External hard drive back up keeps disappearing

The external hard drive connected by USB 3.0 and it's own power supply disappears or won't mount after rebooting or powering on Mac Pro. I have to shut off the external hard drive and turn it back on to mount. It doesn't always do that. Just recent prior to latest Snow Leopard update and after.

Are you sure it is a USB3?
And what program? TM does have a lot of problems.
Switch to FW800 or invest in SATA native case and interface.
FWIW: 3GB is very low, minimal RAM
check out the TimeMachine forum and support, lots of threads and help. I think most of the people I know only use it as a supplement to other backup methods and clones.
Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine

Similar Messages

Itunes is on an external Hard drive, but it keeps copying my movies back. Why and what can I do to stop it?

I have a Mac mini purchased in 2010, i have recently purchased MacTV which is great and works well. Because I had so many movies and music I moved my iteunes to its own external hard drive. I keep getting the Start up disk full warning, which was why I moved both iphotos and itunes to external disks. but I still get the message, now and then. for instance last night it said I only had about 7gig left. I shut down the computer and thought I'll deal with that tomorrow, when I turned on computer today there was over 70gig available... I don't understand what is happening. I'm using iflicks, and I did discover that iflicks kept a copy of files on my hard drive and I've fixed that I think. This morning I discovered all my movies sitting in my music folder on my hard drive. i'm just getting very confused about what my computer is doing without my knowledge.

You will have to engage a split library which means you will have to start answering questions on this forum because you will need to learn a lot about how iTunes works in order not that have a big mess at the end of it all. It also won't be easy when the time comes to relocate it all to different drives.
You can go to advanced preferences and turn off organize media and copy to items to media folder when adding items to library. Next read about how to selectively consolidate items to the external drive.
Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357
"...selected the new tracks directly in iTunes, Control-clicked on the selection, and saw that now you can consolidate selected items." - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090919000326840
Remember that when you start iTunes without the external drive turned on iTunes will present you with a bunch of broken links. If you have automatic downloads enabled with iCloud you may have to turn that off to prevent iTunes from repopulating your drive trying to deal with those "missing" tracks.
If you add tracks in bunches to iTunes and want them to go to different media folders you will need to either add them by holding down the option key while dragging if the desired media folder is not the one set in preferences, or by changing the media folder in preferences. Changing media folder preferences only applies to new files added, not old ones.
Okay, I am going to stop typing because you might just reply to me, "Oh, okay, forget it," and I don't need the exercise.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?

I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.

sydababy wrote:
and then deleting them off of my computer.
BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous. One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
follow here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

How do I move my iTunes library from my external hard drive back to my computer?

Just wondering how do I move my entire iTunes library from my external hard drive back to my computer? It was moved to an external hard drive a few years ago, and now I'm wondering how to move it back to my iMac to increase performance.
Where does it belong in the computer?
Any suggestions?

The library itself is the /Home/Music/iTunes/ folder in its entirety. Did you also change where preference files were stored? Normally, they would be in the /Home/Library/Preferences/ folder.

How do I copy backed-up files from an external hard drive back to my MBA, but under a different user than the one from which they were backed up?

On the advice of the Chicago Mac Genius Bar, in order to get better performance on my few years old MBA, I copied my Home folders (but not Library) to an external hard drive, created a new user, deleted the old user, and tried to copy the Home folder contents from the external hard drive back to the MBA under the new user. However, I get an error message and can't open most of the folders on the external hard drive (e.g. "The folder “Desktop” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.") Help! Thanks.

As captfred says, yes (as long as the drive is formatted for a Mac, not Windoze).
You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

When I try to import .olm files from my external hard drive back up, where do they go? It says on different forums they go to the "on my computer" folder but they are not there

When I try to import .olm files from my external hard drive back up, where do they go? It says on different forums they go to the "on my computer" folder but they are not there.
I go through all the instructions but then my emails do not appear. I'm starting to panic a bit!

You might want to try asking on the MS Office Outlook forum - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoutlook - since those are Outlook files.
Also note which method you're using to create a backup.
Clinton

Transfer old mac files from external hard drive back onto my mac

I just had my logic board replaced by Apple, out of warranty, on my 2008 Macbook pro. As advised by Apple, I had another computer store copy my entire hard drive onto an external drive as a backup. The guy at the other computer store wiped the hard drive on my computer and I sent it away for the repair.
I have my laptop back but for the life of me can't figure out how to copy my external hard drive back onto my macbook. Please help??!! I have already been without my computer for the 10 days it took Apple to do the repair and need to get my work done. The guy at the computer store said he made an exact copy of my hard drive. He also said that since my external hard drive was a little older (never used but purchased a few years ago) it might take a few hours to copy because it took him a few hours to get the files off my mac. Thanks to anyone who can help!

Why don't you attach the HDD with your data on it to your MBP and then drag and drop your folders to your restored MBP.
Ciao.
When you say that he made an exact copy of your MBP HDD, is it a clone with the OS on it? If so you can use Disk Utility>Restore to copy the information to your MBP.
Message was edited by: OGELTHORPE

How do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

how do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

Hello, Esmin77.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
I see you want to restore your MacBook Pro from an external drive. Here is an article that may help you with this process if you used Time Machine to backup these files.
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Cheers,
Jason H.

How do I find my photos on my external hard drive backed up using Time Machine?

How do I find my photos on my external hard drive backed up using Time Machine?
My hard drive died so this is my only storage. The hard drive was from an early 2008 Macbook Pro.
I had recently installed Snow Leopard.

If they’re in an iPhoto library, look in the Pictures folder of your home folder first. Otherwise, they’ll be in the location corresponding to the one you saved them to.
(111765)

How do I transfer all my iPhoto contents from my external hard drive back to my MacBookPro iPhoto?

My MacBook Pro recently had to have it's software cleared completely by a genius at the apple store. I purchased an external hard drive to save all of my documents and photos safely on so I would not lose them. I now am having difficulty reloading all of my iPhoto contents back onto my laptop from my external hard drive. Has anyone else experienced this? Will my iPhoto library go back to it's original appearance with all of the special albums I had made and the way in which I organized my photos and videos? How do I find what folders my photos were saved on my external hard drive to drag back onto my laptops iPhoto library?

iPhoto stores it's pictures in the Pictures/iPhoto Library, so if you have this backed up on a external drive, then it's a simple matter of replacing the new iPhoto Library (free of anything) with the copy of the older one on the external drive and running iPhoto.
If you have some items in the new iPhoto Library you can export them to the Desktop until the old one is replaced and then reimport them. Also another mehtod is to right click on the iPhoto Library and "Show Package Contents" inside is a folder called "Originals" which contain your files.
If you replaced the files and iPhoto doesn't open up, then reset it.
iPhoto rebuild database: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2638
You might want to consider not having your movies in iPhoto, it's not designed to handle too much, in fact 10,000 pictures of mine seem to overload it.
You can keep seperate iPhoto Libraries, use the option key held at launching of iPhoto to select another iPhoto Library.

Copying saved iphoto library from external hard drive back to Macbook Pro

Please help, I have accidentally managed to permanently delete my iphoto library and by this I mean that I somehow dragged my library into trash and then emptied it. I don't know how this happend but I quite quickly found out I had done it and shut my computer down. I have since done a recovery with disk drill and have hopefully recovered most of my photos though I havent had time to look through all the 1000's of photos yet. I do have a copied version of my library on an external hard drive that I did in 2012 and I have tried to copy this library back to my pictures folder so i at least have my photos up to 2012 back but it is not working. I have read through some of the threads on here regarding iphoto library back ups and I think the issue might be that the external hard drive is formatted Fat32 and not os extended.
I am hoping someone can help me get this working. Here are the facts.
1. I am running iphoto 11, version 9.2.3 on a macbook pro running os x 10.6.8
2. The copied iphoto library is on an external hard drive that is fat32 formatted. I can open the package contents and see the originals folder with all the yearly folders inside and all the numbered folders inside that with the pictures in them, so I know the pictures are there.
3. If I try to copy the library folder over to the pictures folder on the macbook i just get a pop up window saying 'preparing to copy iphoto library' and the scrolling bar but the copy doesn't actually start.
4. If I try to open the library through iphoto by holidng down the option key, iphoto tells me that the library has to be upgraded but i am reluctant to upgrade the original copy of the library. I would prefer to copy it first in case anything goes wrong but then i have the problem above that the copy doesn't work
Thank you in advance for any help.

The copied iphoto library is on an external hard drive that is fat32 formatted.
Therein lies the problem. iPhoto libraries need to be stored, placed on a disk formatted OS X Extended (journaled). The FAT format doesn't support the complexity of an iPhoto library and can, and more often than not, corrupt a library.
Try the following:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download the free version of iPhoto Library Manager and launch.>Click on the Add Library button,
2 - select the library you want to add from those in the selection window.
3 - make sure that in the rebuild window the checkbox "Scavange orphaned photos" is checked.
4 - now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
5 - in the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed, i.e. in the Pictures folder of your MBP. Click on the Create button.
Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.
Note 2: Your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.
OT

Moving music files via external hard drive-- Can you keep ratings/playlists

I keep all my music on an external hard drive in order to prevent it getting lost. Anyways... what I'm wondering is if I go to move my music from one computer (comp. A) to another computer (comp. B), is it possible to keep all the ratings and my playlists? I've seen the stuff for transfering with your ipod, but the problem is my 30Gb doesn't hold all my music, and I would reeeeeaaally hate to go through and redo all the ratings. If anyone knows maybe a file involved with itunes that might contain the ratings or playlists that I could store with the files themselves to transfer that would be excellent. Thanks to anyone who can help out. If you need clarification on any of the details just lemme know.

It looks like it should, thanks. One other bit that I'm wondering about is how do I load that Library list once I've installed itunes on comp B? Is it just a matter of going file>import or file>add new file to library? Thanks again

Using Time Capsule as a dedicated external hard drive + back up device

I am running very low on storage space on my current Macbook so I was wondering if I could permanently transfer data to Time Capsule and use it as an external hard drive. If so, can I still also use it to back up the rest of the data on my Macbook? Just trying to figure out my best alternative to clear space on my Macbook. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hello flyeaglesfly. Wecome to the Apple Discussions!
If you are intending on using Time Machine (TM) for your MacBook's backups you will run into the dilemma of it trying to use all of the available hard disk space on your Time Capsule (TC).
You have several options:
o Remove/repartition/replace the TC's internal hard drive. Use one of the partitions for TM backups and the other for NAS. Note: This will must likely void your warranty since you will need to open the TC to do this.
o Create a disk image of the desired size for NAS on the TC's internal hard drive. The drawback of this approach is that Windows clients will not be able to access this disk image.
o Attach an external USB hard drive to the TC. Use the internal drive for TM and the external drive for NAS ... or vice versa.

Time Machine External Hard Drive Back Up

I am wondering if there is a way to back up on time machine an external hard drive connected to my airport extreme.
Here is my set-up:
iMac with a 2TB external hard drive connected via firewire to the actual iMac in the back
airport extreme connected to the iMac via ethernet cable
640GB external hard drive connected to the airport extreme which is used for sharing with PC Laptops throughout the home
I am simply wondering if I can back up the 640GB external hard drive connected to the airport extreme to my 2TB external hard drive connected to my iMac which is being used as my time machine for the iMac itself.
Thanks.

I would simply do this:
-Connect the 2TB drive to the computer via USB or somehow.
-Open System Preferences > Time Machine > and set up the 2TB one as your primary backup device.
-Connect the 640GB drive to the computer with the 2TB still connected.
-Copy everything from the 640GB to the 2TB (select, drag, and drop).

WD Smartware, external hard drive back up not recognized by Macbook Pro

I use WD external hard drive as back up for my Macbook Pro using WD Smartware. All software is upto date but when I plug in my external hard drive it is now not recognised by my Mac. It does not appear in Finder or Disk Utility but it does show up in System Profiler. It has worked fine until now. I have changed the UCB cables multiple times, the external WD hard drive has its own power suppy and other external hard drives work in the same usb port. When I plug the external drive into a PC it is recognised but obviously will not let me use it. When I go to access via the PC it prompts me for the password to open the drive, however when I plug into my Mac, when I click on 'unlock drive' its says that the drive is not locked. The WD Smartware software runs to check the files on my Mac but after categorising them the 'back up' option is not highlighted and it will not access the external WD drive.
How can I access the WD external drive ? System Profiler data is below. Many thanks, apologies for any ignorance and thanks in anticipation of any help !
My Book 1110:    Capacity:     804.4 MB (804,421,632 bytes)   Removable Media:     Yes   Detachable Drive:     Yes   BSD Name:     disk1   Product ID:     0x1110   Vendor ID:     0x1058 (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)   Version:     20./My Book 1110:    Capacity: 804.4 MB (804,421,632 bytes)   Removable Media: Yes   Detachable Drive: Yes   BSD Name: disk1   Product ID: 0x1110   Vendor ID: 0x1058 (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)   Version: 20.18   Serial Number: 574341565931323033383539   Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec   Manufacturer: Western Digital   Location ID: 0xfd130000 / 5   Current Available (mA): 500   Current Required (mA): 2   Partition Map Type: Unknown   S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported   Volumes:   Capacity: 700.4 MB (700,448,768 bytes)   Writable: No   BSD Name: disk1s0   Capacity: 32 KB (32,256 bytes)   Writable: No   BSD Name: disk1s0s1 WD SmartWare:   Capacity: 229.7 MB (229,672,960 bytes)   Available: Zero KB   Writable: No   File System: HFS    BSD Name: disk1s0s2   Mount Point: /Volumes/WD SmartWare18   Serial Number:     574341565931323033383539   Speed:     Up to 480 Mb/sec   Manufacturer:     Western Digital   Location ID:     0xfd130000 / 5   Current Available (mA):     500   Current Required (mA):     2   Partition Map Type:     Unknown   S.M.A.R.T. status:     Not Supported   Volumes:   Capacity:     700.4 MB (700,448,768 bytes)   Writable:     No   BSD Name:     disk1s0   Capacity:     32 KB (32,256 bytes)   Writable:     No   BSD Name:     disk1s0s1 WD SmartWare:   Capacity:     229.7 MB (229,672,960 bytes)   Available:     Zero KB   Writable:     No   File System:     HFS+   BSD Name:     disk1s0s2   Mount Point:     /Volumes/WD SmartWare

mjunder Hong Kong
   I use WD external hard drive as back up for my Macbook Pro using WD Smartware.
To be a parrot,.......REMOVE the WD garbageware.
Western Digital warned its users about its OWN software couple months ago.
Remove ANY and ALL WD software products.

External hard drive back up keeps disappearing

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