External hard drive solution....

I have a macbook pro with a 500gb 7200 rpm internal hard drive. I want to get an external hard drive. I want it mostly for editing videos with Final Cut Pro. Some of my ideas are to get a express card 34 with 2 firewire 800 ports and get an external hard drive that has firewire 800. My other idea was to get an express card 34 eSATA ports and use that for 2 hard drives. Please give me your opinions and also what is cheaper to go with? Thank you. by the way i want 2 1TB drives. fastest possible

OK I'll chip in with my 2¢ ... (I do a fair bit of AVCHD file editing so share some needs)
For best speed/bang for buck I'd go with:
OWC's eSATA SATA I/II ExpressCard/34 adapter @ $19.99
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/EXP34SATA2P1/
and
La Cie's 2TB Quadra @ $329.99 (comes with all the right cables)
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11270

Similar Messages

Alternative external hard drive solution now that FW is gone?

Okay, so I purchased my new Macbook without totally thinking through the implications of the lack of FW. I'm now using this shiny new computer and went to do a first time backup after reinstalling applications and files manually (I've had some software conflicts for awhile and did a painful reinstall to fix these which seemed to work). I plugged in my G-Tech mini backup drive to the USB port and... nada. After reading online discovered that USB ports generally cannot power a drive over 160GB without an external source!?!?? So, now my portable computer is no longer portable because I have to lug around an AC adapter to make the backup drive work. I won't get into the merits of FW and using the BUS power to avoid having to have an AC adapter, I know that is being hotly debated in other threads. So, having my limited knowledge, I'm going to just ask is there anyway to have a functioning backup drive (over 160GB) that can backup and boot without AC power? Anyone know of a drive that can draw enough power from the USB port to allow it to operate? I'm already bummed about the loss of Target Mode option but can live without that if I can get the drive to backup/boot from USB without an AC adapter being schlepped along. I'm afraid the answer is not going to be a good one, but thanks for any feedback.

I use a Verbatim FireWire/USB 250GB hard drive ( http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR043ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MjE1NDcyMw&p=2& s=topSellers ), which draws its power from the USB port. I use this with a MacBook Air, and have it partitioned into four partitions (Startup, Utilities Startup, Time Machine Backup, Data). I use SuperDuper! ( http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html ) to create bootable backups of my MacBook Air's Startup partition and Utilities Startup partition) and Time Machine to backup to the Time Machine Backup partition on the USB external drive.
I don't leave the external USB drive connected, but rely upon the Time Machine application to remind me every 10 days to backup. At that time, I attach the USB drive, let Time Machine do its thing, then run SuperDuper! to update the two bootable backups I noted above.
In summary, I run my MacBook Air from its Startup partition for everyday stuff. I have a Utilities Startup partition where I have my software tools installed to perform the occasional repair of the startup partition (haven't needed it yet, though). I use Time Machine to back up the Startup partition to the external USB Time Machine partition every 10 days, and I use SuperDuper! to backup the MacBook Air's Startup and Utilities Startup partitions to their respective USB backup partitions once Time Machine finishes every 10 days.
This is overkill, but I still remember the days in the '80s when drives crashed and destroyed data on a regular basis, so I take no chances anymore.
So, to answer your question, YES, there are bus powered USB drives that you can use as bootable and Time Machine backups. Just format the drives for GUID, decide on the number of partitions you want, and you're set.

HT1751 I am trying to backup my iTunes library onto an external hard drive but it won't complete due to 'insufficient privileges for some of the items'. Am I doing something wrong and is there a solution to this problem?

Hi All,
I am currently trying to backup my iTunes library onto an external hard drive so that I can copy it onto my new Macbook Pro. I have been following the steps posted on the Apple website however each time I get a dialogue box stating:
'The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items'.
Is this because I have items that were bought under another persons iTunes account? If so, is there a solution to this problem? Or am I doing something completely wrong?
Thanks in advance,
Sbrooks19

Go through the below forum with similar issue and follow the process mentioned by "Macjack" in the beginning.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4499820

What would be a faster backup solution, a thunderbolt adapter to a separate external hard drive or a 802.11ac Airport Time Capsule?

What would be a faster backup solution, a thunderbolt adapter to a separate external hard drive or an 802.11ac Airport Time Capsule? Does not need to be easier to backup just faster.

Thunderbolt by a blazing mile.
Even using gigabit on the TC instead of wireless will not come anywhere near as fast as the thunderbolt.
Let me add though.. hard disk speed might make the difference rather less great. Thunderbolt is so fast the hard disks are left behind.. so the speed is always going to be dependent on speed of drives.. the TC on the other hand is processor bound.. it uses a slow drive since the fact is, a super fast SSD will go no faster.. whereas with thunderbolt and a decent box that can use the power of ssd, it will be as fast as internal SSD on the computer.

My Toshiba external hard drive is no longer being recognised by my Macbook Air - solution?

My Toshiba external hard drive is no longer being recognised by my Macbook Air. The light on the hard drive is on, but it won't appear on my computer's desktop or anywhere else. How can I fix this?

Hi rivraff,
If you are having issues mounting an external hard drive volume, you may want to see if it shows up and/or can be repaired in Disk Utility; you may find the following article helpful:
Apple Support: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1782
Regards,
- Brenden

Hi all not sure where original request went but as a new apple user I have external hard drives that are now "read only" and I can't change or save documents. Went to Get Info and this did not help. Can anyone assist with solution, thanks.

I am a new user to apple and have external hard drives from previous computers. I have many documents I can no longer access and change as they say the drives are read only. How do I change the read only to read and write etc for these external drives. I tried Get Info but this did not assist. Thanks.

Hi,
Google is your Friend
10:18 PM Sunday; February 12, 2012
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Lion 10.7.3)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi, since i put some mp4 video or DVD files on my external hard drives final cut prox won't recognize my hard drives, i move all the video files and the problem still exist. somebody have the solution

Hi, since i put some mp4 video or DVD files on my external hard drives final cut prox won't recognize my hard drives, i move all the video files and the problem still exist. somebody have the solution

Did the back and forth between PC and Mac file systems screw up my files somehow?
Yes. Unfortunately the move has almost certainly caused the loss of the resource data that would have been (invisibly) attached to those files.
By adding a specific .mov extension after the fact you will have helped the Mac correctly identify the file type / asscoiations but also significantly you will have physically changed the filename eg from "clip" to "clip.mov". This means that when you come to reconnect the media in FCP , then FCP will be looking for files that no longer exist at the given path eg when specifically looking for our example clip called "clip" of course it won't find it.
Try this as a test... first remove the ".mov" extension from one or more of the clips, select those clips and press Cmd-Opt-I to open an Info window for the selection. You'll see an "Open with:" popup and in that popup you should choose QuickTime Player (if its a Unix Executable then it will initially list Terminal as the appropriate app, you have to choose Other... then in the open dialog choose Enable > All Applications and then navigate to and select the Quicktime Player app as the appropriate app). After you've done that restart FCP and see if you can now reconnect to those clips.

External hard drive gone kaput

I have an old Mac mini (1.42 GH PowerPC G4, Mac OS X 10.4.11) with an 80 gig internal startup HD, and an external 250 gig Firewire HD. For the last couple of days, the external HD has not been getting recognized by the Mac. When I run Disk First Aid, the drive shows up, but the disc itself - "disc2s10" - is greyed out. When I run "Verify Disk", and subsequently "Repair Disk", I get the following response:
"Checking HFS Plus volume
Invalid node structure
Invalid node structure
Catalog file entry not found for extent
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"
I've tried everything - power on, power off, disconnecting and reconnecting every cable both on the Mac and on the external HD, but nothing seems to work.
I tried looking at solutions in the Apple Support section, but frankly, I've not had much success and am not even sure whether I did the right things.
Losing the disc would be a disaster - not least because I've painstakingly organized 18,000 songs in my iTunes library, and those songs are all stored on the spoilt HD!
The only other thing I can add is that the disk went bad after I Installed the latest Apple security update a few days ago. I don't know whether that had anything to do with this.
Finally, I've had some problems in the past with this HD - which is housed in a casing that has the same form factor as the Mac mini - in that it sometimes did not mount. But I believe that has been due to some loose internal connections between the disk and the casing. At any rate, that has not been a major problem.
Clearly, since the Mac mini says the disc is unreadable, it can "see" the disc.
Could somebody please help? Thanx.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
When you get this message, does is also show a -9972 error number? If so, the Apple disk utility can't repair the drive. As Boece recommended, Disk Warrior, or similar, program would be your next step, and it can often repair what Disk Utility can't repair. However, if Disk Warrior can't repair it, then you want to look at other software to try and recover the data, as the next step would be an erase and restore. And if that didn't work, then the drive is toast. There are services that can recover the data off a dead drive, however, they are not inexpensive.
Some other thoughts ... can you open the hard drive case and pull the short cable off the hard drive and put it back on? Make a difference? Do you have another mac available to you that you could hook your external hard drive up to? Just to see if there's any difference in accessing it? Is it only a USB connection or can you also connect via firewire?

Windows Easy Transfer (WET) Issues with External Hard Drive - "Can't read from the source file or disk"

I work for Office Depot, in the tech department. Basically, one of our associates was supposed to do a data backup, and re-install Windows 7, then transfer the files back. He used Windows Easy Transfer and compacted everything into a 163 GB file.
Now comes the hard part. When we try to put it back on his computer ((drag-and-drop to the desktop) which has been wiped back to factory settings using the recovery partition), it stops at 79.5 GB remaining (you know how it doesn't give you a % of completion,
it just shows how many GB are remaining) and then says "Can't read from the source file or disk" and gives you an option to try again, or cancel. It gets hung up on the same point each time.
Normally, this wouldn't be a huge issue, but the contents on the drive are his wife's architect blueprints and interior design stuff, along with wedding photos, etc, which are the only copies they have. On top of those, they have court documents and other
important files that we are unable to access now.
I wasn't involved with this transfer, so I'm trying to clean up the mess as best I can. I remembered that the customer's wife was Russian, and had some files typed with a Russian keyboard, so on and so forth. I wonder if that's the issue? If not, I really
have no idea how to manually extract things from a ".mig" file, or how to diagnose what area is potentially corrupted.
In light of this situation, we tried using "Recuva" to recover the files post-wipe, but everything was corrupted or unable to be opened, and it also extracted and recovered all of the "useless" photos, such as the skype logos, up and
down arrows for browsers, etc (it was 160,000+ photos).
Trying to avoid a potential lawsuit, unhappy customer, and costing the company lots of money to see if professionals can get into this external hard drive.
Other relevant information:
We used a Toshiba 500 GB (465 GB) external hard drive.
Customer's computer is an HP Pavilion P6000 Series (Model No. p6520y) running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1.
Any other information that is needed can be provided, thanks in advance, and hopefully we can find a solution to this issue quickly!
-John

I think there's a lack of understanding somewhere.
"If you even can't start the process, please unplug it from your new PC. Then head back to your new computer and plug
the external drive back in to your new computer. "
Unplug from new, head back to new, plug it back in? That doesn't make much sense! Haha.
I knew what you meant though, somewhat. When I search through the drives after clicking yes (Has windows easy transfer
already saved your files blah blah blah) I click on the transfer file and it says "Windows Easy Transfer could not open the file".
Rather than drag-and-drop the file to the desktop, I now tried to double-click on the file itself while it was plugged
into the computer. It opened, and it started transferring until it was about 70% completed, and then an error popped up saying "WET can't open the easy transfer file, make sure your USB device is plugged in or check your internet connection".
I checked, and the USB hard drive's light wasn't on. Now, I unplug it and plug it back in, and the light comes back on,
so I click Retry, and it resets the bar back to nothing and says "Transfer time: 1 minute".
Rather than continue trying, I clicked "Cancel" instead of Retry, and it says "Your transfer did not complete successfully."
It says to click "view report" for more information, but there's no "view report button".
At the moment, I am scanning the External Drive for bad sectors using the check disk tool in properties. It's frozen
at "0 USN bytes processed".

Time Capsule - OS Upgrade and External Hard Drive

Hi, This is my first request and am happy to have found this community helpful so far. It has answered many of my previous questions because somebody else had already asked. However, this time I’m not able to get all the answers since I have specific questions. Please help.
I have a Macbook (late 2008 Aluminum) with 2GB memory, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GHz running Leopard. I just went and bought these to start an upgrade project–
a. CD for Snow Leopard
b. Time Capsule
c. 4 GB memory (2*2GB)
d. 1 External Hard Drive – 1 TB Seagate GoFlex (running out of space in 160GB macbook)
I will buy these applications via Mac App Store after I have the OS upgrade:
e. iPhoto ‘11
f. iMovie ‘11
I have successfully connected time capsule and configured it as my router and have set it up as the time machine backup device (what a breeze!). Also, I have taken the first full backup of macbook and am ready to go. Before I go ahead with next steps, I have few questions:
Should I install the new memory first and then Snow Leopard or doesn’t matter?
Any advice for my memory upgrade? I found the instruction manual in Apple’s site and am planning to do it myself.
Any advice for my Snow Leopard upgrade or anything to be cautious about? I believe the instructions after I pop in the CD will be self-explanatory.
After I have done the Snow Leopard Upgrade, I believe I will still have access to my files in the time machine backup in TC from before the OS upgrade? The reason I ask is I am planning to delete/move files after the OS upgrade.
FYI – After the Snow Leopard Upgrade, I will upgrade to iPhoto ’11 and iMovie ’11 from ’08. I have the latest iTunes.
After I have Snow Leopard, iPhoto/iMovie ’11, I will connect the EHD to the TC USB port and am planning to move the iTunes Media and iMovie project/events to the EHD (found the instructions on this) and delete the media from the macbook internal drive to relieve space. Say, just in case my EHD crashes in the next 2 days after I do this, will I still be able to recover the previous media/project files from Time Capsule? Or do I need to copy the iTunes Media and iMovie project/events into the Time Capsule manually before I move it into EHD? Basically, I want to make sure I have 2 copies of my media, 1 in TC and 1 in EHD, since I am deleting it from mac’s IHD.
Now say I have the EHD connected to TC via USB and have moved my all media and movie projects into the EHD. So macbook is accessing the EDH wirelessly, as the source for iTunes and iMovie media. For performance or portability, if I plug my EHD directly into the macbook, can it seamlessly recognize it as the media source for iTunes and iMovie or are there any settings involved? I am just wondering since via the TC it was a shared drive, and now it’s a plugged-in EHD.
I know that Time Machine does incremental backups. Is there an explanation on this as to what is meant by hourly, daily and weekly backups and what are the copies made? I heard the hourly are replaced by daily backups and the daily are replaced by weekly, what does that mean?
This may not impact me now, but may be soon. Is it true that once TC is full, time machine will delete copies of the oldest backup? My concern is that I want to somehow conserve today’s backup for good. Is that do able?
Should I be concerned that time machine backs up every hour, since it may reduce my macbook’s performance during the backups? I know a way to reduce the backup frequency, am just trying to understand if it’s necessary to do so?
How do I use my time capsule as an external hard drive? The reason is I have another PC from which I want to copy files and store in TC as a backup.
I know I have many questions, but am hoping to get your expert advice. Thank you.

Hello, seems like you wanted to do pretty much what i wanted to do. that is free up space on lap top. But still have instant access to your itunes stuff. I found a solution that works for me.
I have a portable WD hdd attached to my time capsule via usb, i then access both through the capsules wireless connection, using the TC for time machine.
The Apple tv then accesses my itunes lib through my MBP via TC's wireless. I did however connect the WD Hdd directly to my MBP for the initial transfer to the apple tv, but itunes seems to find the lib as long as its there, doesnt matter if its connected to MBPs usb or the TCs usb. Sometimes it might revert to the default location, but i've found that if you click on a song it still plays, then if you close then reopen itunes every thing goes back to your external hdd...
Which means if you go away or want your itunes lib on the move you just need a little WD hdd.
I'm not totally sure if its worked yet but i connected my WD hdd to my MBP vie usb and told the TC to back up that too by going to options in TM preferences, seems to have worked, not sure if it would work while connected to the TC usb connection, doesnt seem to.
NB:Before you do this do a back up of everything in you Itunes Lib on your TC incase you screw up.
(For easy transfer of your itunes lib go to preferences on itunes and create a folder called iTunes Music on your Hdd then close preferences and allow itunes to do its thing, then in itunes go to
file - library - consolidate library, itunes. Itunes then makes a copy of all music on your new hdd. I then deleted the tunes off my MBP)
Just make sure you open your finder and click on the TC to wake the drive before you open Itunes other wise you'll have to go in to preferences and keep altering the location for your itunes folder. which can take i tunes a while.
This method seems to cope with video and music just fine.
Well hope that wasn't too confusing, as i confuse myself at times.
Good Luck.........

I need help to repair my external hard drive

(1) My External Hard Drive finally stopped working. Whenever I tried to use it, I would only get variants of, "Time Machine couldn't complete the Backup to "My Passport for Mac", or "The backup disc is not available".
(2) "No problem," I thought. "There is no problem with my computer, so I'll just buy another external hard drive," and I did.
(3) About this time, I partitioned my computer hard drive to enable me to run both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion. I did this with step-by-step instructions by Apple technicians.
(4) I now find that I have lost a considerable number of files, including those that I value most highly.
(5) I now find that I need the files in my old, abandoned external hard drive, and it seems to me that the easiest way to access those files is simply to repair it.
(Here's what I've tried so far: (1) Disc Utility Repair. Didn't help. (2) COMMAND-R start. This produced a window with the following entries: Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall OSX, Get Help online, Disk Utility. It seemed to offer hope, but I couldn't highlight any of them, and the "continue" command was dimned out. Where do I go from here? Data recovery is the solution usually offered, and I've alwys wondered why. It seems to me that fixing the external hard drive should always be the first thing to be considered. Data recovery is expensive, and fixing the external hard drive might be cheap.

baltwo wrote:
I don't think the HD's broken. More likely, since you used it for TM, that's what causing your issues. However, since I don't use TM or ever use WD's crappy HDs, all I can suggest is to peruse Pondini's TM FAQs for starters. Then, check out his troubleshooting steps.
What is "WD"?

External hard drive is not recognized after attempt to format

I just got a new macbook and couldn't use my external hard drive because it was formatted on a PC and only allowed me to read the data. I backed up the data on the 250gb hd and then used Disk Utility to erase the hd and format it as "Mac OS extended (journaled)." After beginning, Disk Utility stopped working and showed up as "not responding" in the Activity Monitor.
Now the hd does not show up on the desktop and can only be seen in Disk Utility. If I try to erase again or partition the hd the utility stops responding. If I try to zero out the drive it continues to say "preparing to zero" indefinately. Now the hd is also not recognized by windows except in the windows disk utility, but it does not even give the option of formatting/initializing it, so that is not an option.
Has anyone ever seen anything like this before, or have any idea of something that I haven't tried yet. I really want to get the drive working and have exhausted all the ideas I can come up with. The internet has not provided too many ideas either.
Thanks so much for your help.
Black MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I have crazy solution to format it to FAT 32, it work a couple times on my several MAxtor, and Western Digital HD. But this is the last resort and if you are not handy and familiar, don't do it.
It happen on my external HD, so I crack the enclosure open, pulled the HD out and attached it as internal HD on a PC after adjusting the jumper to master and make sure no other HD attached to the motherboard. Make sure the motherboard detected (you can see it from bios menu).
Insert a bootable installer disk before XP ('98, ME, or 2000), and start from there until a promt comes, and type fdisk and you delete the old partition and create a new partition and restart once using the disk still and format it using FAT 32.
After that you put it back to the enclosure, and mount it to MacBook as a new HD with default factory format.
If you don't have the installer disk, this might help :
http://www.bootdisk.com/
But if your maxtor still under warranty better talk to them first and they might willing to reformat it for you.
Hope this help your external back and let you use it on your MacBook.

I have an external hard drive, from Iomega. However, I cannot copy or save any file to it. On my PC it says that is possible to read and write in it, but in my Mac, it says I can only read. can somebody help me?

I have an external hard drive, from Iomega. that I can open and see my files. However, I cannot copy or save any file to it. On my PC I have it says that is possible to read and write in it, but in my Mac, it says I can only read. can somebody help me?
Also, Im a photographer, so I like to name a lot of files at the same time (used to do in on PC and it was very usefull.) cannot find out how to do it on my Mac. Really appretiate if some one can give me a solution! Thanx

Your drive is formatted with the NTFS file system. OS X can read but not write to the NTFS file system. There are third party drivers available that claim to add the ability to OS X to write to an NTFS partition. I have not tried them and don't know if they work.
The only file system that OS X and Windows can both write to natively is the FAT32 file system.

External Hard Drive doesn't work after Time Machine cancelation

First post on the forum.
So far i've had 2 hard drives broken because of a simple Time Machine.
I own a MBP and an HP so my hard drives usually have 2 partitions, one for mac, the other for pc. About a month or so i was doing a Time Machine on my Iomega 1TB (the partition used for the time machine is formatted in Mac Os Expanded (with journaling)), and, because the time machine was extremely slow i stopped it. Then came the problems. I tried to connect the Iomega to the mac, but the partition in which i had the time machine doesn't mount. the other partition is mountable and i even managed to delete some files in it, so it worked. But now the partitions don't mount. I can still see the two partitions in Disk Utility, with the correct names i gave them, but cannot mount.
Right now i don't have the disk with me because i went to a "professional" to try and at least recover my files. What a joke that was. First they told me they had my recovered files and them the files were not mine. The switched the disks and gave me someone elses files. And now they ask me for 1100$ to recover my files because it is a hardware malfunction. Obviously i dont have that amount of money available and i cannot afford the recovery atm, and i do not believe that a software can cause hardware to fail. (just guessing)
Resume: 1 external hard drive, with 2 partitions, one mac os expanded and the other is a Windows NT Filesystem. None of the partitions are corrently mounting on mac but the disk utility recognizes the partitions and the names i gave them.
So guys can u help a poor little girl that needs her photographies so that she can go and show her portfolio to get a job. :/
Kinda desperate at this point.
ps: sorry for bad english, second language

One can't read the other.
Just to be clear Mac's can read/write FAT32 but windows cannot use OS X Extended. So to use a drive on both systems it needs to be formatted FAT32
FAT32 does have limitations and possibly the best solution is to use NTFS, a more modern, robust filesystem. The drawback here is that OS X does not natively read NTFS so a third party kernel extension is needed.

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility?
Last night i was using my external hard drive, for some reason the folder just closed and i couldn't find it on my desktop.
After googling solutions, i found it in the disk utilities, i clicked on the 'repair' button many times, but it said the 'error...' message.
So i ejected it to try again, now when i connect the USB external hard drive it doesn't show up on my desktop or disk utilities.
I really just want to either repair or recover the data on it because it literally has everything (documents, work files, photos etc) on it,
I downloaded an application to recover my files but it needs the USB to at least show up.recognise it which mine doesn't.
I know i should've backed it up on another USB, this definitely teaches me for next time to back up all my files.
Are the files lost forever or can i recover them by going to a shop or using a software?

Thank you for responding.
This might sound stupid since i'm not really knowledgeable with Macs,
but since all my files were moved from my mac computer to the external hard drive,
is it possible to recover those files through my Mac - like recovering deleted files?

External hard drive solution....

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