External hard drive and backup advice please

hi,
Sorry if this is a common question to the forum but I have only just registered and need advice that is a bit more taylor made than the other posts I've read.
I am going to be buying an external hard drive - firstly I have read that it's better to get firewire so that if need be I can boot up from it. Is this the case??
I want to make a clone of my hard drive, this can be done using deja vu, but is this the best thing to use? or do i need to get something like carbon copy cloner?
next.....partitioning disks. How is this done and what are the advantages? Why do this? This may be the answer to my next question.....
...I want to use the external drive for (1) making a clone of my HD that I can do each week for backup purposes and (2) using it to copy files onto daily/weekly - keeping it separate from the clone
help would be much appreciated
thanks

I am going to be buying an external hard drive - firstly I have read that it's better to get firewire so that if need be I can boot up from it. Is this the case??
Yes.
I want to make a clone of my hard drive, this can be done using deja vu, but is this the best thing to use? or do i need to get something like carbon copy cloner?
You can also try SuperDuper to perform the clone.
next.....partitioning disks. How is this done and what are the advantages? Why do this? This may be the answer to my next question.....
To partition a disk, use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Partitioning a drive on your model of computer will usually only give you benefits if you want to maintain multiple bootable installations of Mac OS X or Linux on a single disk.
(13860)

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External hard drive and backup

I just got a 750GB external hard drive that I need to format and/or partition and I am not sure what the best way to do this is. We just had the power source fail on the imac and, fortunately the hard drive is ok. I have saved my picture folders, idvd movies & itunes playlists to another external hard drive by exporting them. I am just wondering what the best thing is to do with this external hard drive. This is the only mac we have in the house, we have a pc & compaq laptop, when we had the imac in the shop I couldn't get to the pictures on the external hard drive because it was formatted with the mac. Do I want to clone the hard disk? Do I want to partition it? I still want to save my pictures, movies & itunes on this, is that possible also? If so, do I export these folders to the External HD or is there a backup utility I can use? Is there a way that I can save the pictures so that I can access them on the mac and on the pc if I needed to? Any advice or suggestions would be great. Thanks.

If I make a clone of my old drive, does this also copy folders (pictures, music, adobe...)?
A clone makes a full duplicate of everything that is on the one drive to the other.
Is this something that I would need to update and if so, how often?
Yes, but how often depends upon how much you change your files and how much you are willing to lose if your backup is out of date. A main drive failing is unpredictable. The extreme version of this is having a RAID where the minute you make a change that change is copied to backup drives almost as you do it.
Do I also do a separate backup? I understand that it would be best to have 2 copies of my pictures. I would like to have these on discs as well as the external hard drive, but I have thousands of pictures because I take tons at my children's sporting events. It would take so many cds or dvds, but that is what I will do, unless someone has a different suggestion.
One can write pages and pages on backup philosophies.
Backing up to CD/DVD is almost impractical these days due to the size of data and relatively small capacity of optical discs. That said, I do have things backed up to DVD. Files I know are never going to change (photos, other multimedia). I bought high-quality archival grade DVDs for this purpose. Price per GB though, hard drives are cheaper and easier.
Having multiple backups is not a bad idea. Let's say you keep one backup drive by your computer so it is handy for a daily backup. Somebody steals your computer and backup, well all is gone. Have a weekly 2nd backup stored in the garage somewhere then you still have most of your data.

Hard Drive and RAM Advice please...

I'm looking to expand my computer by adding more RAM and more hard drive space but unfortunately I haven't the slightest clue on what I should buy. I've never bought any kind of internal hardware before. I have an external but I'd like another internal drive since I have the slot space.
I'm a video and film enthusiast who shoots weddings, music videos and short films. I currently use Final Cut Studio, After Effects CS3, PS, and Shake. So as you can see, I have a fully loaded desktop in need of some serious power. It runs pretty good now, although when I get towards the end of a project it tends to crunch up and slow down due to all of the rendering and large file sizes being tossed around. So what should I get? Here are my hardware specs:
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,2
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Hi-
For your internal hard drive, a good, fast second drive for scratch files would help.
In the 7200RPM 500GB range, the Western Digital WD6400AAKS is by far the leader in speed. Very quiet and cool as well.
For a bit larger capacity, the WD7500AAKS is an excellent drive. Also cool and quiet.
If you want to go to a full 1TB drive, the Hitachi 7K1000 series is very fast, with the Samsung Spinpoint F1 also being an excellent performer.
As for the memory, the sweet spot seems to be 4GB. Memory is still cheap, so adding memory is a good, economical idea. For quality, guaranteed, Mac compatible memory, see OWC.
You can watch installation videos on how to install your memory and hard drives. Easy stuff.

Partitions on external hard drive. Need advice, PLEASE!

Can someone explain to me about partitions on EHD's. I have just installed Leopard, and at present I have 3 partitions on my LaCie 250Gb Firewire external drive. I need to create enough space to allow TimeMachine to do a backup (about 120Gb).
I know that I have to use Disk Utility to do this, but can someone tell me if there is a minimum number of partitions to have on a volume like this? What would be your recommendation?
Also, could someone tell me if it is possible to run Tiger on an external drive? Or would that have to be run from the Mac HD? I have some software and games etc that will only run on Tiger. A step by step guide would be much appreciated.

Hi! You can have many partitions on an external drive. One for Leopard, Tiger, Panther, OS9 (if capable) data, pictures, music....you get the picture. I'm not sure what you are using the partitions for now but remember usually reformatting into another partition scheme erases everything. As an example you can have a partition for Time Machine, another for the Tiger OS, and one for a Leopard bootable clone for use in an emergency. I'd recommend that if you plan on changing your current scheme that you do so with disk utility in Leopard. Create your partitions in the disk utility and then clone to the partitions. When you choose two or three partitions then you can grab and drag the bars to change each one's size. Again remember that if you already have a Tiger partition that reformatting will erase the data.
In Leopard open the disk utility and on the left side you'll see a disk drive such as 279.5 GB Maxtor and then listed under that and indented to the right will be the volumes or partitions with the names you have assigned to them. To partition click on the drive itself (not the volumes under it) and then on the right side of the pane will be listed first aid,erase, partition, raid, and restore. Then click on partition and the pane will show the current partition scheme such as only 1 volume (partition) or as many as you currently have. In Leopard you can resize the partitions but that gets a little complicated. If you click on current the tab pops up listing up to 16 partitions that can be created. When you select the number you want and then click apply the new scheme will be formatted erasing the current data on the entire drive. You can assign the names you want to the volumes such as Time Machine, Emergency Drive or whatever you want. Just remember you're erasing the drive so be sure that's what you want to do. Resizing partitions depends on how full they are, what size you want to change them to and takes some practice to master. I typically have soemthing like the following:
300 gig Main Drive with Leopard
300 gig drive with bootable clone of Leopard as a backup
400 gig drive with 2 partitions (1 for time machine and 1 for an emergency
Leopard clone with no added apps and only
utilities such as TechToolPro.
120 gig drive with three partitions
1. a previous system (Panther in my case)
2. a 9.2.2 System
3. a data partition for a quick data backup of something important
Your scheme can vary but give it some thought before you embark on something you're not going to want to change tomorrow. Tom

Can some please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my Mac

Can someone please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my new Mac. I ended up getting a bunch of duplicates. My old Mac has an older version of iPhoto while the new Mac has iPhoto '11. Is that the cause of the problem? Please advise. Thanks.

Simply copy the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder on the old Machine to the Pictures Folder on the new Machine.
Then launch iPhoto. That's it.
This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.
Regards
TD

How do I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

How can I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

I have attempted to make sure my iPhoto library has been backed up on the external hard drive and that it is safe to delete some events from my internal hard drive
You need to think this through.
Time Machine is a back up application. It keeps a rolling back up of the data. It's called rolling because it means you can revert to the data you had on a specific date and time. But that's not eternal, and as time goes by, and your drive fills up, older backups are deleted. So if you delete Events on your Mac they will - eventually - also be deleted from the Time Machine back up.
If you wan tot archive data hendon't use Time Machine for that job. Here's how you might archive an iPhoto Library:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
Now you have two full versions of the Library.
3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
Some Notes:
As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager

I have an external hard drive set up as a Time Machine backup on my IMac. I want to add a second external hard drive and put my Aperture Photo Library on it. Is there a way to have the photos on this second hard drive automatically back up to the Time Mac

I have an IMac with an external hard drive set up as a Time Machine for automatic backups. I want to add a second external hard drive and load my Aperture Photo Library on to it so that the library can be shared by both me and my wife. Is there a way to automatically backup the photo library that will be on the second hard drive to the Time Machine hard drive?

Open System Preference > Time Machine
Click Options....
Ckick on external disk in list and hit the - button below the list to remove from the Exclusion list
Allan

Got a new Macbook Pro today and I plugged in my WD external hard drive to backup with but it didn't allow me to backup.

Got a new Macbook Pro today and I plugged in my WD external hard drive to backup with but it didn't allow me to backup. The problem is that now my computer won't show the drive in finder. I can see it in Disk Utility and cannot access it. Help?

First
Finder>Preferences>Sidebar>Devices>External disk
but it didn't allow me to backup
did you get an error code or error dialog box?

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

HT1751 if i back up my itunes library to an external hard drive and then add subsequent music and want to back that up a few days later, can i backup the only newly added music without backing up the entire library again?

hello,
if i back up my itunes library to an external hard drive and then add subsequent music and want to back up the newly added music a few days later, can i do it without backing up the entire library again? or do i need to back up the entire library each and every time i back up to the external hard drive?

Just copy Users/yourusername/Music/iTunes (containing your library-files) to your external drive as well as that (extaernal) folder that contains all your audio-tracks.

Hello. I have MacBook Pro. I have 30,000 photos on iPhoto which is not on the hard drive but on an external hard drive. I have purchased a 2nd external hard drive and I would like to make a copy of my iphoto library onto it. I cant get this to work.

I have MacBook Pro. I have my iPhoto library on external hard drive only. It has 30,000 photos on it. I have bought a 2nd external hard drive and would like to copy my iPhoto library onto it as a back up. I tried plugging both in and dragging the iPhoto library into the 2nd external harddrive. It looked as though it was working as it said 20 hours, however I then got a message box saying FiNader could not complete the task due to incompatible files. How do I do this please.

lllaass wrote:
Yes, you should format the HD.
A Mac can natively write to a NTSF drive and that is what most drives com formatted with.
You should use the Mac journaled format.
Once again you are posting incorrect information
Until we know what format the drive is it is impossible to state that it must be formatted - that is just a guess
And a Mac can not Natively write to an NTSF drive - it can natively read it but can not write to it with special software
And since formatting a drive erases it it is critical to tell users not to format until they have a positively known good backup
The TOU for these forum state that you should test your answers prior to posting them -- you obviously are not doing that and you advice is endangering users photos - please only post tested answers
LN

Backing up images on external hard drive and restoring to new internal driv

I recently purchased a new external hard drive and a new internal hard drive. Before installing the new internal drive, I backed up the old internal drive on the external drive. Then I installed the new internal drive to my Macbook Pro. However, when I tried to access and print my Aperture images on the new internal drive, I received an error message saying "versions with unavailable master images cannot be printed." I clicked on 'show referenced files," but couldn't determine how to recover my master images. I checked the forum and under "referenced files go offline after restore from a backup" it said to go to "File>manage referenced files" but nothing else. How can I recover my master images? Please help - I have nearly 6000 images that are lost without recovering the master images. And no, I was ultra stupid in not placing everything in a vault = but I'm relatively new to Mac OS and thought a backup would be sufficient. Thank!

The volume name of the new hard drive needs to be the same as the old hard drive - rename it if you have to - then they should be fine.
If you cannot seem to make this work then you will have to reconnect them with locate referenced files under the file menu. Select all the files that are disconnected before going into the dialog.
RB

My songs have all been duplicated. All my music is on external hard drive and I want it to stay there. Am using a new computer and thought I'd done all the required things for my library to show on iTunes 11.

I'm using a new computer. All my music is on an external hard drive and I want it to stay there. Before installing iTunes on the new computer, I followed turingtest2's instructions as to the layout of all the iTunes folders (Itunes folder, Itunes Media, Music, etc...). I also followed his instructions as to get all my music in iTunes on the new computer (but keeping all the media on the external drive). Now my songs are all duplicated in my library (I normally have about 15,000 of them). They all play when I click onto them. Also, I've lost all my playlists, and all the songs in the library are now ticked. I've already spent hours trying to sort this out, but can't seem to find a solution. Help please!

Hi turingtest2,
Thank you for replying. I've been looking at your posts about setting up iTunes using an external drive. A bit of background info. My old computer broke down, so I got a new one from work. I've always kept my music files on my external drive (I have around 170GB of music). I didn't follow the suggestions in the "migrate iTunes library" post because my old computer died on me. However, I've looked at your posts about lay out of the iTunes folders. Before connecting to iTunes on the new computer, I had reorganized my iTunes folder on my E: external drive, and created an iTunes folder which contains an iTunes Media subfolder. The music files are in a Music folder, which is in the iTunes Media folder. I've also put the following files in my iTunes folder: iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, iTunes Music Library.xml, as well as sentinel. I then followed the advice you gave bmw99 on 2 Nov 2013 at 9.58 (sorry, can't copy the exact answer).
Just to clarify: I'd like to keep all my music media on the E: external hard drive (the computer hard drive is too small), and I'm aware i might never have my playlists back, and that all the songs in my library might be ticked. However, I don't want my library to be duplicated.
I'm at work at the moment, but will be back home in about 10 hours, so I can be more specific about folders / files names.
I'm glad you picked up my message and greatly appreciate your help.
Patrice

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up. I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up.
I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?
When I bought the new (used) iMac, I also bought an external hard drive for backups. It worked fine, but my husband stole it.
Then I bought a new external hard drive (Seagate) and it worked fine for three weeks, then died.
So I just got a new external hard drive, which was put together from an internal hard drive and a hard drive enclosure.
Time machine did the first backup today, and it should have taken 9 hours like it did on the previous first time full back up. Instead, it took 30 minutes. That can't be right. I want to start over and do a full backup to make sure everything gets onto my new external hard drive, but I can't figure out how to do that. Please help.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

I spent hrs fixing my iTunes since I did the update and it wiped out everything! I have put all of my iTunes on my external hard drive and it works but I got a new computer. I installed iTunes on the new computer but now the folders on my ehd are empty!

I am having a very hard time. First I finally got all of my music back into iTunes and then moved them all to my external hard drive. I set up iTunes to automatically put and get music from the external hard drive and whenever I open the drive al of the music is there. Now, I bought a new computer and went ahead and got iTunes all set up then tried to add folder to import from the external hard drive but all the music folders are empty! They show the names of the artists and the albums but there is nothing inside. Please help!!

If you've just moved the drive between systems then see Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows just in case that reveals the missing files. Apply to a single album folder first as a test. Otherwise, if you've not done too much with the drive since things went missing, an undelete tool might recover the lost media. FreeRecover looks promising... Select the drive, use the options to get file paths and check file integrity, then, presumably, you can restore anything that has been deleted that looks recoverable. Backup to another drive when you're done.
tt2

External hard drive and backup advice please

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