External backup drive question

We have CrashPlan, which I highly recommend, to back up our files. But I don't have a bootable clone.
And I'm about to upgrade to a new Mac OS, so I'm not about to try it without one.
Here's the question (sorry -- it's convoluted):
I need a new printer. No new Brother (my preferred manufacturer) will work with Mac OS 10.6.8. All require OS 7 or later. So I need to upgrade before I can even buy the printer.
But my 500GB hard drive (MBPro 2.2 ghz late 2008, 4 gb RAM, Intel core-duo) is crammed solid with stuff...only about 15GB free .... so I need to get rid of stuff on the drive.
I bought an external drive (1TB). Western Digital 1 TB My Passport Ultra. I was gonna just offload files on it, like photos -- that would clear out an easy 100GB.
But then I thought, "Gee I really should make a boot disk. This computer is long in the tooth and what if the upgrade fails?"
Can I make a bootable disk and also have something separate on the same external drive so I can offload photos and other files and access that when needed?
I have no idea if I can do both on the one external drive. And do I need to do wonky stuff like partitioning?
Any help would be great. A link to a step-by-step would be fantastic.
Thanks in advance!

You can make a bootable clone.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
Commonly Used Backup Methods

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External (Backup) Drive No Longer Recognized After Mavericks

Since installing Mavericks on my iMac (was running Snow Leopard) I can only see partial information from my WD My Book Live external backup drive. Finder lets me see the two partitions but only some of the files on that drive. However, the Disk Utility does not see the external drive at all. This is mostly impacting Time Machine which also does not seem to recognize the external drive at all. I cannot enter Time Machine to access my old backups and cannot create new ones.
I would prefer not to re-format the external drive since it has other files on it that I don't want to lose.
All helpful suggestions appreciated!

lettertosteve
PROBLEM SOLVED! It was as simple as going to the WD (Western Digital) site and downloading a few updates for the My Book Live.
You need to NOT connect any WD MyBook right now under Mavericks, you have a high likelihood of severe data corruption
WD is telling its customers to REMOVE WD SOFTWARE especially on WD MyBook
keep your WD MY BOOK unconnected right now until a resolution unless you have a backup of ALL DATA on your MyBook stored elsewhere
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/bd-p/passport_mac
Bill_S
Community Manager
External Drives for Mac Experiencing Data Loss with Maverick OS (10/30/13)
There are reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple's OS X Mavericks (10.9). Western Digital is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications.
Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications on their systems before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer. WD has removed these software applications from our web site solely as a precaution as we investigate this issue.

How do I delete a folder that I moved to Trash from my external backup drive when a virus was detected? Trash will not delete the folder.

I have tried unsuccessfully to remove a folder from Trash. My anti-virus program (Sophos) detected a virus which had to be manually removed. I tried (unsuccessfully) to find and remove the infected file. I moved the Folder from my external backup drive and placed it in Trash. Now I cannot get Trash to delete the folder. It asks me if I wish to delete "unlocked" or "all" items. Either selection does not delete the folder. I went to change the permissions to "read & write" and unlocked the folder, but it is still there. I tried to "move" the folder from Trash back to the external harddrive but it seems I can only "copy" it and not "move" it. I am afraid that by copying it, I will not have the folder in two locations (Trash & External HD).
Would appreciate any suggestions and guidance on this. I hope that I have explained the problem clearly!
Thank you!

Before deleting it we should know more about this folder and its contents.
If it is invected and is using other apps, or other apps are still using it, then it cannot be deleted in the normal manner.
You might contact Sophos and ask them about it.
If you are using TM or have a backup of your system before the infection occurred, then you can delete the item(s) in Trash, but there is the possiblity of system corruption and the need for a reinstall, if any of these files are necessary for the OS to work properly, even though they are infected.
Sophos may not have been able to remove the infection from inside a file which is why they suggested manual removal.
You might consider downloading and running ClamXav first and see if it can't do better than Sophos.
All that being said, you can always remove the contents of the Trash using the terminal. Usually as administrator, or in some cases as root (su). Unless you are very familiar with the terminal I do not suggest doing this without some study.

Bonjour to find my external backup drive?

I have a Western Digital My Book that is attached to my router. It regularly backs up items from my older Mac.
I want to do the same for my new MacBook Pro but don't know where to begin,
Do I use Bonjour to find my external backup drive?
Thanks.

Hey MMilesGray13
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. The external hard drive is it part of a networked attached storage; it would just show up on the side bar of Finder.
Mac Basics: The Finder
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2470
It would show up in spot number 8
Regards,
-Norm G.

External backup drive connected to airport router giving "... backup disk image ... /.../... is already in use" error.

I just added an external backup drive to my airport router for my desktop and my laptop to use. Initial backups worked, but now I'm getting "... backup disk image ... /.../...MacBook Pro.sparcsbundle is already in use." This message is on laptop even after stopping timemachine on the desktop. The initial backup worked for both machines. Is this a timing problem? It shows the last backup happened earlier this evening, but I'm concerned about the major amount of work I did after that time.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

You can't use that configuration for Time Machine backups, if that's what you're doing.
Mac 101: Time Machine

"Edit in Photoshop" opening Photoshop on external backup drive

When I use the "Edit in Photoshop CC" command in LR 5, it is opening Photoshop CC that is located on an external backup drive (a clone of my boot drive) connected to my computer via USB 3.0.
How do I force LR to open the Photoshop CC on my boot drive?
I'm running OS X Yosemite 10.10.1.

It didn't work because you told iTunes where to store media from this point on, not where the old media are located. Your "library" is more than media the way a city library is more than a pile of books in an empty lot somewhere.
Hopefully you copied the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. If you did, open iTunes and immediately hold down the option (alt) key (shift on Windows) so you get a prompt to select a library, then guide it to the 'iTunes Library.itl' file in the moved iTunes folder. If you didn't then do so or you will have to rebuild the iTunes window structure from scratch.

I have a MacBook Pro and it cannot locate my Western Digital External Backup Drive.

I have a MacBook Pro and it cannot locate my Western Digital External Backup Drive. It used to work prior to Maverick but now it doesnt. Do I need a different cord or what can I do so I can use Time Machine with this drive?

Your problem is really with "Time Machine", backup software included with OS X since version 10.5, not with your Time Capsule router. For more information on Time Machine, check these Web pages:
Time Machine FAQs
Time Machine Troubleshooting

How do I prevent OS X from opening apps on external backup drive?

I have an external backup drive connected to my iMac and powered on 24/7. I do a nightly clone of my boot drive to this backup. I've been having a problem lately where OS X will open an application that is on the external clone of my boot drive instead of the internal boot drive itself. One example of this is when I use Lightroom and choose "Edit in Photoshop", instead of opening Photoshop on my iMac boot drive it opens it on the external clone of the boot drive.
Is there some way I can prevent OS X from "seeing" the applications on the clone, and opening them? Thanks.

Hi,
In System Preferences > Start Up Disk is one device set as the Start Up Disk ?
It may not be clear just looking at the left to right scroll area (depending how many drives and Partitions) but selecting one can often help.
At Start Up the computer looks for a valid Boot Disk.
If it does not seem to be set it is supposed to go through some checks to find out which one to Boot from. Most occasions it will pick the last Drive/partition that it was Booted from. However the order in which the Internal Drives are connected to the system may also pay a part, particularly of the Current required Boot drive is not the original hard drive (Or at least in it's physical place, cable connection-wise).
Also Click on the desktop and open Mac Help (Help Menu in the Finder) and see what that has to say.
11:30 AM Thursday; August 26, 2010
Message was edited by: Ralph Johns (UK)

Weird startup screen from (external) backup drive

Whenever I boot from my external backup drive it starts up with this screen:
http://mysite.verizon.net/oliverlu.lu/startup.png
I don't where it's coming from, it started doing it on its own, how do I get rid of it? tia

there have been a number of reports of such popups coming up after installing snow leopard. i got one myself one the first boot after SL install. but I haven't seen it again and the word from apple was that they are harmless and can be canceled out and then should not come up again. you may want to redo the cloning from scratch (erase the clone completely first). you might get it on the first boot from the clone but see if it goes away after that.

Reinstall All Aps from external backup drive

Hello all,
I tried to install Leopard on my G5 and came across an Error that did not let the installation finish. My issue is that all of my Applications and updates were moved to my backup disk. My external backup drive is bootable and does have all of my Applications and Documents. I would like to totally erase the original internal HD and then reinstall the Apps from the external backup drive. Can this be done?
Now when I about to try a reinstall of Leopard I will need to bring b ack my Applications from my backup disk, I hope with out the difficult of reinstalling all of the Apps and the various updates to the install.
How can I just get back all of my Applications from the backup disk.
Thanks for you thoughts.
DickB

Dick Barrett 2 wrote:
Hello all,
I tried to install Leopard on my G5 and came across an Error that did not let the installation finish. My issue is that all of my Applications and updates were moved to my backup disk. My external backup drive is bootable and does have all of my Applications and Documents. I would like to totally erase the original internal HD and then reinstall the Apps from the external backup drive. Can this be done?
Now when I about to try a reinstall of Leopard I will need to bring b ack my Applications from my backup disk, I hope with out the difficult of reinstalling all of the Apps and the various updates to the install.
How can I just get back all of my Applications from the backup disk.
Thanks for you thoughts.
DickB
If you backup is bootable, then you should be able to move everything properly by using the Leopard migration assistant.
Moving an app directly may cause file/app ownership problems which can be fixed, but it is best to use the migration assistant to move as many apps etc, as possible first.

Reformatting a WD external backup drive.

I have a 20" iMac and use a WD My Book 500GB external backup drive. This drive is now full and won't perform any more backups; I want to reformat the drive to clear everything out and start again but am having problems. I go into: Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilities and then select the external drive - only one icon is showing for this on the LH side of the screen - but instead of 4 or 5 tabs coming up that would allow me to format the drive, all I get showing is the contents of the ext drive, showing in two folders. Anybody any ideas as to how I can get round this problem?? Many thanks for any suggetions.

Hi Barry,
Many thanks for that but I actually found a way of doing it! Going into Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilities didn't bring up the info I needed but I started playing around and found that the way to do it was to hit CMD and the Spacebar which opened Spotlight and then type in: Disk Utility. This took me to a screen that DID contain the info I needed and it was then very simple to erase everything that was on the backup drive!!
Why I couldn't get to this using the former route I don't know but the latter route works!

Backup methods and external hard drive questions

I usually copy files and photos to DVDs but wonder if that's enough and the most efficient method to back up. So I purchased a Seagate 1TB external hard drive. Here are my questions:
- What is the best way to copy all my data to this hard drive?
- Is it necessary to copy everything?
- Is it possible to partition the external hard drive?
- Is it possible to use this hard drive to copy data from more than one computer, for instance, my powerbook and a PC laptop? If so, how?
Any information on this would be so appreciated!

Here are some suggestions for backup:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
Silver Keeper
SuperDuper!
Synchronize Pro! X
Synk Pro
Synk Standard
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
You can partition the drive if you need to, but that will depend upon why you would need to partition the drive.
Personally, I would clone your startup volume to the external drive. You can do this with any of the referenced software as well as by using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can then incrementally update the clone using a backup utility.
It would be possible to backup more than one computer in which case you would need to partition the drive. Backing up a Windows machine, however, would require partitioning the drive using MBR and formatting it FAT32 (MSDOS).
For clarification do you really have a PowerBook (PPC machine) or a MacBook (Intel?)

Thunderbolt / USB3 questions about external backup drives for my new MacBook Pro

I have a new MacBook Pro retina 13". It has two USB3 and two Thunderbolt2 ports.
Until now on my iMac I've kept two backups on two WD USB2 drives. I have never had any problems with any of my WD Passport drives. One for Time Machine and one for CCC (a complete bootable clone incrementally created at 3:30 am every day).
I'd like to get new portable drives for my MBP for these backups going forward and have a few very basic questions, since this is the first time to have a device with a USB3 port, and the first time I even heard about Thunderbolt.
If I get a USB3 drive and need to use it to restore things on my older iMac, which just has USB2, will it generally connect and run with USB2 at a slower speed? Or would I have to get a drive with both USB2 and USB3 ports?
Is Thunderbolt just an Apple thing? Or is it a new standard widely used by peripherals now? I just never heard of it before. Is it faster than USB3?
Is it common for drives to have both Thunderbolt and USB2 connections?
Are there "hubs" for Thunderbolt like there are for USB? Considering the limited number of ports, I'm wondering the best way to connect 2 external drives. My iMac has 4 USB2 ports on the back, and I connect one drive separate to each of those ports, rather than going through a hub.
Is USB3 like USB2 in that if you have even 1 USB2 device (e.g. my Logitech headset) connected to a USB3 hub it will slow down everything on that hub to USB2?
Any recommendations for good, portable backup drives?
Thanks,
Doug

Hi Doug,
Lets see if we can address some of these:
If I get a USB3 drive and need to use it to restore things on my older iMac, which just has USB2, will it generally connect and run with USB2 at a slower speed? Or would I have to get a drive with both USB2 and USB3 ports?
USB3 is "backwards compatible" with USB2 so plugging a USB3 drive into a USB2 port should work, but at USB2 speeds.
Is it common for drives to have both Thunderbolt and USB2 connections?
Drives sold as Thunderbolt often (not always) have USB as well, drives sold as USB never (in my experience) have Thunderbolt connections.
Are there "hubs" for Thunderbolt like there are for USB? Considering the limited number of ports, I'm wondering the best way to connect 2 external drives. My iMac has 4 USB2 ports on the back, and I connect one drive separate to each of those ports, rather than going through a hub.
Yes there are (but don't expect them to be comparable in price to a USB hub) e.g. see here: http://www.belkin.com/uk/p/P-F4U055/
Is Thunderbolt just an Apple thing? Or is it a new standard widely used by peripherals now? I just never heard of it before. Is it faster than USB3?
I'ts an Apple technology (like firewire) and is far from widely used on peripherals. There ARE Thunderbolt drives etc by companies such as LaCie, WD etc but they are still very expensive (3 or 4x the price of an equivalent sized USB drive). For some this was a worthwhile expense since Thunderbolt is many times faster than USB2. But the arrival of USB3 has, in my opinion, changed the landscape. Yes, Thunderbolt is theoretically faster than USB3 (up to twice as fast) but benchmark tests have shown that in real world situations, the speed difference varies from no difference to Thunderbolt being 25 or 30% faster. When you take into account that USB3 drives are more common than Thunderbolt and are only a little more expensive than USB2 drives at present, then it's a "no brainer" as far as I am concerned.
Hope this helps.
Jon

Internal vs External hard drive question???

I have a very basic question about OSX and its treatment of drives...
If I have an external drive (either firewire or SATA using an Express34 card) and I select it, at boot time, as the boot drive, does OSX really treat this drive as if it were the internal drive or is there some underlying difference?
Is there a difference between an external firewire and an external SATA drive (other than the I/O speed)?
What I'm getting at is this. I want the ability, using the 'opt+cmd' (or whatever the key seq is) option, at boot time, to select either the internal drive or an external drive to be "THE" drive, as far as OSX is concerned.
Asuming that both drives have at least a bootable OSX partition, I'd like for the external drive to have OSX AND maybe another partition for maybe Windows or Linux.
At boot time if I select the external drive as the boot drive will it act like the internal drive and allow me to install a BootCamp partition? Can I manuly repartition it (while its a secondary drive usng iPartition perhaps)? Can I install a boot loader that will allow me to select an OS after initially selecting the external drive with the 'opt+cmd' option?
I'm looking for the ability to basicaly select different drives as the "internal" drive, much like you would using the jumper and/or cable selects in a Mac Pro or even a PC based system.
Is this even possible? id it is, is it possible with firewire or express34 card driven SATA drives?
Sorry if this is confusing, I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what i want to do...
Thanks in dvance,
Peter

Yes. One cool thing to do is create a bootable backup on an external drive, and use it for OS/upgrade testing - think Leopard. To me this is one huge advantage over Windows systems. You can back up the hard drive and prove it works. Also allows for faster recovery of not only data, but installed applications and settings. I always create a fresh backup to my external FW drive before going on trips.
MacBook Pro 17" 2.16GHz / 2GB / 120GB Mac OS X (10.4.7)

External Hard Drive Questions

This is more of an opinion question.
I have a MBP with an 80GB hard drive which always seems to be full up. I also have a 250GB hard drive which is nearly full up. The 250GB is not used for backup, i have all my photos and big files on there and none of my files are actually backed up
I was thinking about getting another 500GBish hard drive and using it for more space and also time machine - can it be used for both? Can anyone recommend a good cheap hard drive?
How well does time machine work with laptops? would i have to plug it in every night? does it have a sort of separate trash kept on my computer which is only deleted when i plug in the Mac to the External hard drive. Or is anything i delete without the external hard drive attached deleted forever?
Or, is it worth the hastle and cost to upgrade my MBP internal hard drive?
Thanks very much
Message was edited by: pumpkin person

okay so what would a cheap hard drive from PC World be like - like this Western Digital Elements Desktop 500GB 3.5" - although i imagine that link will probably time out.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/store/pcwpage.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2000027328.1216206856@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjadeejdfdkigc flgceggdhhmdgml.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=638717&categoryoid=-32889
I think i want to stick with Time Machine just because it looks so flash and easy to use really, plus i would have to pay for Super Duper
I dont really feel confident switching the hard drive myself, i tried doing the RAM once which is alot easier and i competly messed it up and had to take it to an apple store. How much would an apple store charge if i asked them to do it?
Would it be okay to have time machine running at the same time as also having separate media on the same hard drive? How much space would time machine take up?
Thanks very much for your replies

External backup drive question

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