Do I need to partition my external (backup) HD?

I have several iMovie folders on my internal HD that I want to remove from my internal HD (80GB) & put on my external HD (200GB). The problem is, I use SuperDuper! to do backups. As you all know, SD! makes the ext. HD, or backup HD, a clone of the int. HD to reflect the current state of the int. HD. All well & good.
But, altho I want to remove the iM folders from the int. HD to free up space on it, I do not want to trash them. With SD!, it seems the only way I can keep the iM folders on the ext. HD is to keep them on the int. HD.
Is there any way to transfer the iM folders to the ext. HD, thus removing them from my int. HD, yet allowing SD! to continue backing up what I do have on the int. HD, minus the iM Folders?
My ext. HD is not partitioned & I hope I don't need to do that.

I haven't bought an external hard drive preinstalled in a factory enclosure since 1987, and the one I bought then (a 45MB drive for $775, and a bargain for its time!) was still working when I threw it away recently because it was just too small to use any more. Since then, I've bought only bare drives and, when I wanted to use one externally, a separate enclosure to mount it in. By buying that way I save money, I get an unambiguous manufacturer's warranty on the drive mechanism, which is the part most likely to fail, and I get to shop around for the enclosure design and features and the bridge chipset I want without being stuck with a drive mechanism of the manufacturer/packager's choice instead of my own. This has generally worked out well for me, with the exception of a Western Digital drive that failed way prematurely — I won't buy a WD drive again. Seagate currently offers the longest drive warranties at five years, and I haven't had any trouble with Seagate drives. Hitachi, Fujitsu and Maxtor are other brands I've used happily; the only Toshiba drive I've had was a laptop drive, and it failed after four years. Online resellers like zipzoomfly.com, newegg.com, buy.com, and sometimes even compusa.com have huge selections of bare drive mechanisms, some of which are always on sale, and they also sell external enclosures.
A word about enclosures: buy a Firewire enclosure with the Oxford 911 bridge chipset, not a USB 2 enclosure. FireWire is faster than USB 2 in real life, it's bootable (USB booting isn't supported in OS X on a PowerPC Mac), and it doesn't have USB gremlins that can play havoc with system sleep and often cause other problems. If you absolutely must share a drive with a PC, get a combination FireWire and USB drive and use USB only to connect to the PC, but be prepared to deal with the annoyances of the FAT32 format, including the inability to make a bootable backup of your Mac hard drive on it.

Similar Messages

HT201250 Do I need to partition my external hard drive if I'm using Time Machine and other storage?

I never used Time Machine before. I was storing select files on my external hard drive as well as using my libraries (IPhoto, ITune, IMovies) directly off of the external hard drive. That hard drive is giving me problems, so I bought a new one. I want to set up Time Machine on this one, but I also want to keep my active libraries on it. Do I need to partition the external hard drive?

You can partition the new drive, just don't make one of the partitons a TimeMachine drive, save a TM for a entire drive with more space than the boot drive as it saves "states" thus requires more room than most people expect.
I highly advise one drive to one drive for backups, and not placing too many backup eggs in one vulnerable hardware basket basically.
Drives are cheap, data is not. Hardware can fail just as often as software, so you need a multiple backup and storage stragedy to protect even against theft and fire.
Most commonly used backup methods

Do I need to partition my external hard drive for a bootable backup

Hi - First, I apologize for asking a question that's already been discussed so much. I did try to read everything I could, but I remain confused. Here is my precise situation:
I have an iMac, and I purchased a year's worth of Carbonite's online backup and breathed a sigh of relief. Then I read some people have problems with Carbonite, and the best advice was to buy an external hard drive, which I did. It just arrived, I plugged it in, and Time Machine backed up my computer on it...so I breathed another sigh of relief.
Then I read that my wonderful new 2T external hard drive isn't good enough, that I should partition it so as to have one backup, and one "bootable backup." Is this really necessary? And what is the difference between a backup, and a bootable backup? If it is necessary, how do I do it? Is it a problem that I've already used it to create a backup on Time Machine?
I use my computer for things like email, Facebook, pictures, eBay, stuff like that. I have no unusual needs. My computer is an iMac OS X 10.6.8.
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

I prefer a clone/bootable backup ovver Time Machine myself.
For TM you need a running OS, then time to restore, with a clone you can boot from that & keep working while doing the other when time is better. And you can test a clone before you need it.
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
You would need to Partition your drive though.
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

I need to restore an external backup on my macbook pro but the "command R" function isn't working at startup. What do I do now?

I've had a bunch of things replaced on my macbook pro, which meant that the hard drive was wiped. I did a full backup on an external hard-drive but now I can't restore it. Apparently I need to press Command and R upon startup (when the grey screen appears) but I've tried this numerous times and nothing happens. Any help would be g

Try restarting holding the option key for the startup manager
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), i7 500GB 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS8.0.2

When you upgrade from Lion to ML, do you need to erase your external backup drive and start over in Time Machine, or does it just automatically pick up from where it stopped with Lion?

This is a 500 GB G-Drive mobile external hard drive that I've been using since I got my MacBook Pro in '09. So I've had it from Leopard through Lion. Should I have been erasing it each time a new operating system comes out and starting over?

No - just continue to use Time Machine as you have always been.
Not only is erasing it unnecessary, doing that would eliminate the only practicable way of undoing an OS X upgrade.

I recently purchase macbook air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my Seagate external backup plus hard drive for time machine back up. How to partition my 1TB Seagate back up plus hard drive for use with mac and windows pc?

Hi All,
I recently purchased 13" Macbook Air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my 1TB Seagate backup plus external hard drive as time machine and my windows 7 pc. Please suggest a method. Thanks in advance for your reply.

I strongly recommend having an external drive dedicated solely for TimeMachine. You could partition the drive but if something goes wrong you risk losing the data on both partitions. Should you decide to go ahead with splitting the drive for two different uses you’ll need to partition the drive either using the Mac’s built in Disk Utility program or Windows utility. I believe the built in Windows disk utility program will destroy the current partition and erase the data that’s on it - I use a third party Windows disk utility program for partitioning and it allows for non-destructive partitioning but warns to back up data first just in case. Apple’s Disk Utility can do non-destructive partitions but I don’t recall every trying to do a non-destructive partition on a disk originally formatted for Windows using it. Again - back up that data just in case.
Finally, your TimeMachine drive should be at least 1.5 times (I prefer 2 times) the size of the data you expect to be backing up a year or two from now. In other words, if you currently are using 50GB of your computer’s drive but expect to begin purchasing Mac software to replace software on your Windows computer and if you expect to be putting photos, music, and other data on it you might expect that two years from now you’ll have 100GB of stuff on the drive. So a 200GB partition is the smallest size you’d want. TM’s backup scheme keeps multiple copies of data as it changes so the extra room is important for this scheme.

Is it possible to use Boot Camp to partition an external hard drive so there is a OSX partition and a Windows partiton? I want to use the external drive for backup only, NOT to load Windows and NOT to use as a boot drive.

I have partitioned the internal hard drive and am running Lion and Win7 Pro on my iMac i5 2.7GHz with 16GB RAM. Can I use Boot Camp to create a Windows partition on an OSX external hard drive to use for backing up both systems to the same HDD? I do NOT want to install OSX Lion or Windows 7 Professional on the external drive. I do NOT want to boot either system from the external drive. The 3TB external drive is for backup only.

Use NTFS for Windows and buy Paragon NTFS for OS X
You can also try Paragon HFS for Windows
As long as you are using for data and backups, you can leave the drive as GPT too.
I would recommend strongly to always have a 2nd bootable Mac OS drive, only need 30GB partition. System maintenance. Though LIon Recovery Mode finally makes it less but not totally unneeded.
And yes you can use Windows to create a partition.
Boot Camp is too broad. Do you want or mean BC Assistant? not needed but probably possible.
MBR has trouble with 3TB drives.

HT4848 Is it possible to partition an external hard drive that is already being used for Time Machine backups without it being erased?

I'm want to use my current external hard drive, which I use for Time Machine Backup, as a recovery disk for Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. From what I have read, the recovery disk assistant will erase all data on the external drive unless it is partitioned. Can I partition my current backup drive without erasing it, even though it is already being used for Time Machine?

It's very simple to test. Turn off your computer. Have your time machine backup plugged in. Hold option and turn it on, keeping option held. Do you see your time machine drive? If so, select it and press enter. You'll end up in recovery. If it works, there you go. Then just click the apple and restart to get back to your regular desktop. Then you'll know for when you're ready to do the deed.
Edit...
I'm not sure if time machine will think it's an entirely different computer, though, when a hard drive changed, making an actual restore not doable. Either way, you could still reinstall mt lion fresh and then just migrate after, skipping the need for SL.

Do I need to partition external drive?

I'm about to format my first external hard drive and am unsure whether I need to partition it as I'm new to this (my experience of backing up is limited to emailing files to my webmail provider's server). I bought the drive primarily for backup in case something catastrophic happens to my Mac but I understand an external drive has other useful functions; question is, are they useful to me?
One friend said I should make the external drive bootable.
Another said I could put my iTunes on it to free up space on my Mac. I have just over 50GB of music (but this is constantly expanding) and 147GB free on the Mac's drive.
Ideally I'd like to back up automatically every night.
All comments welcome, thanks.

Keep it simple. If you have the space just clone the entire internal drive to the external on a regular basis. Most all backup utilities have a scheduler option. You don't need to partition it. If you have a logical volume disc error the other partitions may still work fine. If you have a hard drive failure you can lose all the partitions.
Some uses for multiple partitions: different OS versions, if you want to boot in 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, or boot camp into WinXP or Vista, each of these can reside in it's own separate partition. Software developers (who can't afford multiple machines?) sometimes test software on different OS versions using a multiple boot system.
Some say that disc access times are slightly improved when searching over a smaller partition as opposed to the whole large drive, not sure if this is really true or not, or if the difference is really significant. So you might boot faster from a smaller partition with just the OS on it, and with User files on another partition, or apps might launch faster when read from a smaller partition, again that's just speculation.
(And, not applicable to your situation, but some older computers/OSs require it, for example the old out-of-production Beige Power Macintosh G3 Desktop computers can only boot OS X from the first partition <8GB in size on the built-in ATA bus. Also, OS 9 can not boot from a partition larger than 200GB.)

Partition of external hard drive for backup different computers

I have a macbook(40Gig) and an iBook(80 Gig); I want to make an external hard drive to backup.
1. Is this possible to partition the external drive into two to make a bootable backup for both laptops?
2.If so how big the external drive should be?
Many thanks

1. Is this possible to partition the external drive into two to make a bootable backup for both laptops?
Yes. Set up a partition for each on the external and then clone a bootable copy of your current drive to the appropriate partition.
2.If so how big the external drive should be?
At least 40 + 80 = 100 GB. You're probably going to end up with an even bigger drive. I'd set up partitions to roughly match each of your computer drives in size (so 40 GB and 80 GB), then another for any extra. Having them match size makes it easy when cloning. Don't forget that if you store files on the extra you will also need to back those up on yet another drive.
Cloning And Backup Tools
A bootable clone is an exact copy of your drive which is capable of booting your computer. Making a copy of your computer which is capable of actually starting the computer requires special copying procedures. Some people just back up data files but if you have problems you have to reinstall all your operating system and all your applications. With a bootable clone you just start up from the backup drive and clone back everything.
To copy files from one hard drive to another hard drive you can use:
[CarbonCopy Cloner|http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html] (donationware)
[SuperDuper|http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html] (shareware)
[IBackup|http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/index.html] (free)
The Restore function of Disk Utility included in OS X. [Kappy's directions|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8799711#8799711]
[Tri-Backup (commercial)|http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html] (payware)
[Silverkeeper|http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper> (free) - version 2 has some issues (references: [1|http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html#d12jan2009],
[2|http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html#d13jan2009]) and it is recommended Tiger users stick with 1.1.4.
[Kappy's Backup Software Recommendations|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9065665#906 5665]
[Overview of Mac OS X Backup Programs|http://8help.osu.edu/1247.html]

I am gifting my iMac to my niece and need to wipe the disc for her use. I have an external backup and also (smile) a brand new iMac I'll need to set up.What is the "best" process for ensuring the safety of my information as well as providing a "new" comp

Gang,
I've just purchased a new iMac for myslef and am gifting my "old" iMac to Niece. Original iMac has Snow Leopard upgrade (came with Leopard) as well as Word for Mac -student addition. I also have an external backup drive and use Time Machine as specified.
What are the easy and appropraite steps to provide my niece a "new" iMac (clean and free of my items) as well as protect my info so I can place on my new iMac? Will I also need to de-authorixe audible for iTunes?
Thank you for your help. I know this is probably a very basic procedure but I want to get it correct and ensure I don't harm either iMac.
Best,
pshdawg1

pshdawg1 wrote:
Gang,
I've just purchased a new iMac for myslef and am gifting my "old" iMac to Niece. Original iMac has Snow Leopard upgrade (came with Leopard) as well as Word for Mac -student addition. I also have an external backup drive and use Time Machine as specified.
Well I don't think your niece is going to rob you blind or sell your company secrets to the highest bidder, so a full 7x- 35x government grade overwrite and operating install is likely overkill.
Just likley some personal files, pictures and videos, stuff like that you want to make sure doesn't get seen.
My suggestion is to clean out your user level files manually in each of your Documents, Pictures etc folders, any bookmarks in browsers (reset Safari, clear cache) and emails you don't want carried on.
Then download and run the cleaning aspects of OnyX, followed by a Disk Utility > Erase Free Space option. (in your Applications/Utilities folder)
http://www.titanium.free.fr/
You can create another Admin account in her name/nick and delete the first one with your name and all that.
If you really want to get rid of your name from everywhere in the comptuer, then the only option is a c boot from the installer disk, Disk Utility Erase with Zero (7x or even 35x overwrite) and then resintall OS X and shutdown the machine,
When this is done, OS X boots into the first "Welcome to OS X" video you saw when you first setup the machine. Of course you lose Word as that's not on the installer disk. But LibreOffice is free and much much better.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
pshdawg1 wrote:
Will I also need to de-authorixe audible for iTunes?
Your allowed up to 5 computers with your iTunes content, but you can deauthorize the computer in iTunes so it doesn't take one of your authorizations.
Also before you do anything, make a MANUAL backup of your data to another drive just in case Time Machine/Migration ***. etc doesn't screw the new pooch on you like it's been known to do.
I always c boot off the new installer disk on new machines and Disk Utility Erase with Zero option the entire boot drive then reinstall OS X, it's not that I'm paranoid, it's that drives are not checked for bad sectors at the factory, they just slap OS X on it and off it goes, problems appear later on as people use the drive or can't read the software correctly off the drive.
So I map off the bad sectors ahead of time, so the software is on good sectors and never have a post issue like others do with new machines.
If you ordered a Mac with custom software installed, obiously your going to need to reinstall it after this.

I have new hard drive in macbook pro(08) and have SATA cable with external power source to old hard drive (10.5.8)via. USB port and newer drive(10.6.8) will not recognize older drive..Do I need to partition newer drive with older disk to recover data?

I have new HD 750GB Hybrid in 2008 Macbook Pro 17" w/ Snow Leopard 10.6.8 connected to old Hard drive(250GB that had 10.5.8 on it at time of failure) via SATA cable to USB port with external power source.. Computer not acknowledging old HD at all in Disk Utility or otherwise (that I'm aware of)..Do I need to partition New HD and load old(10.5.8) onto partition to recognize older drive for data recovery? Thanks Wayno08

You do not need to load 10.5.8 onto your new drive in order for a 10.6.8 system to see the contents of a 10.5.8 system.
You might want to check out the hard drive troubleshooting bootk in the downloads section of this web site:
http://scsc-online.com
They also sell a product named Phoenix that can do OS extraction and volume copying/cloning, but to be honest I don't know if it's appropriate in this case.
I would suggest the following:
Open up Terminal.app (under utilities) and type "diskutil list" without the quotes. This is the command line version of Disk Utility. If the external drive doesn't show up at all, then it's likely not connected properly, not getting power, or just plain dead. If it shows up with only a devce name like disk0s16 but no volume it means the drive is seen, the OS just can't make sense of it.
Assuming the drive shows up, I would try to boot off the original installl disks for the system and run Disk Utility from that. I'm assuming the drive will show up. You'll want to select the option to repair the drive and then perform the option to repair the permissions.
If the unit isn't showing up, as per step 1, try a different USB port. More importantly with your unit, try it on another side of the unit if possible. If you read the book I referenced above, some of those units have I/O boards that are separated from the logic board. If the cable from the logic board to the I/O card goes bad or has problems, which isn't all that uncommon, some or all of the ports on the I/O card may appear to be bad as well. If you use a USB port on another side, it would be routing out of a completely different I/O path, so that's a potential problem.
If the drive is only seen with a device name such as disk0s16, it's likely either the index files are corrupt beyond Disk Utility's ability to see them. The only thing that I think would help would be a product named DIsk Warrior, but I can't guarantee that.
Disk Warrior can be found at:
http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
The company that I linked in the first link above also makes a product named Scannerz that does HD and system testing. The Scannerz/Disk Warrior combination make a good pair because the complement each other....Scannerz does what Disk Warriror can't and Disk Warrior does what Scannerz can't. However, at this point I'm not too sure getting a tool like Scannerz would be of much use because it sounds like the damage has already been done.
Let us know what happens.

Hello, I need help to retrieve deleted information to partition an external hard drive. What should I do?

Hello, I need help to retrieve deleted information to partition an external hard drive. What should I do?

I'm not about the question, and giving you the right answer requires me to ask a few more questions.
Do you want to retrieve deleted information for future usage, or to completely delete a partition? The latter is straightforward: simply erase the partition. The former is more complicated: it's very difficult, even using available commercial software, to recover deleted information. If the data is important, you may want to contact a professional like DriveSavers. It won't be cheap.

If i partition an external drive do i need to erase it?

Hi,
I partitioned an external drive without erasing it first.
Do I need to erase it now that it has been partitioned?
I don't think so.

When you partition a drive all data will be lost whether you erase it or not

HT201250 What does it mean to "partition" an external hard drive? Is it something that I want to do?

What does it mean to "partition" the external hard drive? Is it something I want to do? How do I save files from another hard drive to the new one? I have to reformat the old one as it was not set up correctly. The drive I have is Seagate but not specifically for MAC, so I have to format it.. never have done this before. Don't know the jargon. I read that Time Machine will back up automatically but I want to take files from the old drive to the new one. Do I have to take them to the computer first and then to the new drive? I need more memory on my computer. It's way too cluttered and congested. HELP!

Whoa! Slow donw. TRhere's a lot here. I would suggest you buy a good book on computers in general or macs in particular, one is "OSX the missing manual".
What does it mean to "partition" the external hard drive?
It means you take one large drive and make it into more than one volume. This means that it might show up as 2,3 or 4 inde[pendenmt drives. Each one could have, for example, a different operating system on it. Its a good thing to do if you want to use a drive for several purposes
Is it something I want to do?
beats me, you didnt way what you're trying to accomplish. Sorta like sking "should i turn left?" Depends on where you want to go.
How do I save files from another hard drive to the new one?
See advice n book above. Copy them in finder. Copy them in unix. Use a backup or sync utility. No different from Windows in that respect.
I have to reformat the old one as it was not set up correctly. The drive I have is Seagate but not specifically for MAC, so I have to format it.. never have done this before. Don't know the jargon.
Hook it up. Run disk utility. Partition 1 or more partions. GUID map. Format each partition Mac OS extended, Journaled. for more, read book, above. Seriously - we could give you more tips, but you really should learn enough to be comnfident.
I read that Time Machine will back up automatically but I want to take files from the old drive to the new one. Do I have to take them to the computer first and then to the new drive?
I have no idea what you are asking.
I need more memory on my computer. It's way too cluttered and congested. HELP!
What kind of memory and why? RTAM? Hard drive space? Explain. By the time you are done explaining, i suspect you will have ansered your own question.
Good luck,
Have you read the PDF manual for your cmputer?
Have you used a search engine to look for info, for example, in two seconds i got this from google and wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning
Grant

Do I need to partition my external (backup) HD?

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