that file from each external drive and it just reappears.
If I create an empty folder in the destination drive, I can drag all of the files to it. The problem is I want the new files to be in the same folder with the older files.
In addition there are a few other ghost type files that have shown up too.
Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.

If you're copying from a FAT-formatted volume, do as below.
Back up all data.
Select the text on the line below by dragging across it. Don't include the blank space at the end of the line. Only the text should be highlighted.
dot_clean -m
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination 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 page that opens.
Now switch to the Finder and and select the icon of the FAT volume. Drag into the Terminal window. More text will be added to what you entered.
Click in the Terminal window to activate it, then press return.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear. Then quit Terminal and try the copy again.

Can I transfer data from one external drive to another using my MacAir as a platform?

I am trying to transfer about 94 Gigs of data from one external drive (Touro) to another (Seagate) using my Mac Air which only has about 14 Gigs of available space. How best can I accomplish this operation?

Niel - I know that I must be a real dunce on this. I tried opening the additional window on finder and then dragging and dropping from the Touro drive to the other open finder window for the Seagate drive. Again, it bounced back. What is NTFS? And how do I find if either or both of the drives are formatted in that manner?
Again, thanks for you help on this.
JC
PS I just got the info on the Seagate that it is Windows NTFS formatted. What do I do now? Is Paragon something I can download off the Internet? Why, since I formatted the Seagate to run on my Mac Air would there still be a problem? The packaging on the Seagate says it is compatible with Mac OS systems. jc

What if you move events from one external drive to another?

I presently have all my iMovie events on one external drive, and I have some projects on my local iMac drive that use clips from the events on the external drive.
What happens to the projects if I use iMovie to move the events from the current external drive to another external drive? If I open one of the projects, will it ask me where to find the event clips, or will I break all my projects?

In theory, if you do it within iMovie, it should work. However, I would recommend that you test a single event first before moving everything.

Copying files from one external drive to another external drive

I have a powerbook G4 (Mac OS X 10.4.11) with an external drive (WD Element 500GB) for store music and pictures. I am trying to copy the files from this drive to another (backup) drive (a LaCie 250CB). I do not use a backup software; I simply copy the folders\file onto to LeCie drive. For smaller size items I successfully copy\backup the files. However; I have a large 104GB iTunes library that I am trying to copy\backup onto the LeCie. The copying commences and 37GB into the process the copying ceases and the Powerbook freezes. The LaCie was once partitioned, but I reformatted without partitions.
Any ideas on what is wrong or what I can do to back up the 104GB iTune library.

First, I must correct the statement about maximum file size. FAT32 supports files up to 4 GB, minus 1 byte.
First, both drives do not need to be in MS DOS file format. WD Element is unintentionally in the MS DOS.
Then you can ignore any part of my post about NTFS, which is Microsoft's standard drive format for XP, Vista and the upcoming Windows 7. You want to reformat the WD Element drive for Mac OS Extended (HFS+).
Should I reformat the LaCie Drive to MS DOS from the Powerbook, then back up the WD Element?
No, format it as HFS+ so it is in Mac format (which I assume is where it is already), and can handle any size file you throw at it. Once duplicated and verified there, you can then reformat the WD Element drive as HFS+ and duplicate the information back.
In addition, why does my copy and paste work when I backup smaller folders (one is a iTune library of 17GB.
To which drive? If it's going to the LaCie drive, then it works since it's currently formatted for the Mac. It would (should) be impossible to copy a 17 GB file to any FAT32 (MS DOS) drive.
Also, would backup software help in backing up the WD Element? Someone suggested Carbon Copy Cloner.
Carbon Copy Cloner would work just fine. As would the non paid version of SuperDuper! With either, the destination drive must first be formatted as Mac OS Extended. Neither will recognize an MS DOS formatted drive.

Error copying from one external drive to another

Hi - I am trying to transfer three large iMovie files from an external Firewire hard drive to an external USB 2.0 hard drive. I have the USB drive connected to my 1GHz TiBook through a PCMCIA card. I have the Firewire drive connected at the TiBook's Firewire port. When I try to copy the files, I get about 1/4th of the way through and then I get the following error message:
"Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occured. (Error code -1309)."
The three files are about 25GB each, and the problem happens with all of them. I tried copying them altogether and each one individually. I also tried connecting the Firewire drive to the Firewire port on the PCMCIA card. Same problem no matter what I try. I also tried copying my iTunes music folder, which is about 25GB as well, in case file size was an issue. That copied with no problem.
This is driving me nuts. Why won't these particular files copy? What is "error code -1309"? How can I resolve this issue? Any ideas?

I have not yet been able to figure out what the problem is. I have checked the iMovie and other forums, both here and elsewhere on the Web, and I have not come across a single post that relates to this problem. The files I have been trying to copy are still on the external drive, and I have used the drive to store and transfer other files to and from my TiBook with no problems. But those three iMovie files, which will open and play from the external drive, STILL won't copy back onto my hard drive.
The one thought I had involved disk space: Maybe a significant amount (30GB or more) of free space needs to be on the target drive when copying such large files. When I get to a point where I can delete some of the larger files I have been tinkering with, I'll try again.
In the meantime, any insight from anybody into this issue will still be appreciated.

Copying one external drive to another

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