External drive, how to format and partition?

Hey everybody!
I'm about to buy an external drive for my mac. I am reasonably capable on a computer, but I've never done formatting or partitioning so I have two questions:
1) I just want to check that I do not need to buy a mac-formatted drive. A little big of googling told me I could do the formatting myself with Disk Utility, just wanted to double check that that was true.
2) Once I get my external drive, what I want to do is create two partitions within that drive, one for my Time Machine backup and one for random files and movies. I'm not sure how to do that (apparently I might need to pick different formats for each in Disk Utility?) so if anybody could help out that would be brilliant.
Thanks
(if that helps, I have a MacBook Pro with a 512GB hardrive, and I want to buy a 1TB external drive)

Hi,
Here is a link that will help you set up your external drive. http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-an-external-hard-drive-for-use-with-os- x/
You won't need different formats for Time Machine backups and storage space partitions. However, given the size of your hard drive, 500 gb for Time Machine may not be enough. You could buy a separate one for Time Machine, budget permitting.
Check the size of your startup disk, and if it is only 250 gb or less, then 500 gb for Time Machine may be OK, for a while. It will soon fill up, but the older backups will be erased.
Regards.

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Seagate external hard drive -- should I format and partition?

Hi all,
Sorry, three weeks into owning my MacBook Pro, I'm still a newbie.
I got rid of PCs because they just kept grinding to a halt, and so I want to do everything EXACTLY right as I start out in Macworld.
I need to get an external drive for Time Machine and other back-ups. Is it generally accepted by you all that the drive should be formatted (to get rid of whatever Seagate puts on it) and then partitioned along the lines of Answer #5 in the Time Machine FAQ? Is that what most people do -- with good results?
Thank you.

MarkPek wrote:
I need to get an external drive for Time Machine and other back-ups. Is it generally accepted by you all that the drive should be formatted (to get rid of whatever Seagate puts on it) and then partitioned along the lines of Answer #5 in the Time Machine FAQ? Is that what most people do -- with good results?
If the Time Machine FAQ recommends something, I'd do it.
By the way, if you're going to use that drive for Time Machine and "other back-ups", I'd create separate partitions for each of those two uses.

Disk repair failed / should I reformat my drive / how to format and restore

I have a MacBook Pro late 2011 model and upgraded to Yosemite. The performance on my MB is ok, but just out of curiousity I ran a disk verify, and was told I needed to reboot, hold down CMD / R and run disk repair. I did so and the repair failed. I was promoted to backup and reformat/restore.
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If you have extra external HDD, make clone backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, then,
1) boot from external clone backup drive.
2) reformat internal HDD.
3) restore from clone backup drive with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

External drive - how to format?

Hi there
I'm about to buy a macbook after finaly getting fed up with my windows desktop. I'm going to buy a new external hard drive so I can store all my music and videos on it (it'll also make migrating a breeze) so it wont clog up my macbook hard drive, but I want it to be accessable in windows, should I need to take the files anywhere, or if i decide to use boot camp. I think I am going to have to format it it FAT32 format so that its readable and writable to both windows and OSX, can anyone confirm this or suggest something better?
Also, I'm looking at the Western Digital My Book Premium line, with the firewire and usb2 connection. Anyone had any experiences of using these drives?
Thanks very much!

FAT32 is an older file format that was in place with Win98 before we used our computers for video and such that required these large files.
I do not know the ins and outs of it all, but if an individual file is larger than 4GB, FAT32 might read it, but not all of it, or maybe not at all. If you will be working with files of that size, then it is best to avoid FAT32.
Another option is a program like MacDrive. It allows a Windows PC to read and write to HFS volumes. That way you do not have any issues with file size and will never have an issue with your Mac reading those files.
I recommend that Oxford chipset because the others, such a Prolific, have shown to have spotty reliability when it comes to booting Macs. You might be able to see the drive, but mounting it in disk utility might be a problem too. I have yet to hear of a single problem with mounting or booting the Oxford 911 chipset in Macs. I chose it because of the reliability and recommend it to everyone without reservation. I feel the quality is worth it.
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Dead hard drive-how to format and startup with new disk

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Your computer has got Internet Recovery. Use it to restore your backup.
To start in Internet Recovery, hold Command, Option (Alt) and R keys while your computer is starting. Then, open Disk Utility, choose your hard disk at the top of the sidebar, go to Erase tab and erase the disk using "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as format.
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Install software such as Paragon NTFS, or reformat it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT32. Mac OS X 10.6.5 and newer can also read and write exFAT partitions.
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Format External Drive for HFS+ volume and FAT32 volume with Disk Utility

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Thank you Limnos for all your help. Last night I tried again and it worked! I’ not totally sure on what I did right but:
• Both volumes on the new ext. driver were HFS (from my last attempt the other day) so I looked into a simple erase of one partition/volume into a different format, but DU did not offer a way of erasing it into MS-DOS(FAT32). But I think I did a simple HFS erase anyway of the volume I wanted to format to FAT32. There was nothing “in” that volume because this was a new external drive but I figured it could not hurt anything.
• So then, I think I went back to Partition, locked the partition/volume that I wanted to keep in HFS+ for my Mac files, and (re)partitioned the other just erased volume to MS-DOS. I think I did it under the MBR option.
• It worked! Not sure why but my Mac recognized both volumes one as HFS, the other as FAT32. Maybe someone will find this useful some day!!
• Then, I hooked up the drive to my work Dell, the Dell found only the FAT32 drive (as expected), and I executed a short simple easy command I found on ehow.com (search for ‘convert FAT32 to NTFS’) to make that volume NTFS.
Thanks again Limnos and everyone else!

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

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I am having sporadic issues after new hard drive install and recovery using Time Machine. The same sluggish response, start up screen pixelating...If I reinstall Lion will it wipe out other applications? My HD was formatted and partitioned correctly, I ha

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Use the trackpad to scroll, thats what it was designed for. The scroll bars automatically disappear when not being used and will appear if you scroll up or down using the trackpad.
This is a user-to-user forum and most people will post on here if they have problems. You very rarely get people posting to say there update went smooth. The fact is the vast majority of Mountain Lion users will not be experiencing any major problems with the OS, or maybe with apps which are not compatible, but thats hardly Apple's fault if developers don't update their apps.

I backed up my bookmarks to an external drive, rebuilt my system, and now when I try to restore from that file, I get "unsupported file type" How can I restore from this file?

I backed up my bookmarks to an external drive, rebuilt my system, and now when I try to restore from that file, I get "unsupported file type" How can I restore from this file?

Make sure that the backup file with the bookmarks has the correct file extension: .html for a HTML backup and .json for a JSON backup. 
You can check that via the right-click context menu of that file and open the Properties. 
If you are not sure about the file type then you can open the file in Firefox via "File > Open File" 
A JSON backup will show as one long text line without line breaks and a HTML backup as a web page with clickable links. 
A JSON backup starts with: {"title":"","id":1,"dateAdded": 
An HTML backup starts with: <nowiki><!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1></nowiki>
You may need to add quotes ("") around the name to rename the file to the correct file extension.
See also:
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_and_restoring_bookmarks_-_Firefox

Use the default format and partition step to format disk0 partition 1 in multiple disks sutiation

As we know,we need to disable the default format and partition step in ts to let mdt deploy os on C and leave the other partitions stay safe when there is only one disk on pc，and the way of installing operation system is logical drive letter store in a varible.
But what if there are 2 disks on pc，and for a record the disk 0 is always the OS disk,don't need to confirmed this.How can we modify the format and partition step to format only C on disk0 under this condition?then lead the mdt to do the rest deployment
by itself.
Thanks

You are pushing up against the design limits of MDT, and the more complex and/or arbitrary the disk configuration the harder it is for MDT to perform installations.
If you want to maintain the *existing* disk configuration, and just update the OS present, then the recommended course of action is to run MDT from *within* the OS (cscript.exe
\\server\deploymentshare$\scripts\litetouch.vbs), not from WinPE. When you do this, it's called a "refresh" scenario. MDT can capture the user files via USMT, and it knows which
partitions to use, because it's launched from within the OS itself.
Disabling the default Format and Partition step has other unintended consequences.
Keith Garner - Principal Consultant [owner] -
http://DeploymentLive.com

Task Sequence Windows Server 2012 format and partition issue when using MDT2012

Hi all,
Currently I'm working on a task sequence to deploy a Windows Server 2012 image. We've integrated MDT2012 Update 1 in SCCM2012 SP1 and created a default 'Server Task Sequence'. This task sequence deploys the install.wim to a server which has multiple disks
attached.
We've configured multiple format and partition disk steps to create the following partition layout:
Disk 0: 499MB BDEDrive (do not assign drive letter) + 40GB OSDisk
Disk 1: 40GB Programs
Disk 2: 40GB Data
Disk 3: 25GB User
When the task sequence is finished I've noticed the drive letters assigned to the disk are not correct. In some cases the BDEdrive gets drive letter D assigned, sometimes drive letters are assigned starting with E, thus skipping drive
letter D.
The smsts.log files show an error when it's re-assigning drive letters after booting into Windows. Looks like an error in the DiskPartScript.txt.
<![LOG[==============================[ OSDSetupHook.exe ]==============================]LOG]!><time="16:59:40.889-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776"
file="osdsetuphook.cpp:186">
<![LOG[Executing task sequence]LOG]!><time="16:59:40.905-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="osdsetuphook.cpp:279">
<![LOG[Loading the Task Sequencing Environment from "C:\_SMSTaskSequence\TSEnv.dat".]LOG]!><time="16:59:40.920-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776"
file="basesetuphook.cpp:366">
<![LOG[Environment scope successfully created: Global\{51A016B6-F0DE-4752-B97C-54E6F386A912}]LOG]!><time="16:59:40.936-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776"
file="environmentscope.cpp:659">
<![LOG[Environment scope successfully created: Global\{BA3A3900-CA6D-4ac1-8C28-5073AFC22B03}]LOG]!><time="16:59:40.936-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776"
file="environmentscope.cpp:659">
<![LOG[Debug shell is enabled]LOG]!><time="16:59:43.806-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="basesetuphook.cpp:1440">
<![LOG[Successfully enabled debug command shell support.]LOG]!><time="16:59:43.884-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="debugwindow.cpp:156">
<![LOG[Configuring local administrator account]LOG]!><time="16:59:43.884-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="basesetuphook.cpp:1462">
<![LOG[Re-assign all drive letters...]LOG]!><time="16:59:43.884-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="diskutils.cpp:1941">
<![LOG[Executing command line: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\diskpart.exe" /s "C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\DiskPartScript.txt"]LOG]!><time="16:59:43.900-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context=""
type="1" thread="776" file="commandline.cpp:827">
<![LOG[Process completed with exit code 2147942487]LOG]!><time="16:59:50.249-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="1" thread="776" file="commandline.cpp:1123">
<![LOG[Diskpart.exe STDOUT:
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: SRV03
Volume 1 is the selected volume.
DiskPart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point.
The volume you selected is not valid or does not exist.
There is no volume selected.
]LOG]!><time="16:59:50.249-120" date="05-10-2013" component="OSDSetupHook" context="" type="3" thread="776" file="diskutils.cpp:1807">
When I take a look at the generated diskpart_script.log file the volume D gets selected twice, which fails the second time because of the first remove drive letter command.
This is the output in the diskpart_script.log file:
select volume D
remove letter=D
select volume D
remove letter=D
select volume E
remove letter=E
select volume F
remove letter=F
select volume H
remove letter=H
select disk 0
select partition 1
assign
select disk 1
select partition 1
assign
select disk 2
select partition 1
assign
select disk 3
select partition 1
assign
It seems this error is caused by the first 'Format and Partition Disk' step before the 'Use Toolkit Package' step which is part of the default Server Task sequence. When I disable this Format and Partition step and create the partition manually
all looks ok showing no errors in the smsts.log file.
I've solved this by replacing the first 'Format and Partition Disk' step by an Powershell command which formats and partitions the disk.
Anyone seen this behavior?

I have a similar problem when I install windows on some clients. Have you found any explanation for the behavior?

2nd External Drive - how to restore from Time Machine backup?

I have had Time Machine configured to back up my photos and videos on an external drive. My Time Machine backup is a separate drive attached to my MacBook by FireWire. I have Leopard OS. I have in the past successfully retrieved deleted photos from the Time Machine backups using iPhoto.
Now, unfortunately, the external drive with the photos and videos has developed a problem (possibly power-related) so that my MacBook no longer recognizes that drive. Obviously, this means that iPhoto can't find/open that photo library. Which means that iPhoto can't access the backup via Time Machine. Help! The photos must surely be on the Time Machine backup but I can't figure out any way to retrieve them.

callipygia600,
This one's easy. Purchase a new drive to replace the one that went "belly up." Format (erase) it using Mac OS Extended, and give the volume that will be created the exact same name as the bad drive. Navigate into the new (empty) volume in the Finder, then open Time Machine from the Dock.
You should be able to navigate "back in time" and see the backed up contents. Select everything you see, and click "Restore." It will all be restored to your new external drive. The key is to use the same name for the new drive.
In the meantime, your backup can be accessed in the Finder if necessary. Using the Finder, navigate into the "Backups.backupdb" folder on the backup drive, then into the latest backup. You will see one folder named for your startup disk, and another named for your secondary/external volume. Within that second folder you will find the items that were stored on the bad drive. You can safely copy these to another volume using the Finder, but do not attempt to move or modify them otherwise (do what you like with the copies).
Scott

Can somebody please explain how to format and then reinstall Mac lion10.7 without cd

can somebody please explain how to format and then reinstall Mac lion10.7 without cd

You will need either an Ethernet or Wifi Connection to the Internet - USB Mobile device is not supported.
If you already have Lion installed you can boot to Recovery with Command R and use the Disk Utility to erase the Macintosh HD and then reinstall the OS from the Mac OS X Utilities.
You will need the Apple Id used for purchase if the Mac did not ship with Lion installed originally.
If you want to repartition the HDD you can use the Recovery Disk Assistant to make a recovery USB drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848
As Always - Back up the Mac before erasing unless you are confident there is absolutely nothing on the mac that you might possibly need later.
If the machine is a 2011 build or later you might be able to boot to Internet Recovery with Command Option R

I want to move all files to an external drive--how?

I'm working on a Mac Pro. Using iMovie 9, I've been loading video from 10 years to archive and edit it all. I'm quickly using up remaining space on my primary hard drive (1 TB). I have a second drive (also 1 TB) with plenty of room. Can I move all the "Event" files (haven't started processing them yet) to this second drive? There doesn't seem to be any way to do this. Basically, I just want to move the whole iMovie operation to another drive and work from there. I've read some posts on this but the instructions don't make sense to me and I can't get anywhere.

Here is the main post.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4141
The safest way is to follow the instructions in the post and move Events from within iMovie.
In your case, if you have not started ANY projects, you can move the events in the Finder and they will still work.
The safest way to do this would be to move a single Event using iMovie. This will create the right Events folder with the right name in the right place. Then drag the rest using the Finder. This will be a little quicker.
Restart iMovie and it should see them all and you are good to go.
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External drive, how to format and partition?

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