External Hard Drive ?? - Newbie

Hi!
I am looking for an external hard drive and while I realize everyone's opinion seems to be broadly different on this topic, I wonder if someone can shed a little more light. I'm concerned mostly with reviews and posts that I've seen (for multiple brands) that say that after a few months, the drive just quits. This concerns me because I plan to store all of my photos and iTunes on this external drive vs. keeping them on my iMac's hard drive. I also plan to take advantage of Time Machine backups too if I can.
Do they really just quit and if so, is all lost forever? Isn't the point of the ED to store big stuff like tons of photos and music on them vs. cluttering up a hard drive? Again, I'm new to Mac so maybe I'm missing something obvious. The music and photos really aren't bogging down my Mac yet but I'm sure eventually they will so that's why I'd like to get the files onto an external. I'm assuming that I would delete them from my hard drive so that's why I'm afraid of external's just up and quitting. Am I wrong to assume that?
Anyone have an opinion? Is it "safe" to trust the external drive? Feel free to point out if I am missing something obvious! I'm new to all this hardware stuff!
THANK YOU in advance for your answers! It's always appreciated!
Meagan
P.S. I've found a Seagate 500GB at Office Max for $99 and a West. Digital for about $150 which seems reasonable to me...but both have mixed reviews due to them just quitting!

If you paranoid and careful- backup everything! AS I can see external hard drive will serve you as a STORAGE but not as backup. The best way would be DVD+hard drive combination. Especially photos, since they are not that big compared with music files and you can re-buy mp3 (money well wasted:) but can't redo photos...
As far as brands, they all fail. There are moving parts inside and they by definition will fail. As far as external hard drives, they consist of 2 parts- hard drive itself and enclosure. Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital external hard drives will 100% have their own hard drives inside and some others especially ones who don't list and not that reputable will have hard drive based on "the cheapest of the day" motto. But that is OK because they all decent (and don't pull that Seagate is the best crap, because I have two failed seagate HD). The problem can be with external enclosure- it can be cheaply made or use some sh** chip inside, so the best thing is not to buy some 3'd party noname external hard drives. As far as $99 special, well if it is maxtor, seagate, WD, hitachi it is not so bad quality vice, but speed-vice it might suck- at this price point it is USB. But I don't edit movies so much, so all my external hard drives are usb.

Similar Messages

External hard drive to use with Time Machine? Thoughts? Mac newbie.

Hello. Switched to an imac and have loved the experience. Was just about to buy an external hard drive when apple announced the time capsule. I've been holding off thinking I would purchase one but now I'm re-thinking it.
Between music, videos and pictures, I currently have about 400gb of stuff (and it will grow). My main concern is backing up (archiving) a copy of these files. Backing up other system files is a second concern after that.
I'm thinking of buying a 1TB external hard drive, firewire capable, partitioning part of it to be an archive drive, and the other part to use with time machine. Skip the time capsule.
Will that work? Other recommendations?
If so, any recommendations on a quiet, reasonably sized (i.e. doesn't take up the entire corner of the desk), 1tb external hard drive?
Thanks.

Clayton, if you're only backing up one Mac, then you can purchase any good, reputable 750 GB or 1 TB external drive.
Considerations:
1) Reliability is key here. You want a drive that works. Various people have complained about Western Digital (me included), so take that into consideration.
2) Quiet is important. You have a quiet computer -- why louse up the working environment with a noisy drive?
3) FW (Firewire) 800 is faster than FW400, which is faster than USB. But once you get the initial backup done, it really doesn't matter how fast the drive is, because it works in the background and doesn't hamper your work. And if you DO need to restore your entire computer via Time Machine (I've done it), speed is less important than reliability. Even if it takes 3 hours, you'll be grateful. So while some may counsel you to get a 'fast' drive, reliability is more important.
4) On FW versus USB, you'll hear many claims. Again the key is reliability versus speed. A good USB drive is fine for what you are doing; FW is faster. Some folks have had problems with one or the other, so hear what they have to say.
5) Every drive dies. That's true for any electromechanical device. Don't think you've solved your backup problems by plugging in a drive and walking away. Your most critical files need a second backup, be it to a DVD, CD, thumb drive, network drive -- something. The more critical it is, the more backups you need. If you're writing your Ph.D. thesis, by definition you can't have too many backups
6) Convenience matters. You can 'roll your own' drive if you have experience -- buy a case, buy a drive, assemble, etc. But it's many times easier, particularly for a Time Machine backup drive, to just buy a reliable (there's that word again) external HD off the shelf.
7) Finally, follow directions. Apple tells you how to set up a TM drive. Do it their way. That means, format the brand new drive and make it a 'GUID' partition. Use the Apple Disk Utility. Follow directions.
Good luck,
Steve

External Hard Drive for Newbie

I am a computer system novice. I have my first ever computer (see specs at bottom). I do a lot of editing on Avid Media Composer at my work. I've never had to understand the intricate details of how things work - I just know which buttons to push to edit. We have a Unity server at my office so I never have to worry about storage space issues.
I am planning on getting the Xpress Pro version of Avid for my Macbook Pro once the version is released. (I understand that to be sometime between Sept-Dec of '06).
What do I need in terms of an External Hard Drive so I can easily access and store media clips? Lot's of media clips. Like 10 hours worth of video tape (if possible). Are these external hard drives easy to use? Are they easy to set up? Are they easy to transfer files to/from? How big of an external hard drive should I be looking at and what brands do you recommend?
Thanks for your help and advice!

Figure about 1 GB for 22 minutes of uncompressed standard def video at 480 x 24 frames per second (some one might want to confirm this as I am doing this from memory). So for a full 10 hours of 30 fps standard definition I would guess you need like 1,500 gigabytes, or 1.5 Terabytes! But I assume there is at least some compression on your video (i hope) so maybe you can get away for something under 1 TB.
Well, if you want realtime performance, and not just archival storage of video clips, then you should consider a Firewire 800 external drive.
Unfortunately the, the MacBook only provides a FireWire 400 port, so first you will need to get a FireWire 800 Express/34 card (not yet available, but should be by the time Xpress is out).
As far as the ultimate external FW 800 solution goes, I suggest a 1 TeraByte (1,000 GBs!) FireWire 800 RAID array from G-Tech. Its called the G-tech G-Raid.
It will give you up to 4 real time HDV video streams simultaneously (or 7 DV25). http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID.cfm
Now if you do not need that kind of performance, then the above is way overkill. You can just get a very large external FW 400 drive. Check out the other options available on the site I linked to above (for example the standard "G-Drive" available in both FW 400 and 800 configs).
A key consideration is the quality of the drive. Many people have complained that Lacie drives, particularly ones over 100GB die after about a year. Some claim this is because they use low quality components. But you don't have to take my word for it... you can research this with google quite easily. You will see many complaints about Lacie's dyeing just after the 1 year warranty expires.
The company I linked to above provides a 2 year warranty and is known to make high quality drives, especially suited for video professionals.
Oh yeah, and one last thing - stick with FireWire. Although USB 2.0 is theoretically faster than FW 400, it is not in real world tests, particularly for sustained data transfer.
Oh yeah, yeah, one last last thing... set up is pretty easy with all these drives, just plug them in and go.

If i back up my mac using Time Machine and an external hard-drive, can that same hard-drive be used on another computer and on a PC?

Hi!
I hav just got a macbook pro and am used to using a HP pc and am a newbie! I have backed up my macbook with my elements external hardrive and was wondering if i can transfer the music i have purchased and is now on my external hard-drive back onto my other laptop purely because i use both laptops for different things and want to use my music on both. how do i do this? and do i need a particular software to do so?
Any tips would be greatly appreciated
thanks
alex xxx

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can do it, but it's not recommended to use a Time Machine volume to store other files. In this case, you can create a second volume on the external drive, so you will be able to use it to store data and transfer it to other PCs.
As you are going to use the external drive with other PCs, you can make the volume and format it in "MS-DOS (FAT)" with Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Finally, you will be able to copy files to the external drive.
If you copy files to a Time Machine disk, you may damage the Time Machine file structure, so you shouldn't do it. It may not happen, but it's better not to try that. Also, you won't be able to read the Time Machine drive in a PC

Migrating iTunes library from external hard drive to new laptop

Hi there, I am wondering if anyone can help me please? I am a complete newbie to this forum thing, I am just getting into this cosmic sharing world but find myself utterly frustrated with iTunes and my new laptop - with little help on the Support pages, so i am venturing into the unkown and seeking help from anyone out there.........slightly scary for me, this really is my first post on a forum - so be gentle with me :0)
On my old steam driven laptop I had to move my iTunes library to an external hard drive, my 250MB hard drive just wasn't enough (I know pathetic wasn't it). All ok there and I have been using it no problem. I have now upgraded (finally!!) to a new wonderful laptop (with webcam and all sorts!)but I am at the end of my tether trying to get my iTunes library from my external hard drive to appear in the Library on the laptop. boo hoo.
I have tried changing the file location in the Advance section of preferences, i have tried choosing the library after holding down the shift key on start up (you see not a complete numpty). They all appear to work as i don't get any error messages, but the songs just don't appear in the library. Am i being a complete numb nuts here? what am i missing?
If anyone can help i would be really grateful as this is spoiling the euphoric feeling i have of my lovely new laptop!
cheers Latte

tonybassplayer wrote:
Thank Chris I have just done that. How do I now get them in to Itunes ?
If you simply copy the iTUnes folder to /Music/ and launch iTUnes, everythign will be there. No need to import anything.
This will work the same with iPhoto.
Simply copy the Photo library to /Pictures/ folder and launch iPhoto.

Is there a way to run Vista on an External Hard Drive?

Am a Mac Newbie with some PC application baggage...
It was my understanding that "Macs" could boot from either internal and external hard drives. I thought I could (somehow) install Vista on a partition on an external hard drive and simply connect it to my Mac Book Pro when I wanted to boot from it.
My objective is to minimize (or avoid) the impact of a PC environment installed my MBP, yet still allow periodic "native" or virtual access to a PC environment as needed. And, perhaps, to use any remaining space on the external hard drive for backup storage...
Am not seeing any references to this type of setup...is any part of this possible?
If I understand the threads correctly, Boot Camp only installs Vista to the internal hard drive. And while Microsoft limits the virtual use of Vista to their Business and Ultimate editions, will virtual manager programs such as Fusion or Parallels allow me to put the PC environment on an external hard drive to plug and play as needed?
I thought native would be simpler...but maybe the route to go may be virtual management to get Windows on an external hard drive?
Thanks.

Got resolved in the Boot Camp Forum ny Stefan...evidently Microsoft has restricted Windows (XP and Vista) to not be able to be booted from external HDs.
Stefan pointed out that here is however, a way to achieve this my objective however, see here: http://tubeshards.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/install-windows-to-a-macintosh-usb-dr ive/
Although this is for XP, Stefan thinks it should also work for Vista.
Parallels and/or Fusion will allow me to put the Windows Vista VM nearly anywhere, which includes external HDs.
The external HD has to be formated as HFS+ (the OSX file system) but it is possible to partition the external HD to two or more partitions and use these partitions for backup etc.

How do I move images to an external hard drive?

Hi Everyone,
I'm very much a newbie and am having a problem with moving images to an external hard drive. Do I set up a new external drive and use the Export function to put all my files there, and then delete them from my computer (which is very full!)? If so, can I be sure that Lightroom will keep track of all the files and keywords? If I do that, I think my catalog will still live on my computer, but will know the files are on the external.
The other option I've considered is dragging and dropping everything to the external drive, then using the Import function to let Lightroom bring all the images into its catalog. I've found information about moving Lightroom to a new computer, but all I really need to do is to offload all my images to the external and leave the program on the laptop. Any suggestions with step-by-step instructions will be appreciated.
Computerklutz

Make sure all your images/image folders are in one Top Level Folder on your Laptop. If you don't have this structure do it in the Lightroom Library.
Then connect the external and COPY the Top Level folder to the external using the OS.
Next right/ctrl click the Top Level folder in the Library and choose Update Folder Location and point to the new location on the external.
If the files have all been copied successfully you can now trash the Top Level folder from the Laptop using the OS.
That is what I do when moving files to new disks.
The Catalog and Previews files stay on the laptop and aren't moved!!
There are many ways to do this !!

Using an external hard drive with FCPX?

I plan on using Final Cut Pro X with an external hard drive to edit dv footage captured from my camcorder. Is there a "best choice" for the external drive? And what about formatting the drive?

Sorry, Tom. I am sure I'm not being precise enough in my language. Let me put it this way.
Can I use a USB drive to import AVCHD video from a tapeless camera? I mean, I know I CAN, but is it okay to do so? Understand, I am a newbie over here, but you've probably already figured that out.
The situation is, I will be on the road for a week with my 4 tapeless cameras and my MacBook Air. Going to shoot all day, then go back to the hotel and pull the video off the cameras so I can continue shooting the next day. I was planning importing the video onto one external hard disk (file>import from camera) and also making an archive onto another external disk. That way I have a backup. Thunderbolt drives are still a bit too expensive for me, so I was going to bring one USB drive for the archive and one USB/firewire 800 drive for the "import from camera." Then when I get back home, I can hook that USB/firewire 800 up to my thunderbolt display connected to my MacBook Air. Or maybe by then I can get my school to get me a new iMac, which would be a better editing machine than the MacBook Air. Sound workable?

Disconnecting external hard drive error - PLS HELP!

im an iMac newbie so i didnt know i was gonna encounter a problem when i manually disconnected my external hard drive from the USB port. when i disconnected it, an error message popped up saying something like the USB device was not properly disconnected..make sure to eject the device... this may cause loss of data, etc. So when i tried to plug in my external hard drive again, a message box popped up saying something like "the device is not compatible with this computer.." so i went and tried to connect the external hard drive on to my PC... as i expected, an error message popped up saying that it is not formatted yet and it was asking me if i want to reformat it..
what should i do??? did i permanently lose all the data in my external hard drive?? is there any way to restore the files?? please help..

As indicated in the previous post, you need to 'eject' the drive before you disconnect the cable or power down the external drive.
to eject:
click on the drive icon then press command-e
right click or control click on the drive icon then select eject
plus other methods
I'd plug in the device & power up the device before starting the mac. This will force a drive check.
With the device connected & power up, then run disk repair.
harddrive > applications > utilities > Disk Utility
On the left you will see a list of devices with the partitions on the device below the device icon. Select the device icon of the external device. Be sure to select the device not the partition on the device.
Select the First Aid tab. See lower right.
run verify
run repair
run verify
what should i do??? did i permanently lose all the data > in my external hard drive?? is there any way to restore > the files?? please help..
If the repair doesn't work you need to try a utility like disk warrior. If that dosn't work, you will need to try a commercial recovery firm.
Robert

Formatting a PC-formatted External Hard Drive to work in Mac OS

So I have a 300 gig external hard drive formatted for Windows XP with NTFS. I recently got a Macbook Pro and as it stands in Mac OS X the hard drive is read only. I can copy files from the hard drive to my Mac, but I can't edit files on the external HD or copy from my Mac to my external HD. This of course is a problem and so I need to reformat it to work in Mac OS. While I will not be using PCs anymore, if possible I would like for the external HD to be Mac and Windows compatible.
First things first I have to get all 300 gigs of files off the external HD in order to reformat it. This will be a pain but I have the means to do this. Once I get everything off, how and with what method should I reformat it to work in Mac? Should I use the HFS file system or MS-DOS? Also, what utility in Mac OS lets me reformat it. As I said, I probably won't be hooking up this external HD to Windows anytime soon, but if there is a way to format it in Mac to work with Windows, then fine.
So what exactly are my options here? I understand that I can format the hard drive in Mac OS with either MS-DOS or FAT32. I just don't know which is better/faster/more reliable in Mac OS, as I'm still a Mac newbie. I don't have files that are over 2 gigs as far as I remember, so I don't think that will be an issue. If it helps, it is mostly media files (videos, music). I've read up online about formatting a drive to work with Mac OS, but there's just so much info I'm getting confused. Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
So from what people are saying, I can format the drive in Mac OS as FAT32 (aka MS-DOS) and it will work fine between the two operating systems.
I've been reading more though and it seems that FAT32 drives can not be larger than 130 gigs? Or is that just for partitions.
I have a 350 gig hard drive and I don't plan on having any partitions. Can I just format the drive as FAT32 in Mac OS and the whole 350 gigs will be available? There's so much conflicting info in articles I've been reading.
thanks

How to move media and librar[ies] to external hard drive, when 'Keep organized' de-selcted

Newbie to mac, sorry for being so dense. I am nervous about my understanding of iTunes and from the many posts I’ve read realize how easily I could screw this up. Can someone point me to step by step directions for moving the actual media ‘files’, ie the mp3s, as well as the necessary library files, to an external drive, when ‘keep media organized’ and ‘copy files to media folder’ are NOT SELECTED?
I am running OS X 10.6.8 and iTunes 10 [and prefer a solution which does not require updating software …so far that never goes well for me. (:
For myriad reasons, I prefer to maintain my own customized folder and file structure for my mp3s; and have therefore de-selected
1] Keep iTUnes Media folder organized and 2] Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.
All the directions in the various posts seem to require selecting these options. Is this critical for success?
From the many posts I have read, it seems there’s more to it than just drag and drop, that I need to ensure that iTunes is ‘pointed’ to somewhere? Not the mp3s themselves, but to a ‘library” [is that yet another copy of the mp3s? somewhere on my hard drive?].
Additionally, over the years I have moved about 45GB of mp3s to ‘storage’ external hard drives to create more space on my laptop. Not ideal interim solution. I am again low on space and have decided to buy new external drive for holding all of my mp3s, ie the 45 GB in ‘storage’ and the remaining 75 GB from my laptop. Ideally, I would like to also keep all my artwork, playlists and ratings and the like [which I guess are in the ‘libraries’???]
Am I correct, that I will need to also move to the new external hard drive that folder which holds the .itl and .xml files and which is named ‘iTunes’??? and then there is another step to link the ‘media’ to the ‘library’ to ‘itunes’????
Again, any clarification is greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.

Unfortunately you have the worst possible situation for doing this. If you let iTunes organize files you could simply let iTunes relocate them by consolidating in advanced preferences and it would all be done with a few minutes effort on your part with nothing getting lost. Organizing your own media means when you move things to a different drive iTunes will lose track of many if not all the links.
First, try simply dragging the whole iTunes folder to the external drive and start iTunes with the option/alt key held down. Guide it to the iTunes Library.itl file on the external drive. If you are lucky it will move as a package. If you are not, the link locations will all be bad because it will still be looking for the files on the internal drive. It may look like it is working but get info on a file or two and see if it is still referencing the file on the internal drive or if it is really using the external drive.
When you move the files from the third drive to the new external I can almost guarantee you every single link will break. Again because you do not let iTunes organize media you can't use iTunes' own repair link feature. One solution will be to take the old .xml file and open it in a text editor. Do a global replace of the old drive path with the path to the location of the files on the new drive. Now if all your old links broke for the main library you will have to do this for both the main library on the new drive as well as the relocated files from the main drive. Now this is really starting to get messy and I am going to fade at any minute now because it is getting late. If you needed to do this for all files go ahead and create a new library using the option key method mentioned earlier, then import the .xml into the new library. If you only need to edit the third drive files then remove any references to the old main library files in this edited .xml and import just the edited third drive file references. See? Isn't that all nice and clear? Oh, realize that the .xml does not contain 100% of the information in the .itl (you cannot edit the .itl). You will lose ratings, play count, date added. Ratings and play count can be saved using other tricks which would take about as much typing as I have done already so I won't go there unless they are absolutely critical to you.

Trying to free up space on hard drive, with an external hard drive, but don't want to lose the files!

So I am really stressed out right now.
I have a macbook pro, with a 750 gb hard drive in it. My internal hard drive filled up a while back so I bought a 3TB external hard drive. I backed up my files onto my external a while ago, but I don't really remember how... There is a folder on my hard drive that is called " wd smartware.swstor" , and inside that folder is about 1.7 TB of files (when I click 'get info')... So I'm guessing that is where all my stuff is being backed up. But I also moved files from my computer onto that hard drive, like pictures and videos, that I wanted to delete off my internal... So I may have duplicates?
But my 3TB hard drive is almost full, it has 400GB free on it. And my 750gb internal hard drive on my macbook pro, has filled up again so it only has 10gb free space. So basically I have almost 3TB of files on my external hard drive, and 740gb on my internal.. This can't be right. There is no way I have this many files. I am guessing I have some of the same files on my internal that I do on my external.. Most of my files are high quality HD video files that I imported through final cut pro x....
So I bought another 3TB external hard drive that I haven't used yet. Basically, I just want to move all my files that are on my internal hard drive (roughly 750gb) onto my NEW external 3TB hard drive- and then delete the files off my internal so I have more free space. I just don't know if these files are already being backed up on my OLD external 3TB hard drive.
Can someone please help? Thank you!

craigbuckley wrote:
If I get rid of my TIme Machine, will I lose all my files from the past?
Yes it will unless you back it up first out of TM.
TimeMachine is a self rotating image of your boot drive with saved states, it manages itself based upon the available space on the drive. As new states are created, old ones are deleted along with older versions of your files.
Also if you incur a drastic large change to your boot drive, TimeMachine will DELETE older versions of your files.
TimeMachine is not a archival solution!
To rescue yourself from TimeMachine, you will first need to save the recent copy of file(s) to the new 3TB, then restore the older version of the file from TimeMachine to the boot drive and then rename it/date it and save that older copy to the new 3TB drive.
This way you have both the new copy and the old copy of the file pernamently archived on the new 3TB drive.
Once you have exhausted all of TimeMachines older files, you can free yourself from it, erase the drive.
For your needs, I suggest this.
Internal drive and bootable clone
1: Your internal 750GB boot drive contains active working files.
2: You have another external drive that's either 750GB or 1TB, you use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your boot drive, update it when you know you have a stable OS X system on your boot drive and before updates or changes, this way if the update goes bad and the machine will not boot. You can connect the clone, hold the option key down and boot the comptuer from the clone. You then can get online to get help, or simply reverse clone your software problems away.
CCC has the ability like TimeMachine to save states between clones, it's on be default but you can turn this off as to maintain a pure clone, this is what I advise you do as to avoid confusion. You clone is a perfect copy since the last update of the clone, which you can setup to do nightly if you wish or every few days or every few weeks, whatever.
Your bootable clone is your lifesaver if your boot hard drive dies or refuses to boot up, you can boot from the clone in seconds and only be slightly off since the last update of the clone. TM won't run the computer like a clone will.
I highly adise keeping your clone in a very safe place, away from theft, fire, electrical, etc.
http://www.bombich.com/
External Storage Drives
3: Your first external 3TB drive (sans TimeMachine) will be your storage drive, this will contain any files that you don't wish to have on the internal drive and as a result also not on the clone.
You maintain folders that are dated, with older copies of files in those folders if you wish. This way you can control the space on the drive and not make multiple duplicates of all the large files like TM does.
For instance if you work on a 100GB project for three days, instead of having three copies taking up 300GB like what TM does, you can rather choose to have just one older copy at 100GB. You can decide you don't need a particular older version of a file and remove it, thus managing your drive space yourself.
4: Your other external 3TB is a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the first 3TB, maintain a perfect clone of that as well and update it periodically as your needs change. Since CCC can be schedualed and works in the background, you can have it update your clones overnight or another time your not using the machine. This free's up performance as TM isn't running in the background while your trying to work.
Also with no TM local cache file, that also will free up space on the boot drive.
The general rule is you need both hardware AND software protection for your data, thus with too much data to fit on the boot drive, you need a external storage drive and then a backup of that as to maintain TWO hardware copies of your data at all times.
This method is also scaleable, if you need more room than 3TB externally, you then get another 2 3TB drives, one for the new data and one for backup.
The bootable clone of your bootdrive is kept in a very safe place, it's designed to protect your OS X investment in software etc. and espectially, to get your Mac booting in as short as a time as possible while you plan on a replacement boot hard drive/repair.
Read more about the advanced options bootable clones give here.
Most commonly used backup methods
With your large storage needs, you basically have outgrown TimeMachine by hitting the hardware limit of drives.
If there were 10-20TB drives, you likely could keep on going with TimeMachine, but you can't.
Your clearly in the more "professional" catagory with your storage management needs, not in the TM "newbie to computers" where it's managed for you.
If your finding your needs are going to exceed 6TB, you might want to consider a external hardware RAID 5 box with 5+ drives, they will self redundancy so if a drive dies you just switch it with a new one and the missing data is copied from the other drives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://www.macgurus.com/
Good Luck

Cannot access my external hard drive!

A few month ago when I was transferring my files from a PC via a Seagate external hard drive (originally formatted on that PC) to my then new Intel iMac OS X 10.5.6, I made a newbie mistake in not properly "dismounting" before I pulled the USB. Now I cannot access the files on the Seagate external hard drive either from my iMac nor on my PC.
Are there simple ways I can fix this without spending money on new software? Or would Apple Genius Bar be able to take care of this? Thanks!

1) disconnect that external cables and all
2) power cycle that Seagate, power on power off a few times
3) zap pram on imac
4) reset the power manager on the imac look that up on apple/support and type in search window
when done:
1) power on imac
2)power on seagate
3) connect usb to imac first
4) connect usb to seagate should mount if it does not then no luck.

Need help using music library on external hard drive

Here is my scenario. I am hoping some one can help me as I have been having a heck of time trying to figure this out. I am what you would call newbie to Mac(I just purchased macBook) so bear with me).
I have a iTunes library on an external hard drive that was created using Windows PC machine. I now would like to use the same library on my Mac. How can I get the Mac to connect to the iTunes Music on the external hard drive?
This is what I have done so far. I have been able to network the Mac with my current network so it does see the external hard drive.
BTW, I would like to achieve this without having iTunes open on Windows machine. I know about the sharing option in iTunes but I have discovered that it only works if I have iTunes open on the Windows machine. This may not always be the case so this is why i am hoping their is an alternative to get the mac to connect to the library on the external hard drive.
I look forward to help on this one.
...Bruce

Maybe I did not explain myself clearly. All I want to do is be able to listen to the music in my itunes library on external hard drive on my new MacBook. I am thinking all I will have to do is create the itunes database file on my Mac using the music in my library(on external HD).

External Hard Drive Recommendations?

Hello - Newbie here.
I am in the market for an External Hard Drive for my MBP 2.33. I can't decide between a 500GB Maxtor One Touch III with FW-800/400; and the 500GB Western Digital MyBook with FW-800/400.
I am going to use this to hold my digital video footage. So I will be transfering the video straight from my sony dv camera to the hard drive where I will work with the footage with IMovie. I already have a FW-400 wire for the camcorder-computer connection...that leaves me with a USB and the FW-800 port available.
Has anyone had issues with WD or Maxtor and their Mac? Suggest another model??
Any advice would be much appreciated!!
Thank you!!

Maxtor are owned by Seagate. They used to be something of a budget brand.
Just so that it helps, do bear in mind that an external drive is just an external enclosure with an internal drive or drives in it.
Reliability depends on the combination between the enclosure and the drive - a good drive can still fail as a result of the enclosure doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. A drive can also fail simply because they are not perfect, so you could easily buy an expensive external drive which has a Western Digital Drive in it which will work fine.
Personally I'd go with an OWC enclosure and put a Seagate drive in it. Hang on, I did and opinions will vary. IVMichael recently recommended Western digital Drives (I think - sorry if I'm wrong) - but I think the Drives rather than their My Book solution.
Best of luck.

External Hard Drive ?? - Newbie

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