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.

Similar Messages

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)

Using ATC as an external drive for storage

How can I use my ATC to copy files and photos to to liberate space on my hard drive in my MacBook Pro?

Whoa.
If you move files and photos to the Time Capsule hard drive...and then delete them from your MacBook Pro......the only copy of the files that you will have will be on the Time Capsule.
When....not if...the Time Capsule has a problem, you will lose all of the files and photos.....since you do not have a backup for them.
Surely, you would not want to risk having only copy of your files with no backup, correct?
Add another USB or FireWire drive to the MacBook Pro and move the files there. Then, Time Machine will backup both your Mac and the hard drive.
So, you have "original" files on one drive and "backups" on another. That would be a minimum backup plan. Many of keep extra additonal backups. For example, if my house burns down or is flooded, I have copies of all data on another drive that is offsite.

Aperture use of external drive for storage

I am trying to set up my aperture library on an external shared drive connected to my airport extreme. Aperture will import all of my pictures to this library, but crashes on startup after creating the library.
I have tried this many items.
What am I doing wrong?

I would not expect an Aperture Library to reliably work across a network. Instead keep the Library on the internal hard drive and try using Referenced Masters (From within Aperture, import images from the hard drive folder into Aperture selecting "Store files in their current location."), which I would expect to work across a network.
Good luck!
-Allen Wicks

Partition external drive for time machine

This deals more with Time Machine in general rather than Time Capsule, but this seems like the place to post the question. Is is possible to make Time Machine only use a certain amount of space on your external drive for backups? Basically, I use the same external drive for my backups and for storing other large files and videos. Time Machine always uses up every last bit of spare space, so every time I want to add a new file I have to go in and manually delete an old backup to create space for the new files. Is there a way to allow Time Machine to only use a certain amount of space for backups, say 300GB, and leave the rest of the drive available for my other uses?

Hello coltonbh. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Yes, but you will basically only have two choices to do so:
1) Temporarily remove the TC's internal drive (voiding your waranty); repartition it, and then, reinstall it, or
2) Create a disk image on the TC's internal drive the size you need for file storage. Time Machine backups should leave this image alone. The only problem is that Windows/Linux will not be able to access these disk images ... so this would only work for Mac clients. You would create a disk image using the OS X's Disk Utility, not through the AirPort Utility.

FCPX editing on internal or external drive for small media files with lots of layers and compositing ?

I am upgrading my mid 2012 MBP with an internal SSD. I have16 RAM. OS is Mavericks.
I edit videos using a mix of photos (imported layers via photoshop), short animations, short video clips. I do some very basic stop animation also. So each media file is not heavy (photos, pics, short videos), but I do a lot of layering and compositing in FCPX. I had a lot of delays and freezes with 5400 rpm HDD… so I decided to upgrade to SSD.
Some people have told me to edit it all on my internal SSD as the media files are not big..
Everywhere else on the web I read that all media / libraries should be on an external while I edit them. But most of these contributors are using huge video files, HD, which is not my case.
So – with small media files but lots of editing and effects / animation, should I spend the extra money on a good external 7200 rpm USB3 to edit from ? Or just use external drive for storage and not editing.
Not going for TB as I read there would not be a difference between USB3 and TB on a 7200 rpm external drive (difference is felt when using RAID, r SSD external)
Thanks!

I uses external SSD Thunderbolt for my all my editing stuff. I make small projects and only keeps one library at a time on my external drive. When finished I backup the library to another big external. I would strongly recommend external SSD Thunderbolt such as LaCie Rugged 256 GB or 128 GB. I use this setup with my Mac Pro late 2013. I never edit from internal. You could also go for RAID with 4 disks but that might be an overkill.

I would like to use an external drive for the iPad I just purchased for my husband? How can I accomplish this is there an accessory that would allow me to use a USB

I would like to use an external drive for storage on the ipad I just purchased. How can I do this?

You can't attach drives to any iOS device.
Having said that, there are some drives with built-in wifi routers that a device can connect to. These would behave like a cloud device in which some of your apps might be able to connect.
Try googling to find some brands.

I have the G Drive 1 TB (GEN4 1TB) external drive purchased in 2010. I need to connect to my new MacBook Pro. I'm using the external drive for media storage of my video editing projects. Will a 800fw to thunderbolt adapter cable work?

I have the G Drive 1 TB (GEN4 1TB) external drive purchased in 2010. I need to connect to my new MacBook Pro. I'm using the external drive for media storage of my video editing projects. Will a 800fw to thunderbolt adapter cable work? I understand that using a USB port connection is not fast enough for video editing. I read somewhere the G Drives don't connect well to MacBook Pro.
thanks
larry

I doubt this can be relocated or moved so you might want to just repost in the macbook pro area.
MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os?view=discussions
Can you afford a new Thunderbolt case and cable? any case with FW800 is going to be slow 72MB/sec and less, and any new 1TB drive is capable of 75MB/s minimum up to 125MB/sec.
Thunderbolt storage can of course when setup properly reach 100's of MB higher using multiple drives.
Use what you have for a system backup or for secondary backup storage.
you might be able to take the drive - most cases allow you to open and swap drives - and use this:
G-Technology 1TB G-DRIVE mini High-Speed Portable Hard Drive
or this:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/HB137VC/A/g-technology-4tb-g-raid-professional -high-performance-dual-drive-hard-drive?fnode=5f

Internal versus External drive for Backup/Clone?

Internal versus External drive for Backup?
Suggestions/comments as to the pros and cons of each approach.
Looking at purely doing Clone of main drive.
As a side thought I am noticing topics on issues with mounting drives. Does having the drive internal make this a non-issue?
Thx in advance.
Power MAC G5 Dual 2.0, 30" ACD, RADEON X8000XT card Mac OS X (10.3.9) I also have a IMAC G5

If you use internal and the machine is stolen your backup is lost too.
If it's for backing up for Business use, your insurers may insist on offsite storage, secure offsite storage that is of a backup or they wouldn't pay up.
External is often good too because if you ever sent the machine in for repair and the fault(s) were mis-diagnosed and the engineers wiped the HD, they may wipe your backup too.
That would be very unfortunate. At least with external it could be safe with you. Depending how important your backups are you can also 'Scale' your backup by adding more drives to backup to. So increasin odds of recovery at a later date.
Mark

My 320GB external drive for Time Machine now only has enough capacity to keep a backup of one day. All my other backups are gone. What can I do to fix this situation?

I've been using a 320GB external drive for time machine for the last several years. The backups always worked fine and when necessary I was able to look at & restore older data from the time capsule. Recently, I keep getting the message that a backup cannot be completed and an older backup will be deleted. Usually this wasn't an issue because I still had several months of information on disk. Now a one-time backup takes up 315GB and therefore I only have a backup of the previous day. I don't understand this because I thought that the backup only saves information that has changed and doesn't copy everything everytime. What do I need to do to get my backups to a reasonable size so that I can keep at least 1 month data stored on it.? Please don't tell me I need a larger drive ... that would be too easy.

Get a larger drive for your TM backups.
The recommended size is 3 times what you are backup. So if 315 GB is a backup then you need a 1 TB drive.
Allan

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

HT201250 Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller ext

Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?

50maz wrote:
Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in
Yes, it will do a full backup.
and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?
Only if you want to be able to go back in time to those previous Time Machine backups. When you plug in the new larger external drive, you will only be able to go back as far as the first day you plugged it in and ran the first Time Machine backup on it.

HT3275 I am using an external drive for backup. I am now getting a message that the drive needs a disk repair, but when I run disk repair it just seems to freeze.

I am using an external drive for back up. Yesterday the backup failed and I received a message that the external drive( a passport drive) needed a 'disk repair", when I ran disk repair nothing happened it seemed to freeze. Suggestions? should i simply erase the external drive and start over-my computer is fine.

Get a different drive for backup.
In the meantime, once you are backed up some drive safe, then you can attempt to repair the backup drive using the repair the directory link.

Using Time Capsule and External FW Drive for TM Backups

Wondering if this can be done, or if anyone is successfully doing it.
Here's what I want to do:
Use a 1TB Time Capsule to backup wirelessly and a FW800 external drive for speed in case I need to reinstall. Therefore having 2 backups? I've been down the road of using SD (cloning) and am ready to move on to another backup strategy. Cloning works fine but it dedicates a drive 100% of the time where TM doesn't.
One thing I did with an old 2.5" 80GB HD in an enclosure that I like a lot is put 10.6.2 on it along with Disk Warrior 4.2, Tech Tool Pro, and Drive Genius to use as a startup and repair disk.

D/FW wrote:
Use a 1TB Time Capsule to backup wirelessly and a FW800 external drive for speed in case I need to reinstall. Therefore having 2 backups?
You can do that, but not simultaneously. TM only has one destination a a time; you can back up to the TC, then select the external HD via TM Preferences, then switch back.
I've been down the road of using SD (cloning) and am ready to move on to another backup strategy. Cloning works fine but it dedicates a drive 100% of the time where TM doesn't.
I don't know what you mean by that. I use CarbonCopyCloner (similar to SD) in addition to full TM backups, so I have two separate, independent backups, on two separate drives, and get the advantages of both. You can partition an external drive (but not a Time Capsule), so you could have your clone on one partition, and other things in one or more additional partitions (I do that as well). As long as the "clone" partition is the same size as your internal HD (or at a minimum, at least 15% larger than the amount of data on it), you can use the rest of the space for anything else.
See #5 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum for detailed instructions on setting-up a drive for Time Machine. The same procedure works for setting one up for a clone and other partition(s), too.

Going from xp to windows 7 64 bit using an external drive for music storage

Greetings Techies!
I hope you all are well.
I need to move my iTunes from an XP machine to Windows 7 64 bit. On the XP machine I am using an external drive for music storage and the iTunes database is stored on the internal drive. I am looking for advice on how to transfer all of this over to my new Windows 7 64 bit machine. I know iTunes can be picky about everything and I don’t want to take and chances and loose my playlists or music.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Blessings,
paul

You are right about it being picky. I just upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 and was forced to format my drive. I had all the music backed up, but when I imported it, I have 2 or 3 copies of some songs, art work missing, and have lost my playlists. I hope someone responds to your question, because I could use similar help! Best of luck to ya . . .

External Drive for Storage/Backup?

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