External Hard Drive (reformating required)

I inherited an external hard disk with a bunch of archival data on it. Time Machine won't use it, claiming "reformat required". It is a 280 Gig FAT32 disk. I would really hate to have to copy the 80Gigs of content from it to another system and reformat this drive.
Isn't there a way to get Time Machine to use it?

+When I try to erase my FAT32 external HD using Disk Utility...+
One poster reported that he just plugged in his Western Digital drive and Time Machine formatted it correctly. That didn't seem to be the case with 10.5 so it might have been fixed in 10.5.1. The drive needs to end up being formatted in Apple Extended (Journaled) with GUID partitions for Intel Macs and Apple Partition Map for PPC Macs.
If the Time Machine automatic format doesn't work try the partition two-step dance to get your TM drive formatted. The directions are here.

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Is it wise/ok to use and external hard drive that requires Tuxera NTFS for Mac.dmg to be installed?

I had a white screen issue twice recently and freaked out. I got everything back but worried now that my imac will crash and I will lose
all my files/pictures. I purchased an external hard drive, a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 Plus with 1TB to install to backup my files. I went to
install it and it says that for Mac you must install Tuxera NTFS for Mac.dmg, which says it enables read/write support for the NTFS
partition on your Mac. Is this a good way to back of files on a Mac? If not what is better? Is there an Apple product for back up?
Please help I am clueless and worried about the dreaded white screen!

sketchgirl wrote:
I purchased an external hard drive, a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 Plus with 1TB to install to backup my files. I went to
install it and it says that for Mac you must install Tuxera NTFS for Mac.dmg, which says it enables read/write support for the NTFS
partition on your Mac.
Depending on whether you need to use this as a boot drive and what model iMac you have (PPC or Intel) you will need to reformat the drive as a GUID or APS drive with Disk Utility. OSX Tips: Using Disk Utility: Format, Erase, or Reformat a Drive

External Hard Drives-Recommendation required

Hi All,
I have a new Intel Mac and also a Lacie EHD of 80 gig capacity. I am also running XP, but about to go to Vista.
My question is about the best performing and silent (ish) EHD's.
My understanding is that Samsung in an appropriate case, may win on all counts, any comments. My aim is to use a new 300 gig Firewire EHD with an Oxford chipset, to back up the Mac ( using SuperDuper ) and use the present Firewire 80 gig Lacie to back up Windows ( have not figured out how to achieve the latter as yet-understand Windows Backup, not so good)
[[Further, my understanding is that many of the EHD 'manufacturers' eg Lacie, simply make the 'pretty case' and use mainstream drives.}}
Anyone see any issues with that? "That" being the setup I propose using in general terms.
iMac 20" Intel Core 2 Duo, 250 gig HD, 1 gig Ram Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie EHD 80 gig, Running XP via Boot Camp
Message was edited by: Ronald Begg

My biggest problem is the d2 case design by LaCie. I haven't used any of the others, but its power supply has a strange switch that puts the drive basically to sleep, when it is dismounted, or removed, and automounts when you start up even if you didn't press that button, or if you attach it. There are times you want the drive to act as if it isn't on. For quiet drive case designs with true on/off switches, I go for http://www.macsales.com/ cases. If you don't mind a little noise, http://www.granitedigital.com/ (also known as Relax Technologies) has one more plus to its side and that's the fact its cases actually use standard power supplies. The downside is the fan, but a properly inserted drive will yield very little if any fan noise on them.

Can Flash Player be installed on an external hard drive?

I have this game I am trying to install on an external hard drive that requires Flash Player and even though it is installed on my computer the game keeps popping up with Flash Player is required for this install. Would you like to install it now? Is there any way to install Flash Player on my external or get the game's installer to recognize it being on the hard drive. I don't want to install the game to my computer. Thanks for any help.

Flash Player is installed on the Windows system32 and syswo64 folders; it cannot be installed anywhere else.
What does that game require: the ActiveX control, or the plugin? If in doubt, install both.

Time Machine says both of my external hard drives require reformatting to case insensitive. What do I do?

I have been successfuly using Time Machine to back my iMac to an external hard drive (via usb) and everything has been fine for the last year. I have been using TM to back up to a HD called Terra LaCie via usb.
A week ago, my iMac hard drive was full--so I spulrged and bought a 6 TB external hard drive (Western Digital My Book-Thunderbolt). I set up the new Thunderbold HD to use RAID 1 (mirror) and copied most of my iMac hard drive over to the Thunderbolt HD.
I kept my working photographs (most recent) on my iMac and felt good to know my older photographs are on my new Thunderbolt hard drive.
For a few days, Time Machine seemed to work fine (backing up my iMac to Terra LaCie HD. I haven't been concerned with backing up the Thunderbolt drive (as I feel that mirroring is same as backing up).
Yesterday, Time Machine indicated the lastest back-up failed (for the HD called Terra LaCie). Now, when I go into Time Machine, the dialog box indicates the following message:
"Are you sure you want to erase the backup disk “Terra Lacie”? Erasing will destroy all information on the disk and can’t be undone.
The disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because a disk you are backing up is case sensitive, but the backup disk is not."
When I open Time Machine to look at my external hard drives (I also have a third usb portable drive); two of the three drives indicate the following:
"reformat required; case insensitive disk".
The small, portable hard drive (that I'm also using) doesn't say it needs to be reformated (but my new Thunderbolt and my old usb HD both indicate the same message (above).
What should I do? I just spent days transferring my photographs from my iMac to my new Thunderbolt. Should I just not use Time Machine any longer and work from my Thunderbolt drive?
Am I to understand that my iMac suddenly become case sensitive? Sorry if this was too much information about my hard-ware set-up.
Any help someone can provide me would be greatly appreciated. I suppose I need to understand Time Machine and perhaps my Thunderbolt better.

Hi BDAqua,
Bravo, you helped me solve my problem.
The Case Sensitive Disk was the small portable hard drive that I was using termporarily.
I just disconnected it and I started TM machine and everything seems to be working just fine.
Thank you very much!!!!

I have a new mini mac and i want to use my existing external hard drive but it needs to be reformated how do i do this without loosing all my old photos?

i have a new mini mac and i want to use my existing external hard drive but it needs to be reformated how do i do this without loosing all my old photos?

Formatting will erase the drive.
You need to copy the photo's to either your old computer, the Mac Mini or to a new external drive and then decide what to do with your existing external drive.
For example: You could use one External drive for Photo's and one external drive for Time Machine to backup both your Mac Mini and the Photo drive.

External Hard Drive requirements needed?

Hello. I'm very new to Mac...I have an external hard drive from my PC and was wondering what the requirements are to run TimeMachine...I realize that I would have delete everything on the hard drive if I wish to use it. It is a Maxtor. Thank you.

The size of the TM backup disk should be 2 to 3 times the amount of data you expect to back up. That will leave plenty of room for incremental backups.
The disk will have to be reformatted with the Mac HFS+ (Journaled) file system. Disk Utility is the tool to use for that.

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

What kind of repair?

Reboot Required when attaching external hard drive

I recently purchased a seagate 1.5TB external harddrive. It as been working fine with just one partition. The need arose for two partitions and I started the process using disk utility. My macbook froze during the process and now every time I connect this external hard drive, the gray window appears requiring a hard reboot. I can not reformat the external hard drive since it freezes every time I connect it. Help!

All usb hard disk with usb 3 are backward compatible to usb2.. but of course they still go at usb2 speed.
Very few routers have usb3 even with usb3 for a few years now.. the router chips are often underpowered so they simply cannot support the transfer speed.. usb 2 even goes at half the speed of usual usb2.. which is mainly a function of the underpowered processor on the router.

Why do my two external hard drives require "ejection" prior to shutdown?

Why do my two external hard drives require "ejection" upon shutdown?

Problem solved. I had plugged in my external hard drives into a USB card. I switched my two printers to the USB card and plugged in the two hard drives into the computer's USB outlets and now NO improper eject messages. What a relief!!! Thanks again.

External Hard Drive requirements

Hi,
I'm looking to purchase an external hard drive and was wondering if it needs to have certain requirements to make it work with video and graphics... basically i'll use it to save my work done on FCStudio... any information is more than welcome...
thanks...

Next time try to be more specific with regard to what format you are editing.
Reason being that if you are editing DV or HDV even a FW400 could do FW 800 even better especially if you are dealing with less compressed HD formats (DVCPRO HD to start from the bottom).
eSATA is a good choice if you are editing ProRes, uncompressed SD/HD etc
Anyways, here some useful links:
http://www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp
http://www.caldigit.com/products.asp
http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/products.html
http://www.g-technology.com/Products/Products.cfm

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 have a CS6 Disc I purchased. It does not seem to fit correctly in my external hard drive so I can download the software. Is a special kind of external hard drive required. I have a MAC Book Pro Yosemite version.

I recently purchased an Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium software so I could use a more updated version of Photoshop & Illustrator. My new Mac Book Pro does not have an internal hard drive. I was told by Apple to buy an external hard drive to download the software. I bought an LG Ultra Slim Portable DVD Writer compatible for MAC. When I went to put the disc in the drive it does not seem to fit in the tray properly. Is there a special size external drive I need to purchase to do this? Please help if you know the answer. Thank you.

Hi Bluedrake
Please download the CS6 Trials from below link : Download Adobe CS6 Trials: Direct Links (no Assistant or Manager) | ProDesignTools
Follow the instructions to Start your Download ...
Use your Serial Key to Activate them ....

Reformating external hard drive for use with new MacBook Pro

I'm trying to figure out how to use an existing external hard drive (formatted for a Powermac G4) with my new MacBook Pro. I understand that the file formats are different and that I need to erase the hard drive and reformat it with a GUID partition, but how does one do that?
I've already erased the drive with disk utility (using the old Powermac) and connected it to my MacBook with the hope that it would be recognized. No dice, alas. It doesn't mount at all.
Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

My external harddrives all work just fine with the MacBook Pro. You shouldn't have to reformat anything. I think if you did then it would not be backwards compatable with the older systems. Stick it back in your old computer and try to mount it again, repair permissions shutdown your macbook pro and connect the external drive then reboot

I acidently erased my external hard drive (G-Tech) while reformating my GoPro. Can they restored?

When transferring files from a GoPro camera to an external hard drive (G-Tech) I accidently erased the hard drive video imovie files. I was trying to reformat (erase) the GoPro in the Disk utilities. I clearly had the GoPro highlighted but for some reason both the external hard drive and the GoPro were erased. I had the external hard drive connected but not open or highlighted. The files were not back up on icloud or on any other device. The 1T hard drive was almost full. Can the files on the Hard Drive be restored?

Highly unlikely. Try one of the solutions below:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689

External Hard Drive (reformating required)

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