External Hard Drive?? What's the best to get, Hows it all work??
I'm wondering if anyone can help me. I'm wanting to free up the space on my mac and thinking an ext HD would be the way to go.
Firstly, what do I get? who do I stay away from. I'm wanting to get something between the 500GB - 1TB mark. What's most compatible with the intel based imacs, do I go firewire or usb?
Secondly, can I use an ext HD as fast and easily as I use my internal HD? For example; basically all I want an ext HD for is to import, store, minipulate and playback my video footage in iMovie. I've currently got 160GB of Video on my HD and that's just from a few months of shooting. (my wife is both baby and camera crazy) Can you use them this way or are they just simply more of a back up unit.
Hope I've made sense, any input would be greatly appreciated.
cheers, John
John,
1. Buy the largest FireWire drive you can afford.
2. If other interfaces "come along for the ride" for free, then so much the better.
3. You basically have 4 places (in my opinion) from which to acquire your new drive.
a. OtherWorldComputing - http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/400+USB2/ . 500GB, quad interface for $230 USD. The positives are price and OWC's very good customer service (in my personal experience). The negatives are the slight noise from the fan.
b. G-Technology - http://g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVEQ.cfm . 500GB, quad interface for $300 USD. I own 2 of these. Cost more, but ZERO noise as they use passive cooling. Longer warranty. I can't address the service issue as I have never had to use it.
c. LaCie - http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10894 . 500GB, quad for $220 USD. I have not owned this, but have owned 2 LaCie Porsche drives. Good service (personal experience) and price. Negative is the fan noise. Slight.
d. Wiebe Tech - http://www.wiebetech.com/products/toughtech.php . You buy the enclosure from them ($120 USD) and then insert your own hard drive (500 GB from NewEgg for $120). Slightly higher cost than OWC and LaCie. Small DIY effort. No noise with no fan. Look at the ToughTech XE series. Very good reputation in the market.
,dave
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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 -
Is it possible to use an external hard drive to use the music collection at home and at work?
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When working with an iPhone earlier builds of iTunes would remove any file not physically present in the local library, even if there was an entry for it, making manual management practically redundant on the iPhone. This behaviour has been changed but it will still only permit manual management with a library that has the correct internal ID. If you don't want to sync your library between machines on a regular basis just copy the iTunes Library.itl file from the current "home" machine to any other you want to use, then clean out the library entires and import the local content you have on that box.
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(unless you are running Lion in which case see below))
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For the benefit of others who may read this thread:
Obviously the foregoing only applies to DVDs you have made yourself, or other home-made DVDs that have been given to you. It will NOT work on copy-protected commercial DVDs, which in any case would be illegal.
And from the TOU of these forums:
Keep within the Law
No material may be submitted that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act.
Do not submit software or descriptions of processes that break or otherwise ‘work around’ digital rights management software or hardware. This includes conversations about ‘ripping’ DVDs or working around FairPlay software used on the iTunes Store.
If you are running Lion or later:
From the MPEG Streamclip homepage
The installer of the MPEG-2 Playback Component may refuse to install the component in Lion. Apple states the component is unnecessary in Lion onwards, however MPEG Streamclip still needs it. See this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3381
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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.
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MargieChoose Mac OS extended (Journaled) unless you have a specific reason to use another format.
(31565) -
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Any input is greatly appreciated!! I am sick over losing the videos and had a little hope on Adobe Organizer until I was unable to open them. I am thinking it is due to my external hard drive not being plugged in. I thought when I transferred from the external hard drive to Adobe 13 that it would be there without the external hard drive needing to be attached but maybe I did something wrong.
Thanks again for any help!!!!jnrmendonca
It had 4 years of photos and videos on it.
To what did your camera record those photos and videos - camera's internal memory, inserted memory card, other?
Any remote chance that the latter may still exist for you to use to download the camera files to your new external hard drive?
ATR -
I have moved my library to an external hard drive and changed the location of the iTunes media folder in Preferences, but every time I close and re-open iTunes, I have to do it all over again. How can I make the iTunes media folder change permanent? I have an older machine with Windows XP.
I don't believe mounting the hard drive should be necessary, unless you have several external drives and want your computer to recognise them as folders, rather than drives. I've never had to mount a hard drive, ever. If you don't know how to do it, then it shouldn't be necessary now.
Try this:
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Make a note of which drive-letter the external drive has been allocated. (Look in Windows Exploer)
Look at the file location for a song. Make sure it plays (and therefore that iTunes has found it). Highlight it and select File/Get Info/Summary>Where: and make a note of the drive letter for that song.
Close and shut down the computer.
The next time you turn the computer on again, connect the external drive
Before you start iTunes - check the external drive in Windows Explorer. Is it ready, does it have the same drive-letter that it had last time? Can you go into the drive and see the files on it?
Once you can, start iTunes. (If the drive lettter has changed, you need to work out why before going any further.)
If iTunes fails to find your external drive, you need to check where iTunes is looking for your Library.
Select the same song you checked before (presumably iTunes can no longer find it). Follow the procedure for locating it. You should be able to see where iTunes thinks the file is. It's the drive that counts. Which drive letter is iTunes looking at? Is it the same one that it was previously (which should also be the same one that the drive has now).
What happens, which step do you have problems with?
Message was edited by: the fiend -
Final cut is not reading events or projects from my external hard drive, what can I do?
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Like this
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Using an external hard drive to connect the camera to the Mac Book Pro
I am about three weeks away from a 9 to 4 pin firewire cable. In the meantime, I am logging and capturing from my Canon AX HI through my external hard drive. I am not super amazed at the quality of the image, it's noisy.
I am using HDV tapes, and I don't beleive the lighting should be causing the issue.
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Thanks for any help.There is ZERO quality loss when you capture via firewire. It is a digital transfer of files...that's it. The issue you have is that you are trying to judge the quality of your image based on what you see with your computer monitors, and that is simply the LAST thing you should be doing.
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Shane -
I have an external hard drive that I have been using for years. All of a sudden my mac will not recognize the external as a "save as" device location. But the external does show up on my desktop and I can open it to drag and drop items. What happened and how do I get my mac to rerecognize the device?!?!?
Hi,
Check Finder>Preferences>Sidebar, is it checked there to show external drives? -
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. -
HT201250 Time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme
How can I setup a time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme? Even better for time managment purposes I want to use the Eithernet Thunderbolt connection for the first back up and then through the wifi there after for daily routine Time Machine back ups.
You can attach a hard drive, but Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port at the AirPort Extreme are not supported by Apple, so it's not possible to say what your actual results might be.
If you decide to try this, it would be wise to have a secondary backup plan in place as well.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html -
hey, can i clone my Macbook Pro internal hard drive and then paste it all onto a formated external hard drive, then make the Mac use the external as the primary hard drive? please help for i only have around 618mb left out of 189GB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If what doesn't work?
If cloning your internal drive to the external drive is not successful, I expect CCC will tell you so. Assuming that doesn't happen, you will have a bootable replica of the internal drive on the external drive once CCC has finished.
You can then do any of several things:
1. Replace your internal drive with a much larger one (320GB or 500GB, or even larger), and clone the external drive's contents onto the new drive so you'll have all your data in one place. Note that if you do this, you'll also need to buy an external drive that's large enough to back the new internal drive up on.
2. Boot from the external drive as a temporary measure while you clear at least 30-40GB of data off the internal drive, allowing you to keep using it and saving small amounts of data to it. The external drive will then contain the only copies of the files you've deleted from the internal drive, so you'll need a seond external drive large enough to back both the other drives up on.
If you can't comfortably clear a minimum of 30GB off the internal drive, you really need a larger internal drive right now, and you shouldn't bother fooling around with the inadequate one you have — you'll just quickly overfill it again.
3. Replace the optical drive in your MBP with a large conventional hard drive, giving you two hard drives inside the machine. You will then need one or more external drives large enough to back up both of the internal drives.
If you sense a theme here — back up, back up, back up — you are correct. It's flat-out foolhardy to own or use a computer without maintaining complete, up-to-date backups of everything at all times. -
How do i transfer my iphoto events to an external hard drive and have the pictures remain within their original events? Every time i try it splits up all of my pictures one by one. You'd think you'd be able to just drag and drop the event, but no such luck. Help!!
What version of iPhtoo do you have?
To export the photos in an event use the file menu == export command - see the user tip on exporting for the available options
TO use your iPhoto library on an external drive
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN
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