External Drive as a Backup

Hello all,
I have been scanning the threads on this issue and from what I can see most posts on this subject refer to either moving the itunes library or temporarily moving it. I want to use an external drive as a backup only with the ability to be able to use it on another computer should anything happen to my pc and it takes itunes down with it. All I can find in the itunes help is backing up to cd/dvd.
So using my very limited computer knowledge, can I simply copy and paste the library folder into the external drive? Or is that a stupid question?

To use that iTunes folder, hold Shift and launch iTunes.
Select *Choose existing library* and select the *iTunes library.itl* file in the iTunes folder on the external.

Similar Messages

Ca I stop TM from formatting external drive prior to backup?

I bought an external drive to backup my Mac and my Pc. It is formatted as Fat32, acceptable both to Mac and Pc.
When I tried to use Time Machine it asks to format the external drive -- which means it will be formatted for Mac only. Is there a way to force Time Machine to accept Fat32 and proceed with the backup?
If not, is there an easy to check list of files or folders that should be backed up manually?
Thankx. Roxy

You cannot use a FAT32 drive for a Time Machine backup destination. FAT32 doesn't support the required features that let Time Machine store multiple copies of files and directories in the way it does.
You have two basic options.
One is to format the disk as HFS+ (including partitioning the drive to have a separate Mac and a PC partition)
Two is to create a disk image on the FAT drive and use the disk image as your backup destination. As a disk image, the necessary file links work and are hidden from the FAT disk.
At no level, though, will the PC be able to read files directly from the Time Machine backup.

Formatting external drive for storage/backup/video files

Hi,
I just purchased a 500mb My Book Pro external drive for use with my imac duo which runs Windows XP via bootcamp. This computer is shared by three family with very different skills and needs. My dilemma. I want to format the drive so that the imac can be backed up easily three users. It is formated Fat32 and is supplied with Restrospect Express 7.5 backup software. It would be nice to backup the modestly used windows sector, but that's a secondary consideration. My problem is that one user has a lot of larger than 4 gb video files which are too large the Fat 32 format. My notion is to segment the backup drive so that I leave 300 mb in fat 32 to facilitate backup with supplied software, and segment a second 200 gb drive using mac os extended so that the user can manually move her video files for storage/backup on the backup drive. Is there a simpler solution? For example, if I formatted the entire 500gb as mac os extended, could I still run the retrospect backup software? If not, is there a reasonably priced alternative software? And finally, with either Fat32 or Mac OS extended, can I move files from the Windows platform? Would I be better off just biting the bullet and telling my daughter to make her own arrangements to compress and backup her video files or get her own hard drive, thus leaving the backup drive to the simple factory supplied software solution?
G-4 and iMac core duo Mac OS X (10.4.9) use emacs and imacs at work location

Hi,
I just purchased a 500mb My Book Pro external drive
for use with my imac duo which runs Windows XP via
bootcamp. This computer is shared by three family
with very different skills and needs. My dilemma. I
want to format the drive so that the imac can be
backed up easily three users. It is formated Fat32
and is supplied with Restrospect Express 7.5 backup
software. It would be nice to backup the modestly
used windows sector, but that's a secondary
consideration. My problem is that one user has a lot
of larger than 4 gb video files which are too large
the Fat 32 format. My notion is to segment the backup
drive so that I leave 300 mb in fat 32 to facilitate
backup with supplied software, and segment a second
200 gb drive using mac os extended so that the user
can manually move her video files for storage/backup
on the backup drive. Is there a simpler solution? For
example, if I formatted the entire 500gb as mac os
extended, could I still run the retrospect backup
software? If not, is there a reasonably priced
alternative software? And finally, with either Fat32
or Mac OS extended, can I move files from the Windows
platform? Would I be better off just biting the
bullet and telling my daughter to make her own
arrangements to compress and backup her video files
or get her own hard drive, thus leaving the backup
drive to the simple factory supplied software
solution?
G-4 and iMac
core duo Mac OS X (10.4.9) use emacs
and imacs at work location
Hello,
You're indeed in a pickle. If you use Bootcamp and want the HD accessible via the Mac and WinXP, then you don't want to format it as Mac HFS because WInXP wouldn't be able to access it. If you go FAT32 then both WInXP and Mac OS can access it, but you face the dilemma of the 4GB threshold.
If you format as NTFS, then you eliminate the 4GB threshold but then Mac OS cannot access it.
I have a similar dilemma, which is why i use Parallels more than Bootcamp. I have 2 external FW HD's (160GB/250GB), both formatted to Mac HFS. The 160GB i have partitioned as 50GB and 100GB. I have a bootable backup of Mac OS residing on the 100GB partition (yay to SuperDuper!) and some other stuff on the remaining 50GB. The 250GB is exclusive for movies (cough..cough..bittorrent) and for streaming via Orb 2.0 to my Treo. I have WinXP running in Parallels, and Vista Ultimate via Bootcamp. In Parallels, i can access my external HD's via Parallel's Shared Folders but in Vista (Bootcamp) since the HD's are in a non-Windows recognised formatting, they're not accessible (which is a bummer, as i'm loving Win media center).
What you can do is partition the HD the way you're thinking and format (one part Mac HFS and the other NTFS), but my best recommendation is that with the falling prices of HD's nowadays, why not just get a seperate HD do what you want with it. I spied a WD MyBook 500GB USB HD at CompUSA for $129.99 (no mail-in rebate nonsense) and similar good prices at Bestbuy and Newegg.com.
iMac 17" 2GHZ C2Duo 2GB RAM 160GB HD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

External Drive for Storage/Backup?

Ok so I think I'm at the point where it would be a smart idea to back up all my valuable data (as if there was never a smart time to do this?)
Now my question is this: Can an external Hard Disk be used on both my G5 and relatives MacPro at the same time? As in I can dump some files on it from the G5, then plug in into the MacPro and do the same - having seperate storage folders on the Drive for each computers backup?
I've never attempted to do an external drive backup before. I've only ever done it with burning DVDs. So if I'm missing something or this sounds like a silly question please forgive!
Thank you in advance!

I am not too sure you can simultaneously connect one drive to two different machines, in fact I am quite sure you can't and I think that is what you were asking, vs. partitioning it with two partions (easy) and using it on one or the other mac at separate times.
Note by easy I mean it uses the mac partitioning scheme and thus it cannot boot an intel.
As pointed out, there are guides to formating one drive with 2 partitions so it can have two different bootup disks, on PPC and one intel. I would not bother. Seems daunting and if you are unsure of PATA vs. SATA then forget learning that very complex operation.
These drives of adequate (or even quite massive) size don't cost enough to bother. Buy two drives, firewire only and partition one GUID for the intel and the traditional mac format for the other.
And I think you should just buy two already made external (FIREWIRE) drives from LaCie or OWC and not get into buying raw drives, cases and the like and assembling them - you don't save a whole lot if anything, and a lot of these cases are rubbish pure and simple.
Judging by increasingly unhappy posts about the "PC brand" external drives (Maxtor, WD, Iomega) trying to mosey into the mac world I would avoid them like the plague.

Hold entire iTunes library on external drive including iPhone backups

I have successfully moved my iTunes library to an external drive. This allows me to plug the external into any of my Macs, hold Option while launching iTunes, and manage the library. That way, I can use either mac as my home sharing server and can travel with any laptop I'd like.
Now I'd like to incorporate my iOS backups so I don't have to use a single computer to sync my phones and iPads. I travel quite a bit and take different laptops with me. While I'm home I want to use my Macbook Pro. Is it possible to sync my iPhone with any computer as long as I'm running an installation of iTunes from an external hard dirve?

http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/11/iphone-backup-location/ - your iPhone files are backed up at the following location:
in Mac OS X:
~(your home directory)/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Setting up a 1tb (2-500gb) external drive to do backup and file storage

I bought a WD 1tb (uses 2 500 GB drives). I want to use one of the drives for backup and one for storing and working with large video and photo files. How do I set this up? RAID 0 HFS+ or RAID 1. Am confused about how to partition this so that one of the drives is a backup for reliability. Seems like RAID 0 would not allow me to do this and RAID 1 just mirrors everything on both drives.
Help?

alright ... here we go ...
every drive has to be formatted ... whether you do or you buy it that way ...
most likely one is formatted NTFS, and the other FAT32, especially since you can write to one and not the other ...
did you use both with windoze ???
Mac OS X uses HFS+ but can write to FAT32 ...
what you are going to have to do is copy all the data over to your local disk and reformat the externals ... both of them ... using disk utility (in Utilities folder in /Applications - the Erase tab) ...

USB3 ONLY external drive ejecting during backup

This has been discussed and posted in various ways here, but I haven't seen/found a solid solution yet which might be out there.
Has anyone figured out the solution to a USB3 drive ejecting on it's own?
My staff's OWC USB3 external portrable hard drive keeps ejecting during any operation: time machine, Carbon Copy, Lightroom, importing, moving files, etc.
Attached is a screen shot of the warning box that comes up when the drive ejects itself.
COMPUTER:
The machine is a 2012 NON-Retina MBP.
OSX 10.8.2
EXTERNAL DRIVE:
The drive is an OWC Mercury Elite On the Go drive: USB3 only
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MSU37750GB16/
We have used the drive, and cable on my 2011 MBP, OSX 10.7.5 with only USB2 on my machine, and it runs perfectly fine under all conditions.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
Repaired disk permissions
Disk Warrior
Defrag
All Updates for OSX
Re-install OSX
All updates for 2012 MBP
Taken to Apple "Genius" bar twice. They confirm the failures. Initially blamed the drive/enclousure/cable. Then blamed that there were firmware and other updates that would fix it....which they did not.
YET TO ATTEMPT :
Creating a 10.7.5 boot partition on the 2012 MBP and test that.
Trying a powered external drive on the 2012 MPB
Trying a FW800 drive
Any thing else I am missing? Trying to avoid having to send it into Apple Care and be without a needed machine for week+, and concerned that like others, it won't be fixed anyway.
Appreciate your thoughts.

I have something similar on a brand new iMac 27" i7 top of the line model. I bought a USB 3 enclosure from OCW for a 120 gig SSD. I was using it as the cache drive for Photoshop CS6. It began to display the same issues you are describing. I brushed it off and blamed the cheap enclosure I purchased. This all occurred 1 week ago on 1-22-2013.
On Saturday 1-26-2013 I was backing up a sweet sixteen shoot via time machine connected to the USB3 port and the drive ejected mid way of a 70 gig back up. I found that strange because I've never had a problem with that drive or the enclosure it's in. (By the way this is a USB2 enclosure) I tried it 3 more times and the same issue occurred. I figured it was the cable and switched it with another USB cable and this time it worked.
Not thinking much about I assumed the problem was the cable. The next morning I realized I still had one 8 gig compact flash card in my camera and I needed to back that one up. This time I used my USB 3 RAW STEEL UDMA card reader to ingest the work. There were only 20 images on the card. During import the compact flash drive froze on the third image. I had to force quit and redo the import again. It took 3 times before I had no issues importing the images. I could not figure out what the **** was going on until it hit me.
During my trouble shooting I realized the 3 drives were, when they ejected themsleves, connected to the same port in the back of my iMac. The second one closest to the SD card reader port in the back. That was the free port I kept switching to use these different peripherals.
I need to do a little more testing but I'm almost certain something is wrong the the USB3 ports in the back of the new computers. Never had these issues with my late 2009 iMac.
The last thing I want to is haul this machine into Apple after it took me 4 days to get it set up the way I use it for my Photography business.
Disappointed big time!

External drive says "the backup disk is not available"

I am trying to use an external back up drive with time machine on my macbook air. The air is an older model (150G) and the drive is 250G. I used to use this drive on my macbook pro, but then erased it to use on my air. Now I get a message "Time machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available".
What I've done so far:
-I've looked on the drive icon on my desktop and made sure it is empty.
-I ran a disk utility repair.
-I rebooted the computer.
Thanks for anything you can suggest!
-Kate

old 250GB ext. HD, likely dead SATA card, or the HD is kaput
verify on another Mac,
verify on other USB port
see here:
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
Purchase a new ext. 1TB HD, stay away from WD drives.

Can I backup the contents of an external drive to a network location using Time Machine?

I have just installed a Lacie Thunderbolt external drive as I want the speed to access large volumes of photographs. If I configure it as RAID 0 I will need to back up the data on that drive. I have a NAS drive which I already use for Time Machine and which works well. Can Time Machine be configured to include the external drive in the backups to the NAS?

You may find these useful:
Mac Basics
Mac OS X: PC to Mac
PC to Mac Guide - OS X Tips, Tricks & Tutorials

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.

Time Machine won't backup my external drive

I have my iTunes library stored on an external drive and I want Time Machine to back it up.
I have a brand new TM drive. I've been using it without problems to backup my 250Gb iMac. As soon as I add the external drive to the TM backup, it fails. I have other data on this drive that I don't need backed up, so I've only included the sub directory iTunes (by excluding all the others).
I followed a couple of similar threads, but the situations don't seem to apply. I did install Time Machine buddy so I could see the error messages.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Node requires deep traversal:/Volumes/Music:DVDs reason:must scan subdirs|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 151.31 GB requested (including padding), 1.56 TB available
Error: (2) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID path:/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Tori's iMac/2009-11-25-182722.inProgress/3B5DD274-5AB6-44D1-9F1B-561934FB44AD/Music/DV Ds size:37
Stopping backup.
Copied 0 files (0 bytes) from volume Music/DVDs.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
Drives are all formatted OS Extended Journaled
I've run Disk Util on all the drives - no errors.
Any ideas or other things I should try?
If I remove the external drive from the backup, it starts to work again.

The mystery deepens . . .
I tried to replicate the problem. Renamed an empty partition from Misc2 to Misc2/test and copied some docs into it and ran a backup.
Sure enough, the message refers to it as Misc2:test and the deep traversal took almost a minute and a half (one folder, 3 sub-folders, total of about 30 items!), but it ran successfully.
So renamed it again, to Music/DVDs exactly like yours. No deep traversal, and it does call it Music:DVDs in the messages, but it backed-up properly.
Perhaps it was fixed in Snow Leopard? Or just another of TM's many little quirks? Perhaps the phase of the moon?
Edit: Some of your posts say you're on 10.5.3, others 10.6.2. Which is correct?
Message was edited by: Pondini

Share or Backup Project to External Drive

Ok,
I've figured out a solution, and it probably isn't the best. I couldn't really find answers around, so I thought I'd post this to either; a) help or b) get better ideas.
It should be noted that FCPX crashed a couple of times while I tested this on my MBP. I found the FCP manual to be a little lacking on this subject, but I wanted to be able to work with a project on an internal media drive on my Mac Pro, then move it to external drives for sharing & backup purposes. Here's what I came up with:
1. From the media drive root, copy the "Final Cut Events" & "Final Cut Projects" folders to the root of the external drive.
2. If you have published specific motion generators or titles for your project, you will need to copy the "Motion" folder from the Username>Movies>Motion folder to the external drive. . . if you will be using another computer for this project, you will need to add all the relevant files to the new computer's Username>Movies>Motion folders so that everything is accessible from there (as far as I know, FCPX won't recognize them unless they are installed there).
3. Be sure you've copied any external files (i.e. ProRes files stored on your media drive, imported into FCPX, but original media stayed in it's initial location outside the Final Cut Events folder).
This last part is the trickiest because I've found that those clips won't reconnect using "Modify Event References" when you get to the new workstation (or at least it's never worked for me). However, I've found a trick that works great for this:
4. To reconnect media, have FCPX open to a PROJECT TIMELINE with missing media. Open a Finder window to a parent folder containing all folders & files that may contain disconnected media. Do a search for ".mov" and narrow the search to the parent folder by clicking its name at the top. Click the "+" at the top-right and change the Kind from "Any" to "Movie."
5. Drag all the resulting movies from the Finder window (BUT DO NOT LET GO OF THE FILES) and hover them over the timeline. If this search contains some media you don't want in that event, it would add them if you dropped these files. Instead, just hover over your timeline until FCPX appears ready to add the clips, then drag them BACK to the Finder window! Now, when you click on the event in FCPX, you will see the clips reconnected!
6. Repeat steps 4-5 but replace ".mov" and "Movie" with something like "aif" and "Music" for any audio files you have.
I hope that wasn't too confusing. I should have just done a screencast since it probably took me longer to type! Please let me know if anyone has a better solution.
Thanks,
Lawrence

Thanks Andy,
I saw that post, and thought the correct answer listed didn't really cover some of the caveats I have encountered (like the published Motion generators), nor the issue of reconnecting (which hopefully will be an issue resolved soon). I have tried deleting the pref's file on the new machine, but I didn't get great results. So I just thought I'd try to combine my issues more succinctly here.
As far as making a copy of the whole media drive, that's not really what I want either. I would like to be able to move the specific projects to an external drive that backs up my active media drive projects & events, but then be able to also quickly move them to archived drives and delete them from my internal media & media backup drives. As my archives go, I will usually designate drives for clients who do a lot of work.
So for my purposes, I am using Chronosync to synchronize certain folders.
I appreciate your help. Always appreciated all the great support we get from knowledgeable guys like yourself!
Lawrence

Limiting Time Machine backup size onto external drive

I have a 6TB RAID LaCie external drive that I would like to use with Time Machine. My mac has a 1TB HD which is not full. I do not want Time Machine to fill up my external drive with multiple backups. Is there some way to limit how much space Time Machine will use on an external drive? My understanding is that Time Machine will fill up the drive completely, then start overwriting the oldest files.
I do not think that I could partition the drive. But I am not sure how to do that, if it works with mac, and if I can do it now without reformating the drives. I am looking to see if there is a solution on the Time Machine software side.

Try Use Terminal to limit Time Machine sparcebundle size on timecapsule,
should work to limit Time Machine backup size on any NAS or external disk (or not...)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize500000
to return to ilimited
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize
if you want to reclame deleted files space shrink it use
hdiutil resize -size 500g -shrinkonly /Volumes/TimeMachineYOURNAME/YOURNAME.sparsebundle/
Regards

Time Machine Backup across multiple external drives

Hello all-
I have about 1.5 TB of data in my computer (video editing- fills things up fast)... I was wondering if it were possible to tell Time Machine to recognize multiple external drives as the backup volume? I'm not talking about creating cloned backups of my data on different drives, I'm talking about plugging in three 1TB external drives and having Time Machine use them as targets for the backup image.
Thanks

Yes, you can use Disk Utility to create a +Concatenated Raid Set,+ also known as a JBOD (Just a bunch of disks). See the Help for Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
This is kind of the opposite of partitioning: it combines 2 or more disks into a single volume. The three disks won't appear on your desktop or Finder sidebar individually, just the one volume.
I'm not sure that's necessarily the best solution, though. Is all that data on a single internal HD, or do you have, say, OSX, applications, and most of your data on one drive, and media on a second? If so, it might be better to use TM on your main OSX drive, and something else, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! on the media.
That would greatly reduce the time needed for a restore, as you'd only have to restore the drive that failed.
It could also reduce the amount of storage needed, as you might not need (or want) TM's hourly backups of the media files, and keeping all the previous versions. Using another app would allow you to back that data up somewhat less frequently, such as once or twice a day.
But, of course, it all depends on your situation and preferences. As usual, there are many options.

2 TimeMachine backups on 2 partitions of an external drive

Hi,
Last week I bought 2 Macbook Pros running Mavericks. Today I bought a large HDD for backing them up with Time Machine.
The drive was partitioned into two, one partition for each Macbook. Everything went as expected in the process, except that when I backed up the 2nd Macbook, the backup of the first Macbook was erased, even though it was in a separate partition. It looks like one cannot use one external drive for two backups. Is this correct? Or are there indeed ways to back up two Macbooks onto one drive but I haven't learned the right way to do it? I'm new to Mac and also to this board, all help will therefore be very much appreciated.

Thank you, Kappy. You're very likely to be correct and I could have done it wrongly.
I "set the drive up" twice for backup, each time for each backup and this "setting up the drive for backup" must have wiped out the 1st backup already on it. As I said earlier, I'm completely new to all this and I'll have to try again
Cheers,

External Drive as a Backup

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