Encryption for the entire hard drive? (traveling with a MacBook Pro)

Is there a way to encrypt the entire hard drive? Maybe I am being too cautious. But I will traveling overseas for an extended period of time and I am curious to know if there is a way to secure my hard drive by encrypting it. Is there a built-in feature in the latest OS that allows me to do so? And if so, where can I get information on how to do it?
If there is a way to encrypt the entire drive, what are some trade-offs? How does it affect future software installation, software utilization (iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture 2, etc.), and so forth?
Thanks!

You can use FileVault to encrypt your data. Also, in System Preferences > Security, turn on "Use secure virtual memory". There is no reason to encrypt the system or applications.

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Has anyone else been having hard drive issues with 13" MacBook Pro barely a year old?

Has anyone else been having hard drive issues with 13" MacBook Pro barely a year old?

Yes, BUT...
... there are many problems that are really easy to eliminate by replacing the Hard drive, including ones that have nothing to do with actual Drive Hardware failure. These include corrupted install of Mac OS X, its EFI partition, clobbered partition tables, or the appearance of Bad Blocks in a critical area.
Any of these problems can sometimes be eliminated by re-initializing the entire drive and writing Zeroes, and re-installing from scratch. The trouble is, this process takes hours to complete, and is not guaranteed to be successful -- you may still need a new drive after all that effort.
I learned from my Plumber that consumers have no appetite for solutions that might work, and detest return visits for any related problems whatsoever. You or your friend may have had your drive replaced, not because it actually failed, but because the situation was troublesome, and the provider thought you would not tolerate anything less than a crisp, complete fix on the first attempt. And based on the cost of technician time, it may have even been cheaper that way.

Having hard drive problems with 2011 macbook pro

Hey all,
I am having some hard drive issues with a 2011 Macbook Pro running OS X Mavericks.
How it happened: I was browsing the web when suddenly I got the spinny-wheel-of-death. The spinny wheel of death stuck around for much longer than usual, and eventually my computer wouldn't even respond to mouse input (the mouse wouldn't move). Nothing worked, so I did a hard reset of my computer. When I rebooted the machine, it took me into "Recovery Disk Mode".
Here are the diagnostics that I've done: In "Recovery Disk Mode", I have the option to use the Disk Utility, which I have done. My main volume, called "Macintosh HD" is grayed out - and not mountable. When I run "first aid" on it, it is not able to verify the disk because of an "Invalid B-tree node size". It then tells me to repair the disk. I have tried repairing the disk, but it fails - and that is not entirely unexpected because all of the forum posts that I have read up until now say that Disk Utility cannot repair this specific type of error.
3rd party software I have tried: Based on the forum posts that I have read, Disk Warrior is especially capable at fixing this kind of error, so I went to my local computer shop, purchased the software, and booted into it. Disk Warrior did not recognize my drive, and did not even show it in the list of available options.
Other things I have tried: I purchased a Seagate external drive, and I tried to use Disk Utility to copy the contents from my MBP's hard drive over to the external drive, but when I do so, "Disk Utility" tells me that "Recovery partition restores can only be done on GPT partition maps." I have also had it give me another error message where it says it "cannot verify source - error 254".
Additionally, I have seen around the internet that many people try using "fsck" to fix this issue, but I haven't been able to find a good explanation of the proper steps when using "fsck", nor how to specify to the "fsck" program that I want it to fix my "Macintosh HD" volume. I've opened up the terminal, and gone into the "/dev/" folder, but I don't know which item in that folder, or any other folder, would properly lead down the path to my "Macintosh HD" volume. Also, the man pages seem to be of little help here.
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So, now having explained everything I have tried, can y'all give me any advice on how I can recover my drive without completely repartitioning it? Although most of my important data and files are located on cloud services, there are definitely some files on the drive that I don't have backed up, and I would like to recover the drive without losing those files. What suggestions can you give me? Thanks!

Yes, BUT...
... there are many problems that are really easy to eliminate by replacing the Hard drive, including ones that have nothing to do with actual Drive Hardware failure. These include corrupted install of Mac OS X, its EFI partition, clobbered partition tables, or the appearance of Bad Blocks in a critical area.
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I learned from my Plumber that consumers have no appetite for solutions that might work, and detest return visits for any related problems whatsoever. You or your friend may have had your drive replaced, not because it actually failed, but because the situation was troublesome, and the provider thought you would not tolerate anything less than a crisp, complete fix on the first attempt. And based on the cost of technician time, it may have even been cheaper that way.

Is it yet possible to upgrade the internal hard drive on a 13" Macbook Pro with Retina Display?

Hi all,
I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) with a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, a 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory and a 128GB built in flash storage drive.
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Many thanks
Silecta

For direction on how to upgrade SSD, read https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2014+SSD+Rep lacement/27849

Do all external hard drives work with my macbook pro?

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The drive should work fine once you've reformatted it for the Mac, but whatever small portion of the purchase price went to cover the included software will be wasted, because HP will only have included Windoze software with it. And in the unlikely event that you ever need to call HP tech support, they'll be clueless about anything involving a Mac. These are the two reason why DP suggests avoiding drives whose makers don't mention anything about use with Macs.

Hard drive issues with my macbook pro

I have replaced my hard drive twice in 2 months. The beach ball continues to spin and I am concerned that this new hard drive will fail like the others! I am not getting anywhere with Apple support. They continue to tell me it is just the hard drive. Can't believe it anymore. I am ******!!
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Thanks

I want to know if someone else has had this issue?
Why would that matter? If you had it replaced twice in two months, it's highly unusual. If it happens a third time, Apple will probably take a commensurately unusual interest in your Mac. Perhaps they overlooked an underlying cause, such as a damaged cable connecting the drive to the logic board.
Whether it fails again tomorrow or ten years from now, if you value the information it contains, you need a backup strategy. All you need to buy is an external hard disk. They're very inexpensive.
The slow Mail performance you describe may have been a symptom of the disk's impending failure.

Transferring data from external hard drive to new replacement Macbook Pro...

Hello,
Apple have arranged to give me a replacement Macbook Pro due to faults with hardware on the one I am currently using. I will be going to pick up the replacement Macbook Pro tomorrow morning.
As a complete novice I just wanted to check that I have backed up the data from my current laptop onto my Iomega external hard drive properly, as I am slightly nervous about losing all my work and not being able to transfer all my files onto my new Macbook Pro tomorrow.
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Will transferring data from the external hard drive onto my new Macbook Pro be a simple task?
Will I have to reinstall all my software such as Logic and Pro Tools? Also will my preferences and settings for music software be changed?
I'd greatly appreciate any advice.
Thanks,
Deena

Well it's like this.
If your problem on the Mac didn't affect the software or the TimeMachine backup, then restoring from that using SetupAssistant (when you first set up a new Mac it will ask you to restore) should go fine.
HOWEVER, if there are software issues on the Mac that also transferred to the TimeMachine drive, that will only transfer them back onto your new computer.
You can't very easily just pick out the things you want to restore from TimeMachine with, it doesn't give that fine detail of control, and if it's really messed up, it might not restore anything at all.
The golden rule of backups is to maintain two separate and easily accessible hardware copies of your data off the machine at all times.
Since you don't know for sure if the TimeMachine restore is going to work as intended, and your only other source is going to disappear, I'd advise a additional backup of your Music, Documents, Pictures and Movie folders etc., to another regular external drive via regular drag and drop copy methods.
The operating system and programs can all be reinstalled from fresh sources on the new machine, provided you have the AppleID and password, license codes for your programs, email passwords and any other necessary information to re-establish the license on the new machine.
(In some cases licensed software HAS NOT transferred to a new machine with a TimeMachine restore and had to be reinstalled)
Some times you have to contact the developer or "uninstall" the licensed program so it sends a signal to their servers that the program has been removed, else your license code may not work on the new machine.
You might decide the new machine would be better off with a fresh install of your programs that you know are 100% compatible with Lion etc., leaving a lot of older stuff you installed over the years off the new machine, if you restore from TimeMachine, you don't have this option. You pretty much get all the crap along for the ride,
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So I'd advise another hard drive with a copy of just your files, just in case a crap-up occurs
You can restore Lion yourself if it craps up, install programs from fresh sources as you know how to do, use the old license codes and then return your files manually exactly back into their same Music, Pictures, Documents, and Movies (etc, not Library) folders as before.
The key to this manual method is to make sure to use the same user name as before, so all your file location data pathnames retained by program files like iTunes to where the songs are located on the drive, are matched. Once you open these programs and restablish the links in OS X, then you can move them around.
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So use TM if you dare, but prepared to do things manually is my opinion.
TM restores have not been all that reliable or dependable, the more messed up your machine is, the worst the restore seems to be.
Good Luck

I just purchased the Mac Mini Server with the intention of replacing Lion Server with Lion for the first hard drive while installing Windows 7 thru Bootcamp on the second hard drive. Is it possible for me to do this? Thanks.

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I would use Parallels or VMWare and use the second drive to hold the virtual machine. That way the VM only uses the space that it needs and you can still use the remainder of the drive for other things, not to mention that you would not need to reboot to run windows.
Also Time Machine does not back up a boot camp partition.

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The genius bar technicians can check your MBP for possible hardware problems and specific software issues that you may have. The diagnosis will be free. Any extensive repairs will not be free.
If you have minor software problems, you essentially will have to deal with them yourself. Examine these two comprehensive documents for possible problem definition and solutions. If you encounter problems that you are unable to cope with, start a new discussion and there will be persons willing to assist you in solving them.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3521
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3353
Ciao.

I just bought a MBA and I need to move my photos and itunes to an external hard drive (from my old MacBook Pro) because they won't fit on the Air. I got the photos moved fine and I followed an online tutorial to move the necessary files for itunes, but i

I just bought a MBA and I need to move my photos and itunes to an external hard drive (from my old MacBook Pro) because they won't fit on the Air. I got the photos moved fine and I followed an online tutorial to move the necessary files for itunes, but it didn't work. The files copied fine, but when I tell iTunes on the Air to look at the external drive for the library, it doesn't find anything. What I copied was the entire iTunes Media folder. So, how do I move the necessary iTunes files from my old Pro to a external drive so I can access them from my new Air? Whew!

iTunes- How to move the library to an EHD
After you move the library you need to open iTunes by first depressing the OPTION key then launching iTunes. You will be given a choice of which library to use. This can then be made a permanent change, if you wish, in the Advanced section of iTunes preferences.

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Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers. You can purchase replacement discs from Apple.
Or, you can upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion:
Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion or Mountain Lion
You can upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $19.99.
If you sign into the App Store and try to purchase Mountain Lion but the App Store says your computer is not compatible then you may still be able to upgrade to Lion per the following information.
A. Upgrading to Mountain Lion
To upgrade to Mountain Lion you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Mountain Lion is $19.99 plus tax. The file is quite large, over 4 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
     OS X Mountain Lion - System Requirements
       Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
     Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.
     For a complete How-To introduction from Apple see Upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion.
B. Upgrading to Lion
If your computer does not meet the requirements to install Mountain Lion, it may still meet the requirements to install Lion.
You can purchase Lion by contacting Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers. The cost is $19.99 (as it was before) plus tax. It's a download. You will get an email containing a redemption code that you then use at the Mac App Store to download Lion. Save a copy of that installer to your Downloads folder because the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation.
     Lion System Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7,
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I have my itunes stored on my external hard drive of my IMac.
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Can anyone help me out here? Thanks.

I have my itunes stored on my external hard drive of my IMac.
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Can anyone help me out here? Thanks.

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Good luck and you are welcome.
Like I said, I bought one of their inexpensive enclosures and now can use the hard drive just as a source for the files that are on it...my external drives are much larger and faster so I just plug that drive in when I need something from it.
This one is on sale for $16 http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ES2.5BPU2S/

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I am traveling with my macbook pro and I forgot to install final cut express and quicktime pro before I left. How can I in a way download them for free on my laptop from where I am? I need them and don't want naturally to buy them again!!!
Thank you

Assuming you purchased QT Pro, you can always download it again at no extra charge by logging in to your Apple account.
Regarding FCE, there is no way to download & install the product. You need an original FCE install disk and your FCE serial number.
Final Cut Pro X (aka FCPX) can be purchased & downloaded from the App Store.

Is it possible to increase the hard drive capacity on my Macbook Pro?

is it possible to increase the hard drive capacity on my Macbook Pro?

If you feel confident, you can do it yourself.
If not, Apple can do it for the small matter of money.
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Find you Mac on this page it has videos that show you how to replace the disk drive.
After you view the video then you can make your mind up as to which is the correct way for you to go.
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Encryption for the entire hard drive? (traveling with a MacBook Pro)

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