External Hard Drive -- What do you recommend plase

I use super duper and do not have the backup drive on except when doing a backup. I need a capacity in the 750 to 1 TB size.
When I look at Amazon or other ratings they are all over the place. One size is good and another is bad for the same manufacture.
Can anyone please recommend a make or manufacture for me to consider. I have used Maxtor for years with pretty good results.

I bought OWC's FW hard drive encloser. You can put in your own drive(s) (I bought Seagate drives from OWC) depending on whether you want a single drive backup, dual ot RAID. I bought the OWC Mercury Elite...great encloser rated top in all my Mac magazines. What's nice about these is, if the drive goes bad you can replace it yourself and not have to get rid of the whole unit (like what happened to my Western Digital FW Ext. drive last time!). OWC's enclosers have Oxford chipsets which are totally Mac friendly. They also work for Windows machines. OWC also backs up their products...no arguing involved.
DALE

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I have downloaded mavericks to my external hard drive, what do I do next to go back to using Mavericks?

i have downloaded mavericks to my external hard drive, what do I do next to go back to using Mavericks?

I would not use Time Machine for this task. Rather I suggest you clone to the external drive. You can then boot from the external drive to restore your clone. First, purchase Carbon Copy Cloner.
Clone using Carbon Copy Cloner
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the right side dropdown menu.
4. Click on the Clone button.
5. When completed select Disk Center from the Window menu.
6. Click on the Recovery HD tab then select the backup drive from the list.
7. Click on the button labeled "Create a Recovery partition for this volume."
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
You now have a fully bootable copy of your iMac's hard drive. When you receive your iMac back after the drive replacement you can boot it from this backup and use Carbon Copy Cloner to restore the backup from the external drive to the internal drive. The process is identical except you will switch the Source and Destination volumes - Source will be the external drive; Destination will be the internal drive.
Because the newly installed drive will most likely have OS X installed you can skip Steps 5-7. You can now continue to use your external backup drive by setting up scheduled backups with CCC. No need to use Time Machine.

I would like to transfer my iTunes and photos etc from my PC to my new iMac via a external hard drive. Would somebody recommend one. I read that the Western Digital Mybook Essential 3.0 is good.

I would like to transfer my iTunes and photos etc from my PC to my new iMac via a external hard drive. Would somebody recommend one. I read that the Western Digital Mybook Essential 3.0 is good. Though as Mac has 2.0 is this fast enough? I am a basic user, surfing only.

If you plan on using the WD with the Mac after the iTunes transfer I would strongly recommend against WD. WD external HD's tend to be the most troublesome with Macs. If you intend to use the drive for backup using Time Machine or creating a bootable clone then I'd recommend a higher quality drive than WD. The drives I'd recommend in that case would be:
OWC Mercury Elite Pro series
LaCie d2 Quadra series
G-Tech G-DRIVE series
These are all high quality drives and enclosures with similar features. Personally I use the LaCie's however I would be happy to have OWC and G-Tech on my desk too. FWIW I've been using the LaCie's for 4 years and have 4 of them, all work perfectly and have never given me any trouble.
You also my find this article helpful: Move an iTunes library from a PC to Mac (and back)

Final cut is not reading events or projects from my external hard drive, what can I do?

Final Cut X is not reading events of projects from my external hard drive, what can i do?

Like this
Cmd-Shift-4. Drag a box around the area to capture. Screen shot appears on the desktop. Click the camera button in the message reply window.

External hard drives - what brand do you use

I'm looking to buy an external hard drive, maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but I'm thinking about getting a RAID1 setup. I have a lot of valuable pictures in I-Photo, a lot of music in I-Tunes, and would not be a happy camper if my internal HD fails.
Would you give me some ideas as to the external HD brand/model you use - anybody use a RAID setup for redundancy ?
Thanks,
Bob

Hi Bob, I wouldn't go RAID at all, though Raid1 is pretty good you still have problems with RAID, the whole reason they came up with RAID5, RAID10, etc...
I think two independant drives are better than 2 tied together, and there are many options for backups.
Almost more important than the External Drive itself is the Chipset in the External, Oxford being good & Prolific & others not so.
My Books have had far less than glowing reviews for Macs...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2191614&tstart=0
http://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3219&p=42023&hilit=western+digital#p420 23
http://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2939&p=34120&hilit=western+digital#p3412 0
If you try LaCie then have a few spare Power Supplies on hand.
I'd stay away from Bus Powered drives & 2.5" drives also, here's some choices, I'd go Firewire & drives with a 5 year warranty over 3 year warranty...
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/
Lately I use the Voyager...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10618536&#10618536
Also see the last post there for the OP's review.

Partition external hard drive-what format do I use

I'm trying to partition an external hard drive by following the instructions in the disk utility help and am confused about which "format" to use. My choices are: Mac OS extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended (case sensitive, journaled), Mac OS Extended (case sensitive), Unix file system and Free space.
I've looked in the forums and in the disk utility for definitions of these terms and am sorry if its there and I just don't see it.
On a different subject is there any opinion as to whether I should create a partition that should or should not be used for startup? What is the difference and which is better?
Thank-you very much,
Margie

Choose Mac OS extended (Journaled) unless you have a specific reason to use another format.
(31565)

I am using Iphoto 11 ver 9.4.3 on mac using oxs 10.8.5 i want to export calendar projects to an external hard drive. what is the easiest way to do this? i have tried export and import but it didn't seem to work.

I am using Iphoto 11 ver 9.4.3 on mac using oxs 10.8.5 i want to export calendar projects to an external hard drive. my goal is to store them in an external hard drive so it doesn't use up memory on the mac hard drive. is it possible to copy the specific projects without copying the entire library? what is the easiest way to do this? i have tried export and import but it didn't seem to work.

What do you not understand?
You can duplicate the iPhoto library (command - D ) and delete everything except the project and its photos from the copy and move that
Or
However the calendar takes very little space - it is simpy database entries - it is the photos in the calendar that take space - and for most people you would wnat to keep those photos in your library
you can use a photo in 50 calendars and it still is only one photo in your library - as I explained calenders do not exist as such - they are simply database entries telling iPhotop how to display the calendar - they take almost no space at all
LN

External Hard Drive - "The disk you inserted was not readable"

Yesterday I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB external hard drive and I ran disk utility and had it erased and formatted for my iMac. Then I put all my video files and movies on there to free up some space on my main computer hard drive. The FreeAgent external hard drive showed up on my desktop right under the main hard drive and it was working fine.
Today I downloaded and installed Boot Camp and then installed Windows XP Home Edition. After I was done, I went back to OS X and now there's no icon for the FreeAgend external hard drive on my desktop and instead a windows pops up saying "Disk Insertion-- The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" and my only options are "Disk Utility", "Eject", and "Ignore".
So I can't access my external hard drive now but I don't want to do the "erase" option on Disk Utility to reformat it since I have all my video files on there now.
I don't know what to do-- please help!!

Contact Seagate for tech support.

External hard drive, what FS to use...

External hard drive of 2TB, what filesystem to use and to protect the disk?
The main concern is portability, I might need to use the disk in other OS or distro.
The second concern is safety, if I lose the disk I would have important data lost with it.
So, I was thinking to use udf as filesystem as it seems well supported everywhere nowadays:
mkudffs --blocksize=512 --media-type=hd --utf8 --lvid="soandso" --vid="soandso" --fsid="soandso" /dev/sdZ
And keep a directory inside protected via veracrypt since it also seems to support Linux, OSX, and Windows.
What do you think? Any flaw in this plan? What do you suggest?
Last edited by ezzetabi (2014-12-04 13:10:14)

Interesting... I was in a similar situation recently. I've never heard of UDF before. In my situation I went with FAT32 for ease of use and compatability.
Does UDF support journaling? If not, what would make UDF a better choice over FAT32?
I found a few websites that discussed using UDF on an external drive. It seems possible but a little weird or tricky to setup properly.

I can't transfer files from my mac to an external hard drive. what can i do?

i have tried to transfer files from my mac to my external hard drive but i just couldn't.. help me

leemamacita wrote:
i have tried to transfer files from my mac to my external hard drive but i just couldn't.. help me
More information would help. How is the external connected? Does the external appear on your Desktop? Has the external been formatted for a Mac? What method do you use to transfer files? When you try to move a file to the external, what does happen?

I cannot pass information from my Mac to my external hard drive, what can I do?

Hello,
This is my first Mac and I am new to all of it. I have an external hard drive that I use to use with my old PC . On the external hard drive box it says its compatible with both windows and Max os x. I can pass files from my external hard drive to Mac but I cannot pass files from my MacBook Air to my external hard drive. No messages comes up or anything explain why it simply doesnt allow me to do so. What can I do?

Your hard drive is formatted NTFS for windows. That format is read-only from OSx. If it's not needed on Windows anymore, you can use Disk Utility and format it for the Mac. Mac OS extended (Journaled) - Partition Map scheme of GUID Partition table.
Make sure to save any data from the drive as it will be wipped doing the above.

Failing-but-possibly-repaired external hard drive: what to do?

I had a problem restoring a file from my external hard drive; disk repair said there were serious problems with the disk; DiskWarrior repaired it, but said there may be some missing files. (There's now a "backup" icon and a "rescued files" icon on the hard drive.)
What's the best next step? Assume the "repair" took? (Doubt this is prudent.) Clone the external hard drive onto another and resume Time Machine from that point? (Possible?) Simply start over with TM on the new drive and ditch the old?

Are these your only backups? If so, I'd advise putting that drive "on the shelf" until you can get a new one and get a full backup on it, preferably a "bootable clone."
The two most popular apps for that are [CarbonCopyCloner|http://www.bombich.com>, which is donationware, and [SuperDuper|http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html]. It has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling.
Then, if you want to try to salvage your Time Machine backups, delete the "rescued files" folder. The only other thing on the drive should be your Backups.backupdb folder. Start your Mac up from the Install disc, then Restart normally. That should trigger a "deep traversal" on the next Time Machine backup, where Time Machine will compare everything on your system to the backups, and back up anything that's missing. You should see "Scanning nnnn items" on the Time Machine Preferences window. That will take somewhat longer than a normal backup, but should get you caught up with the current contents of your system (some copies of things you'd deleted or changed may be gone).
Or, as kingfumonkey says, do a zero-out erase and start fresh.
Either way, continue both normal Time Machine and regular "clone" backups. You might want to consider getting a portable external for the clone, so you can take it to your safe deposit box, workplace, relative's house, or other secure off-site location, so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, direct lightning strike on your power lines, etc.

After backing up through time machine on external hard drive, how do you access that data?

I backed up my MacBook to an external hard drive through Time Machine. After it was all done and I reconnected the external hard drive to make sure that I could access everything that was backed up, I couldn't get into the data on the external hard drive because it said that it was backed up through Time Machine.
What does this mean? How to I access the data that is on my external hard drive?

There are 2 options.
1) (The Suggested way) With the TM external drive connected Open The Time Machine App in Applications and you can browse what has been backed up.
2) Open Finder and select the drive name on the left then the Backups.backupsdb folder and in there is all your files from the backups you have made listed under your Machine Name and in that folder under the dates/times they were created

I'm not able to save any files on an none apple external hard drive, what can i do to make it work?

I bought a omega 320GB external hard drive so a friend could save the files off an old windows laptop i had but now when i try and open the files on my mac, it doesn't let me. i'm also not able to save any file on to this hard drive either! can some one please help me?

The drive has the NTFS format, which the Mac OS can read but can't write to. Copy the files from the external drive onto your Mac, then reformat the external drive using Disk Utility, creating a Mac OS Extended volume and using the GUID partition scheme. Then you'll be able to write to the drive. Note that reformatting erases everything from the drive, so don't do it until after you've saved the drive's contents to other media.

HT1338 my mac pro doesn't see my usb external hard drive what can i do?

I'm having a problem with my mac pro not see my usb external hard drive. Can someone tell me something I can do to get the mac tosee the external drive?
Thank you in advance.
George

Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) and check the sidebar. If it's in it, select it and format it unless you have files

External Hard Drive -- What do you recommend plase

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