Drive Storage and longevity question

I LOVE my MAC PRO and am setting up some new drives and have a simple question:
I have 1TB drive that houses all my most valuable work that I keep in an internal drive bay. I have a secondary 1TB drive that I intend to mirror the first drive. I can't use RAID in my Mac due to a current Pro Tools limitation. I use SuperDuper to image my drives.
Would it be wise to just put the second drive into a second drive bay for easy mirroring or would external Firewire be better as far as longevity goes?
I'm just worried that if they are both spinning and one fails, the second might fail at nearly the same time and I'd be screwed.
External drive would be more of a pain in the arse to do my auto-backs, but it would allow me to turn the drive off while not doing weekly backups.
What do you guys think? Thank you!
Also is it more wise to do compressed image type backups, or uncompressed backups that I could access the files immediately with?

Right, if it's not in 3 places it doesn't exist and yes I'm on a nice UPS system. I noticed my whole rig got much more stable after pure sinewave output upgrade too.
So mirrored copies copy bad data. What method/software would you use or recommend?
I was thinking about multiple compressed backups with different dates so if one goes bad I would revert days back.
What eSata case do you use/recommend? I have a Venus eSata drive but haven't tried it yet, I couldnt get it to connect. Are there different eSata cables different from internal SATA connectors?
Thanks much for your time and help.

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Secondary drive storage and retrival

Hello, I've attempted to save music (and itunes) on a recently installed drive. After I copy everything from 10GBprimary to 2ndary drive I erase files and free up space on primary drive. This erases everything copied onto 2ndary as well. apple tech explained to me that what I should do is copy and paste data from one drive to another and not simply drag folder over, that didn't work? Then I was told the 2ndary drive needs operating sys. to run itunes and also that partitioning would combine both drives? After some research and another phone conversation with Apple tech this was contradicted? At this point I'm confused and frustrated. what do to do? I just want to free up primary drive of music (and itunes) and store it on 2ndary drive? is this possible? Thank you. jp
g4agpsawtooth Mac OS X (10.4.6) upgrade 1.6 prcssr/mem, max/2nd drive 120 GB

Hi, jpok, and welcome to the Discussions!
Here's a workable approach to moving and maintaining your iTunes Music on another drive:
From your Home Folder, navigate to the Music Folder, the iTunes folder, and then to the iTunes Music Folder. Drag or copy/paste this folder to your other drive, which will copy it there. (Don't command drag to move it without copying, it's risky.) Leave the iTunes Library and its xml file right where they are in the iTunes folder. After the copy is completed, drag your original iTunes Folder to your desktop for temporary safekeeping.
Next, launch iTunes. From the iTunes Menubar, choose Preferences... , which will bring up a popup window. Click on the Advanced icon in the window's toolbar. Select the "General" tab there, and in the section that says iTunes Music folder location, check the two boxes there and then click on the "Change..." button. In the window that appears, navigate to your other drive, find and highlight the iTunes Music Folder there and click "Choose". Your iTunes music should now be completely accessible from iTunes on the primary drive. Moreover, any music files added to iTunes will automatically be placed in the iTunes Music folder on the second drive, rather than your primary drive.
Quit and relaunch iTunes and check the results, insuring that all went well. Highlight one of the songs in the iTunes window, go to the Menubar and select File>Show Song File. Notice that the song file is now referenced to the second drive. When you're satisfied, drag the original iTunes Music folder that you dragged to your desktop into the trash, emptying the trash. You're done. Enjoy!
If you have any questions or concerns, please post back.
Gary
ps: Have you considered moving your entire startup volume to the 120GB drive? It's easily done by cloning it there. If you're interested, post back.

Photo storage and delete questions

Hello there,
I have photoshop cs51 and bridge. I also have a new version of lightroom (I tried but was unable to download and use the creative cloud versions so had to do separate). My versions of PS and bridge will not open raw, so i'm using 90% LR and only bringing photos into PS when I need that little extra. I'm fine doing it that way. I'm having a huge issue with photo storage and have some questions I'm hoping someone can answer. Obviosly I'm not very technical, so simple answers work best.
I had LR for months before PS and bridge. Bridge has imported many of my photos. If I delete them from bridge, will they be deleted from my computer, or only bridge? Would it be possible for me to delete the bridge program, as I don't use it?
My one year old Mac is already full and running out of storage. I've moved my LR catalogues over to a portable HD. It's my understanding that it 'removes' those photos....but keeps a thumbnail in LR for me to see. I can only access the photos when they portable HD is connected to my Mac. However, there is still SO much space being taken up by my photo's. I'm not sure why. Should I remove the thumnails from LR? Do they still take up a lot of space?
I have been unable to load new photo's due to this issue. Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

Bridge does not, like Lightroom, import photos. If you delete an image in Bridge, you delete it from your computer. I don't think you can uninstall Bridge, it's probably part of the Photoshop install.
You should move your photos to the external HD, not the LR catalogs. The catalogs don't take up much space, your photos do. (And, btw, there's no need to have several catalogs, one is usally enough.) But you can leave your catalogs on the external HD if you like.
When you move you photos to the external HD, make sure to keep the original folder structure. If you have a parent folder containing all your photos, the move will be easier. LR will put a question mark on all your files and folder. If you have a parent folder, then right click it in LR, and direct LR to the new location on the external HD.

Floppy drive problem and memory question!!!!!!!!!

hi
i have a bit of a problem i cant get windows to allow my floppy drive to work, everything else works fine, the drive works and has been tested elsewhere, when i click on it in windows it say floppy drive needs formating and sometimes says there is no disk in there when the disk i have put in fully works and is full tested, please advise,
secondly i have 2*512 kingston pc3200 value ram 3-3-3 , i am currently running them and they are working fine and are very fast but when i do benchmarks it says they are running in single channel, just need to know if they are suppoused to be like that or can i get them to run in dual channel , and if so what will the diffrence be?
i would really appreciate if you could help me with these question please e-mail me at [email protected] if you wish to send me info or ask me any quetions, cheers

Hi
Floppy drive. Is the Floppy seek enabled in advanced bios features. Is the floppy set as a Boot Device. Is the floppy controller enabled in integrated peripherals, not on auto, but enabled.
Does your floppy cable have a twisted wire in it ? Some older floppy drives have jumpers to set them to either Flp1 to Flp2. Also if cable does not have twisted pair, you might need to set floppy swap as well.
This CPU and Mobo use single channel Ram by default, so no loss in speed.
cheers
jocko

Using Time Capsule for Backup Drives, Storage, and an iTunes Server?

I have a 500 GB Time Capsule to accompany my Macbook. The Time Capsule connects to my household's existing wifi network and is not connected by a cord to my computer. I went through a great deal of difficulty setting it up, but now it's time to start using it. I just canceled my off-site backup service, so I really need and appreciate your help and advice.
I want my Time Capsule to perform a few different tasks:
1) Time Machine backups for TWO different user accounts on my Macbook
2) Additional file storage
3) iTunes server
Is this possible? If so, how would I accomplish it?

1) Time Machine backups for TWO different user accounts on my Macbook
Time Machine backs up the ENTIRE hard drive. It is not user dependent.
2) Additional file storage
Yes
3) iTunes server
You can use it to store your iTunes library. However iTunes will need to run on your MacBook to play the music.

Drive partitioning and recovery question

My laptop is suffering some performance issues, and general cleanup doesn't seem to be doing much, so I was thinking of going through the recovery to give the laptop a fresh start.
The only thing is currently my DVD drive doesn't seem to be working, so backing stuff up is awkward, to put it mildly.
If I create a new partition of the HDD to store some of the files I want to keep, will the recovery process delete this? Or does it just get rid of the stuff on the C drive?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
Which ever way, you need to backup your files/data to elsewhere, not on the SAME physical HDD.
Good luck.
BH
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Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

External drive storage and Time Machine backup.

I don't want to keep photos on my hard drive anymore as they take up too much disk space.
1. Can the "Pictures" directory that exists on all Macs be assigned a new location on an external drive? ie, I save photos to the "Pictures" directory and they automatically go to the external drive.
2. If I store all my photographs on an external drive can I have Time Machine back them up to another external drive I currently use for backing up my HD? If so, how do I set this up in Time Machine?
Merci buckets!

werdup wrote:
2. If I store all my photographs on an external drive can I have Time Machine back them up to another external drive I currently use for backing up my HD?
Yes, as long as it's formatted for a Mac, and you tell Time Machine to stop excluding it (externals are excluded by default).
If so, how do I set this up in Time Machine?
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations.

ICloud storage and backup question

According to the most answers that I have been searched here in iCloud ,I found out that iCloud didn't back up all the photos on my photos stream (which I couldnt restore them later -_-") but pictures will be keep in iCloud photos stream just for only 30days Then will be deleted forever. As I experienced updating iOS recently,my phone was cracked during upgrading and I have to restore everything in my iPhone as a default factory setting. once I backup my photos from iCloud,I got only photos that I clicked back-up manually since 2012 :"( and all my new photos were not appeared forever. In this case,that iCloud didn't keep those photos,why my iCloud storage is showing full?? Any idea...pls advice..

Your iCloud backup only includes photos (and videos) in your camera roll. It doesn't included any photo stream photos. You are correct that photo stream photos only remain in iCloud for 30 days. If you have photo stream photos that are not in your camera roll that you want included in your iCloud backup, you have to save them to your camera roll before performing the backup.
Zushee wrote:
As I experienced updating iOS recently,my phone was cracked during upgrading and I have to restore everything in my iPhone as a default factory setting. once I backup my photos from iCloud,I got only photos that I clicked back-up manually since 2012 :"( and all my new photos were not appeared forever. In this case,that iCloud didn't keep those photos,why my iCloud storage is showing full?? Any idea...pls advice..
Sorry but I don't understand what you're asking here. If your question is why is your iCloud storage full, you can find out by going to Settings>iCloud>Storage & Backup>Manage Storage to find out what is using your iCloud space.

Hard drive saga and noise question

Sep '08 I upgraded my MBP's 250GB harddrive to a Samsung 500GB.
Mar '09 it failed.
I replaced it with an Hitachi 500GB.
I also got a warranty replacement from Samsung, which I held onto as a spare.
Oct '09 the Hitachi failed.
I swapped it out for the spare Samsung, which was bad from the start. System hangs, failure to wake and occasional failure to boot.
Meanwhile, I've received a warranty replacement from Hitachi, which I installed this week.
Hurray, everything works great and better than since the machine was new.
Except......the drive clicks. Every few seconds, irregularly, and louder than a hard keystroke....VERY loud, shockingly loud.
I know this might be a dumb question, but should I swap it out AGAIN, for a 5th time??? I expect warranty replacements are often refurbished units. So, I would buy another brand new one. No idea what brand now. I'm ridiculously disappointed in the quality of both of these. And really, really disappointed that both my warranty replacements appear to be duds too.
I just want someone to tell me a very loud click is harmless and not to worry. So I don't have to buy another drive and spend another 12 hours installing, restoring, configuring and backing up.

I'd be concerned about such a loud click from a hard drive, it's bound to have some long term physical impact never mind the annoyance factor ...
I'd recommend the Seagate 500GB 7200 drive, the one in here has been excellent since I upgraded.

Hard drive and FCP question

I got lots of short questions and a semi bigger one.
I plan on editing HD and standard definition video with my iMac using FCP. My hard drive is 130 gig and I need a bigger one. My current fire wire ports on my iMac are both 400mb/sec and that is too slow for HD and I was told I cannot get that upgraded. The guy at an apple store told me iMac's use lap top hard drives and there is no big improvement from my current 130 gig.
I looked my hard drive up and I believe it is actually a desktop hard drive if I'm not mistaken. The model number is ST3160812AS. So does that mean I can get a desk top hard drive upgrade? If so I was looking at the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 750g 7200 rpm. Is that a good choice?
How do you upgrade to a new hard drive anyway? Who installs it? Me or can I get a professional to do it for me for a small fee? How do I get all the current data on my hard drive on to the new one?
Where I usually do most of my editing the computers have two hard drives. One to hold the footage and transfer the data to the other one which is actually doing the editing. My film teacher says this is the best thing to do, but obviously I can't do that since two hard drives in my iMac is out of the question and I can't get a fire wire port fast enough to support a hard drive that isn't just for storage. Can that hard drive I was looking at handle doing the two processes on its own? Do I have any other options?
Thanks in advanced.

J D McIninch wrote:
\- The bitrate for HDV high-definition video is *25 Mbps* -- 1/16th the bandwidth of FW400.
\- Max bitrate for AVCHD is *24 Mbps*.
\- DVCPRO100 has the highest bitrate of all the HD video formats at a whopping *100 Mbps*.
The maximum burst speed of FW400 is about 393 MBps \[typo: 393 Mbps\] and sustained
transfer rate it near that.
You shouldn't worry about the transfer rates on FireWire as much as the drives.
Most hard drives are not going to be able to sustain transfer rates of 100 Mbps --
you probably need an array for that. It's moot, however, if you are using consumer-grade
HD (with rates around 25 Mbps).
Very useful info on the video data rates on various formats, JDM -- thanks.
However, I'm a little confused by the disk drive data rates you quoted. It appears that
the numbers you mentioned are actually MBytes/s (MBps) rather than Mbits/s (Mbps).
The OP's current internal HD (ST3160812AS) is a 160GB Seagate 7200.9 family drive
spec'd at 83MBytes/s max sustained throughput. (That applies only to the outermost
tracks, when the drive is nearly empty. It'll be about 40MBytes/s on the inner tracks.
So, when nearly full, the internal drive is about the same speed as a FW400 external.
The 750GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 is slightly faster (ca. 85-90MBytes/s maximum,
when empty, and half of that when nearly full). That's fairly fast as today's large HDs
go, but not quite as fast as the new Seagate 7200.11 family drives (105MBytes/s max)
or WesternDigital's WD7500AAKS (98MBytes/s, max) -- but they're all more than fast
enough to saturate a FW400 link, even when the external drive is nearly full.
BTW, from the spec sheets, I see no indication that any of the four drives mentioned
here are "green." They all have similar power requirements; if anything, the Hitachi
consumes the most power, and the Western Digital the least. (That seems to agree
with tomshardware.com's observation 7K1000 drives run hotter than most others.)
It is nice to see that today's fastest 750GB drives consume no more power than the
best-performing 160GB drives of a few years ago.
vtwiz wrote:
Don't attempt to replace the drive in your iMac. Keept it for the OS and software
and use an external drive for all your video.
Good advice! Regardless of the size of your internal drive, save the data-flogging
for the easily-replaceable external drive.
Looby

What I have learned about the optical drive and my question is:

I am used to burning data to a CD or DVD on the PC and never experienced a problem. With an RW disk, I can simply open the disk and add, delete, format, etc. without any problem. It is fairly easy to make the disk as a Data disk which effectively works identical to any external hard drive storage device in terms of file operation. I would like to do the same thing on my iMac 27, but have learned some of the limitations of my Apple drive program.
1) It will recognize only certain disks. Example: will not recognize a CD-RW, resulting in the following error message: “Medium Write Error” . However, the drive will recognize a CD-R blank disk.
2) When it does work, the disk cannot be made into a Data disk in that it is limited to what it will allow. Example: I cannot delete selected portions of anything stored on it. I cannot format the disk; it can only be erased. If I want to add a file to it, I must go through the entire Burn process of creating a *.dmg file. If I want to modify a file or folder, I have to erase the entire disk, make the file correction and burn it again onto the disk.
3) The erasable disk can only be made if the disk has been checked as “Leave disc appendable”, otherwise it is strictly a read-only disk. The following link should be helpful.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1749.html
4) Apple’s position is apparently that anything burned to a disk should be for archive purposes only.
5) The installation of a 3rd party program such as Roxio is the only way to achieve the ability to have a disk perform as an external hard drive.
My question is this: Can anyone suggest a reasonably prices 3rd party data disk creation program that functions well within the Snow Leopard environment?

My suggestion would be Roxio Toast and, if you are not already doing so, instead of using only media for your backups, you should consider one or more external hard drives for either Time Machine and/or a bootable clone. Both methods automatically update your files while copying them. I have bootable clones and, once or twice a year, I will burn a DVD with extremely important data just to have another copy, but that is not my main backup.

Time Machine, New Mac Mini 2011 Storage Drives, Restoring... questions!

Hi all,
I've currently got a 2011 Mac Mini with a 500GB internal drive, and a 1TB Firewire connected external drive. Backups are done as as single operation to my time capsule.
I've just bought a 250GB SSD and 2TB Hard Drive to fit internally to the Mac, and I'm ready to do the install.
The questions are as follows:
1- Does it matter which way round the drives go inside. Are both interfaces bootable, and when restoring from the time machine backup, can I specify the SSD as the installation drive.
2 - With reference to the above, I guess within the time machine backup there are two sections. 1, my main OS Drive (the 500GB Drive backup) and 2, my external drive backup (the 1TB drive). I presume the recovery console will prompt me to restore the main OS drive, and then when I'm back into OSX I can then perform the restoration of hte other data onto the other internal drive.
Has anyone ever done this, and if so, can they tell me how straightforward it was please?
Really looking forward to more speed, more storage, and less clutter

As far as being bootable, it does not matter which
position the drive is in. An Option key boot method
will get you to the drive the first time and then set
default once booted in OSX.
I would suggest that you get yourself and external
USB case or one of the many USB->SATA adapters
and do the initial system restore to the SSD before install.
This way you can verify that all is well with the restore
of OSX (and the drive itself) before installing in the Mini as
this is a task you REALLY want to do only once.
As to your time machine restore question, I will defer that
to someone else as I don't use time machine and personally
never cared much for it.

Basic question about storage and safety in iMovie '11

A very basic question about storage and safety:
I want to keep a backup of my raw footage on my external hard drive prior to begin working on the movie in iMovie. I want to do this:
1. Upload the digital files from my camcorder to my Desktop *(as opposed to iMovie)*
2. Duplicate that footage/clips.
3. Put the duplicate clips/footage into a folder labeled with the name of that footage (like "Fun At the Dentist" or "Jimmy Learns How to Yodel").
4. Drag the folder with the footage/clips into my external hard drive into a pre-existing folder titled "Backups/duplicates of all of my raw footage/clips." This big granddaddy folder will house all of the child folders of different movies.
5 Then, open up iMovie '11 and import the raw footage/clips from my Desktop rather than from my camcorder.
6. Then I want to make a duplicate of my finished movie and put it in my external hard drive in a "Finished Movies" folder.
I know that the original raw unedited footage will always be in iMovies '11 but I want the original to also exist immediately accessible in my external hard drive.
QUESTION:
Is this viable? Is it wise? (I know it goes an extra unnecessary step, but aside from that.)
*Do you have any precautionary advice?* Should I do something in my iMovies '11 preferences? What?
In earlier years with iMovie '04 or '06 (cannot recall) I made many novice errors and ended up losing audio to my finished movie. I also lost footage.
This time around with iMovie '11 I don't to make such novice, ignorant errors.
Thanks so much for any comments to this question.
-L

Yes I'm sure it will work great for you.
The iFrame format is something Apple has come up with. The reason for its existence is unknown to me so I can only speculate. But it seems to me that Apple "invented" this format in order to have devices such as Ipod/Ipad/Iphone/Ixxx create clips that are editable on consumer hardware such as already mentioned devices but also standard Mac computers, without the need for format conversion.
iMovie converts most input formats during import, which takes a lot of time, and this need for conversion often comes as a surprise to most people new to home video editing.
iFrame has a resolution of 960x540 which is long way from the common standards of 1920x1080 and 1280x720. If your end target is YouTube however, this may not be too bad though. However if you intend to go with YouTube HD, you may find iFrame footage to look wrong since they are effectively upscaled to a higher resolution.
Technically iFrame uses the H.264 algorithm, a smaller frame size (960x540) and a rather low compression scheme. This will result in large files, but the plus side is that the files are ready for editing without the need for any conversion and iMovie will natively edit the files.

I have a Time Capsule with 2tb of storage, and an I-Mac with 500Gb. (which is at capacity) Can I use the Time Capsule to store data in addition to backing up the hard drive?

I have a Time Capsule with 2tb of storage, and an I-Mac with 500Gb. (which is at capacity) Can I use the Time Capsule to store data from my hard drive that I want to access later in addition to backing up the hard drive?

Can I use the Time Capsule to store data from my hard drive that I want to access later in addition to backing up the hard drive?
Yes, but if you move the "original" data on your iMac to the Time Capsule....then the "original" data is now on the Time Capsule disk.
When...not if...the Time Capsule disk has a problem, you have no backups for this data.
Perhaps a much safer plan might be to add an external hard drive attached directly to your iMac. Then, move the data to that drive from the iMac.
Now, Time Machine will back up both your iMac and the external hard drive so you have "originals" on one drive and backups on another. Would that plan work for you?

HT1553 I did the back up as instructed... Installed a larger hard drive and followed the restore instructions... Now I get a white screen with a folder icon and blinking question mark. When trying to set startup with new drive I get a bless tool error...

I did the back up as instructed... Installed a larger hard drive and followed the restore instructions... Now I get a white screen with a folder icon and blinking question mark. When trying to set startup with new drive I get a bless tool error... Help!!

If you have installed a new hard drive , you will need to have formatted it in Disk Utility correctly. This may explain your problem.
Boot into your 10.6 Install disk again at the top menubar > Utilities > select Disk utility and in there select your new hard drive, and select the tab Erase and choose to make the format as Mac OS Extended Journaled. When that is finished look in the main window to make sure that the partition map scheme says GUID Partition Table.
Now go to the Restore tab and reinstall from your backup.

Drive Storage and longevity question

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