FW800 v eSATA & External Hard Drive set-up questions

Hi there: I've loosely got 2 questions to the wise here...
I recently acquired a new MacBook Pro 17" and have extended my collection of external drives. I have:
- 300GB Lacie (connected via FW800) after years of service, now semi-retired used solely as a clone of the system drive
- 1TB Seagate Freeagent (via FW800) currently used as 2/3 Timemachine and 1/3 general non-important storage
- 2TB WD MyBook Studio II (via FW800) to be used as a FCP scratch disc.
I've only had the Seagate for a day and it's behaving ok but seems quite warm to the touch, whilst the WD (arrived today) seems to run much cooler.
I have thought of changing things so that:
- 1TB Seagate becomes the scratch drive
- 2TB WD becomes 3 partitions: 1/ small amount of storage 2/ timemachine backup and 3/ a scratch disc backup
My logic being that (a) the Seagate will be in use less and (b) that I will be able to back-up capture/scratch stuff. There are two possible downsides to this:
- That I will effectively half my capacity for scratch, although at 2TB I might have over-estimated my need in any case.
- I give up my potential for eSata for the scratch disc.
So as well as general advice about my set-up (or proposed set-up) I'm asking whether eSata would be sufficiently faster to justify purchase of an Express/34 card and restricting myself to only using the WD for scratch.
Now give yourself a medal for reading through all this!
Message was edited by: Norliss

Your need for both space and for speed is determined by what codec you're working with, how much of it, and to what complexity. I'd start here to estimate how much space you need:
http://www.videospaceonline.com/
And if you like, you can use my Digital Acquisition Codecs chart to find your codec bitrate:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=0f3cee79d16c357cd5a101cf914073b415dd66068b14f 2a8
eSATA is definitely faster than FW800, but whether you really need that extra boost is something for you to decide. And remember, you can always daisy-chain your backup drive (or connect it via FW400 or even USB-- it's just backup after all), allowing it to backup your scratch files even if they're on another disk.

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I have an external hard drive set up as a Time Machine backup on my IMac. I want to add a second external hard drive and put my Aperture Photo Library on it. Is there a way to have the photos on this second hard drive automatically back up to the Time Mac

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Open System Preference > Time Machine
Click Options....
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K9A2 Platinum esata port and Install and Usage of esata External Hard Drive

I just bought a sata hard drive and an icy dock enclosure for backup purposes. Having never used one before can someone explain how this works?
I have the hard drive in the enclosure, no problem there. I plugged it into the esata port on the back of my motherboard, but vista won't recognize it and when I reboot and go into the BIOS, I don't see it there either. I have purchased Acronis True Image 11 Home for backup and mirroring purposes. I wish to mirror my existing internal drive to this new external drive.
Questions:
1. Can I use the esata ports on the motherboard for this drive, or should I use the PCI bracket and plug it into one of the existing sata ports on the motherboard? If esata port, exactly how do they work? Are there BIOS settings for the esata ports or do they operate more like a usb connection?
2. Do I need to do anything with this drive before using it; format, install operating system...??
3. Are the esata external drive considered plug and play or do I need to plug it in before I boot my computer.
TIA.

Everything seems to be working as I would have expected at this point, with the exception of the size of the mirrored drives.
I decided to make another mirror onto the 3rd drive making all 3 drives identical. So now I would expect all three drives to show the same "GB free" while viewing with Vista explorer. The odd thing is, is that which ever drive I make bootable - SATA5 port and becomes the C: drive, shows 226GB free. The other drives, either as E: or J: will show as 268GB free. Most be an Acronis or Acronis user (me) issue/oddity?
But bottom line, the sata and esata ports seem to be working as I would expect. Though plugging the external hard drive in before booting (power on or off, needs to be unplugged from the esata port) seems to hang at the FasTrack screen as described above.
My only guess to why this all seems to be working currently is that I don't think I ever had my bios set correctly. After enabling the onboard controller, having the drive actually plugged into SATA5, then rebooting, selecting boot sequence and selecting the raid drive as the first boot device. At least this is my recollection, I made so many bios changes previously that I thought I had it all covered.
Any thoughts? I think I will try to get an answer on the Acronis size difference before I try to setup my RIAD 1, since that would require erasing two drives, per your instructions here: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=113738.0
Thanks for help once again.

External Hard Drive set up for Mac and PC

Hi there.
I have a Lacie 1000GB external hard drive conected to Power Book Pro. I don't know much about it but was wondering if I could partition some of it off for my PC back up. As my Powerbook is for buisness (editing) I try and keep it away from emails and things, which I use me PC for. When I first purchased the Lacie HD, after setting it up with the mac I then tried to connect it to the PC to do a general back up of documents, etc. but it wouldn't allow it. Can anyone help with this? Sorry the info is a little vague...
Adam

You need to have a partition for OS X and one for your PC. Partitioning will erase your drive.
Open disk utility in the utilities folder in finder. Choose your external drive.
Choose partition and then under volume scheme choose 2 partitions. Pick the size of the partitions by either dragging the center bar with the dot on it or type in the size. Pick the partition you want to be your mac partition then choose option and pick guid partition table. For format choose mac os extended journaled. Pick a name for this partition
Now pick the other partition and under option choose master boot record. Under format choose MS-DOS file system. Choose a name for this partition.
Now in the right hand corner choose partition. It will take a while so be patient.

Can't write to external hard drive set up by Windows

We have a 300gb Maxtor external hard drive. I had set it up using the Windows laptop I use for work.
The Mini that we have can read, but not write to, this external drive. I just went back and set the Security properties to allow Full Control for the Everyone group. That did not work; the drive is still read-only for the Mini.
Additionally, when it's hooked up to the Mini, the hard drive starts spinning for no apparent reason. When it's doing that, you cannot eject the hard drive. It will whir for several minutes; at times, we've had to reboot the Mini to get the thing to stop.
Is there a Mac OS setting somewhere that needs to be changed to allow the Mini to write to the drive?
Why is the drive spinning for no apparent reason? Is there something we can look at to find out what's happening with it?
Any other suggestions for fixing the problem? I'd like to avoid reformatting it, if possible....

We have a 300gb Maxtor external hard drive. I had set
it up using the Windows laptop I use for work.
The Mini that we have can read, but not write to,
this external drive. I just went back and set the
Security properties to allow Full Control for the
Everyone group. That did not work; the drive is still
read-only for the Mini.
Sounds like the drive is formatted in NTFS. Under OSX, your Mac will be able to read, but not write, to an NTFS formatted drive.
If you format as HFS or HFS+, the Mac will be able to readd/write to the disk, but the Windows box will not be able to recognize the disk.
Since it is a 300gb drive, FAT will not work (FAT does not recognize drives that large).
It must be formatted as FAT32.
It can be formatted as such on either the windows box or the Mac.
You can partition the disk, one HFS+, one FAT32, but the windows box still will not be able to recognize the HFS partition, and the Mac will be able to read/write both.
So...for maximum compatibility and cross-platform usage, format the drive as FAT32.
As for as the periodic drive spin, it's possible Spotlight is updating it's index.

Time Capsule as an External Hard Drive + Ethernet Cable question

In reading up on the Time Capsule, it can be used as a router and for storage purposes.
Some questions:
1) can the Time Capsule be used just as an external hard drive, not for back up purposes at all? Is there a setting that needs to be checked to make sure that it doesnt back up anything at all.
2) can I move files from a macbook or pc to the time capsule via an ethernet cable for faster speeds? Do I need a special ethernet cable?
3) can I also move files from a macbook or pc to the time capsule via wifi if I want, just wondering if it is possible?

slumpey326 wrote:
1) can the Time Capsule be used just as an external hard drive, not for back up purposes at all?
yes.
however, files stored on the TC's disk cannot be backed up using time machine. also, if the drive fails, it will be very difficult to retrieve the data from it.
in other words, you need to find alternatives ways to backing up your data.
Is there a setting that needs to be checked to make sure that it doesnt back up anything at all.
turn time machine off in system preferences > time machine.
2) can I move files from a macbook or pc to the time capsule via an ethernet cable for faster speeds?
i'm not 100 % sure about a PC but definitely from a Mac.
Do I need a special ethernet cable?
[Cat6_|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6cable] will be fine.
3) can I also move files from a macbook or pc to the time capsule via wifi if I want, just wondering if it is possible?
again, not sure about the PC but yes for the Mac.
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

External Hard Drive/Time Machine Questions

The hard drive on my four-year-old-plus MacBook Pro is apparently failing, and I can't afford a new MacBook Pro yet. So I bought an external hard drive, hoping to clone my hard drive and run my computer off the external hard drive if the main drive crashes.
At the moment I can't afford an Apple external hard drive, so I bought a non-Apple model. So I was surprised when it asked if I wanted to use Time Machine to back up my data while I was setting it up. I chose yes, though I'm not even sure if I've set it up correctly.
OK, let me start from square one...
My external hard drive has 1 TB of storage space, and I initially formatted it in one big block - no partitions. If I want to boot off a cloned hard drive, will I have to partition it, so I'm booting off a particular partition?
If I do have to partition it, I understand I can use Apple's Disc Utilities to do the job. Can anyone tell me if there are any special steps or conventions I need to follow? I'd probably create a partition of about 200 GB for my cloned hard drive. (I'm currently using about 120GB on my internal hard drive.)
In fact, I might make two separate 200-GB partitions, cloning my hard drive to one partition, then cloning it to the second partition a few weeks later, just for security.
My first Time Machine backup is scheduled to begin in just half an hour or so. Will it merely copy all my files to the external hard drive, or will it create an operable clone? Approximately how long do you think this initial backup will take, using firewire?
Also, once I get my hard drive cloned, I'm thinking of booting up with the clone and upgrading to Snow Leopard. If everything works fine, then I'll upgrade my main (internal) hard drive to Snow Leopard as well.
Sorry for all the questions. I think I understand the basics; there are just a surprising number of details to figure out.
When I can afford it, I hope to upgrade to a new MacBook Pro 13" or 15" and an iPad, which I'd like to take to work with me.
Thanks for any tips.

David Blomstrom wrote:
If I want to boot off a cloned hard drive, will I have to partition it, so I'm booting off a particular partition?
yes.
you would need to partition it and use one partition for cloning and the other for TM backups.
i don't recommend such a setup, however. it's like putting all eggs in one basket - if (not when) the external fails, you'd have lost both backups @ the same time !
If I do have to partition it, I understand I can use Apple's Disc Utilities to do the job. Can anyone tell me if there are any special steps or conventions I need to follow?
yes.
you can use the instructions in [this|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] user tip.
I'd probably create a partition of about 200 GB for my cloned hard drive. (I'm currently using about 120GB on my internal hard drive.)
the partition for the clone needs to be just a big as your startup disk (e.g. 120 GB). the partition for TM backups, otoh, would ideally be 2-3 times the size of your startup disk.
more information [here_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/1.html].
Will it merely copy all my files to the external hard drive
it will back up everything on your startup disk unless you specifically exclude files from backups.
or will it create an operable clone?
no.
use software such as _*Carbon Copy Cloner*_ to clone your system.
Approximately how long do you think this initial backup will take, using firewire?
the initial backup could take overnight - depending on how much data is to be backed up.
Also, once I get my hard drive cloned, I'm thinking of booting up with the clone and upgrading to Snow Leopard. If everything works fine, then I'll upgrade my main (internal) hard drive to Snow Leopard as well.
yes, that will work just fine. in fact, some users recommend this technique even if the internal drive is not about to fail - better muck up a clone than the regular startup disk.
JGG

IMovie and external hard drive: follow up question

This is a follow up question from the iMovie 6 forum. Hopefully, this question will help the poster on that forum as well. I, too, am working on multiple iMovie 5.0.2 projects at the same time and am running out of hard disk space. I would like to transfer remaining miniDV tape to an external hard drive and, when finished, transfer these clips from the external hard drive to the current iMovie project in my Powerbook, one project at a time. Is this possible ? Will I transfer files from the external hard drive to the Powerbook hard drive and then to iMovie, or directly from the external hard drive to iMovie ? Do I have to format the external drive to Mac OS Extended as advised in iMovie 6 forum in order to transfer miniDV tape to the external hard drive ? When pressing the erase tab to format the external hard drive, will this erase files already on the hard drive before formatting ? Can I transfer projects I am not working on from iMovie to the external hard drive and then transfer them back to the Powerbook when it is time to work on them ? Sorry about all the questions but I need to think very simple-minded when it comes to computer related issues. Thanks for your help.

I was able to use and store iMovie in the external hard drive using my Powerbook as a monitor, so I presume it is formatted correctly
Sorry, but you cannot assume the drive is formatted correctly. iMovie doesn't tell you the drive format is incompatible with iMovie. (it should, but it doesn't.) Some iMovie project features can be saved and some cannot.
It's easy to check the disk format. In the Finder, click on the drive icon and choose File > Get Info from the Finder menubar. The window that opens shows the disk Format. You want it to say "Mac OS Extended". "(Journaled)" is optional.
With some drives, sometimes even that can be wrong. To be sure, use Disk Utility to check the format. When you click on the drive in the list along the left side of the Disk Utility window, the format is displayed at the bottom of the window.
Always, always, always check the disk format before using a drive with iMovie.
Karl

Upgrading Itunes with an external hard drive and another question

Okay so about a month ago I transferred my itunes library to my external hard drive. I have since purchased and downloaded new music/video to my Ipod. Here are my questions if anyone can help me please.
1) Because I moved the library to the external, does that mean I also moved the Itunes program OR just the place where new music is downloaded/purchased and save to?
2) Upgrading to new Itunes on this computer, will that ruin what I have in my library or just upgrade and keep everything the same like it is now?
3) Horror story I heard is that when I upgrade, I may have to re-purchase music from Itunes in order for it to play on new Itunes. If that's true then I am paying like $400+.
I'm not a dummy, but this Ipod and music are very, very important to me. Any help would be very appreciated.
Sincerely,
Gusaphit

gusaphit wrote:
so because you have kept your itunes folder and library on an EHD, I take it you have also deleted the actual Itunes program folder from your computer's C drive?
Not the program folder, iTunes folder where your music library and ancillary files are kept. I haven't had my iTunes music on any internal hard drive on any computer for years.
I am trying to delete the music/movies off of this PC as it is my work station as well.
What steps do I need to take in order to successfully ensure that my Itunes will be secured on my EHD and fully operable should I want to add more music, purchase more music, or delete/re-arrange music as I am doing now.
Check in Preferences>Advanced to make sure that iTunes is pointed to your EHD. If it is, you should be fine. Then, just to make sure that everything is where it should be consolidate your library: File>Library>Organize Library.
Follow-up: If I move the program over to my EHD does that mean I can use any PC to download music into the Itunes library from my EHD?
I don't think you want to move the iTunes.exe file to your EHD. As I understand it, iTunes isn't really happy there and it takes some work to get it there. Just move the library.
I'm asking because you responded and you're cute.
Very happy to help but really, I'm not that cute.

ESATA external hard drive woes under Bootcamp

Hi everyone,
I have just taken delivery of a early 2009 MBPro 17 inch and a WD MyBook USB/eSATA/Firewire external HD.
I am trying to use the MyBook with eSATA in bootcamp with a generic expresscard that utilises the Silcon Image Sil3132 chip. I'm only wanting to use it as a single drive with no RAID. The drive shows up and works fine when booting into Leopard but under bootcamp it is nowhere to be seen in explorer. I have installed the ATA controller driver and in control panel it shows up as it's own "app" (and even tells me theres a WD drive attached to it). It also shows up in Device Manager under SCSI/RAID controllers as "Silicon Image SIL 3132 Softraid 5 controller.
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Available controllers: SIL 3132 revision 1
Location: PCI bus 6 device 0
IRQ number: 5 (0x5)
Device location: Channel 1 Target 1
Type: Disk Drive
Model: WD My Book
Firmware revision: 01.00A01
Serial number: blah blah
ATA version: ATA/ATAPI-6
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Host link speed: Generation 2 (3.0gb/s)
Device link speed: Generation 2 (3.0gb/s)
Look Ahead: Unsupported
Write Cache: enabled
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Am i missing something here?
I am really stuck with this, so if anyone can help i'd be very grateful.
Cheers
John

Where / how can i find that information?
When i "get info" in Leopard it just says it's formatted as "Windows NT File System"
It came formatted as FAT32 but i reformatted in NTFS. Leopard has read and write access thanks to Paragon.
Windows on the other hand can see it if it's plugged into the USB socket, but not under eSATA.
I was wondering maybe that the express card slot might not be fully supported under Bootcamp, meaning no matter what you plug into it the thing won't ever work properly?
The express card is an unnamed generic one with this chip: SiI3132 - PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300
Drivers are here..supposedly: http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=4

ThinkPad T510: eSata External Hard Drive Not Working with Windows 7...

Hey folks,
My LaCie Quadra 1TB drive arrived on Monday and the Quadra disconnects 1 minute into any copy / move function using the eSata connection. The USB 2.0 connection works just fine, however, I invested the extra money in a Quadra specifically to take advantage of eSata connection and would like to get this working.
I received the following from LaCie support:
"...the issue with eSATA and large or small drives on Windows 7 is a known issue. However, it is not limited to LaCie drives and we believe this to be a Windows 7 driver issue from Microsoft... using a third party eSATA card with its own drivers does eliminate the issue."
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Any idea how to get my eSata drive working on my ThinkPad T510 or ThinkPad Mini Dock Plus Series 3?
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Kind regards,
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Hi Bananaman,
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Any further thoughts?

How can i unlock my files from an external hard drive set up previously on windows?

hi
i created some files on an external hardrive when i had a windows os on a laptop
i am trying to unlock them files to sort or delete them the external hardrive is now connected to my imac
i would know any passwords but there is no option to unlock they are read only files?
do i need to open through a windows program again?
or any other way?
using OSX 10.9 (13A603)
thanks in advance if anyone can help

Mac OS X can't write to NTFS drives by default. Drag them to the internal drive first.
(91809)

External hard drive set-up

Hi all,
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Also, is there anything else I should do or know that I'm not asking about?
cheers,
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Hi Studio X and Martin R.
Thank-you for your advise. I really appreciate all of the professional help on this forum!
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External hard drive not readable anymore after a blackout.

We had a blackout yesterday and now my external drive comes up as not readable, it has all my iTunes as well as photo's that are not replaceable. When I attempted to repair permissions, it would only allow me to delete and re-format the hard drive, which I haven't done as I don't want to loose all my stuff. I can't even access my time machine to go back to before the black out. Please help.

Do not attempt to perform a permissions repair. That is not related to the problem you are experiencing.
Do you have that external hard drive set up as a single partition or multiple partitions? If multiple partitions, are all the partitions failing to mount?
Regardless, you are going to have to move to a more robust (and expensive) method of recovering your data than is available with the tools provided by Mac OS X. Your best chance of recovering your data without spending an inordinate amount of money is DiskWarrior:
http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
If the data is very valuable to you and you really really can't lose it, then you might care to try a profesional data recovery laboratory. It is extremely expensive – thousands of dollars whether they are successful or not. There are many good labs; here's one:
http://www.datarecoverylabs.com/
In the future, you simply have to learn to keep redundant backups. Keeping active files on the same device as your backups makes no sense at all; you might as well not bother creating the backups if you're going to do that. Read here for good advice on backups:
http://www.mac-essentials.info/?page_id=213

Music/movies on external hard drive and internal hard drive

I moved my itune library to an external drive using the recommended method (consolidate, etc.) quite awhile ago. Everything is working fine with that. However, at some point, apparently when the external drive was not connected, new music and movies were downloaded into the library folder on the internal hard drive on my computer.
Now iTunes, although it displays the information about the files that are on the external hard drive, when I try to play them, I get the message that "the song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it now?" I can play the song after I locate it on the external hard drive.
My questions:
1)Will I have to "locate" all of these items individually, or is there an easier way to do this? And, is there a way to avoid this problem in the future if I accidentally download an item when the external hard drive is not hooked up?
2)How do I move the files that are now on the internal hard drive to the library on the external hard drive so that iTunes recognizes them?
Thanks!

+However, at some point, apparently when the external drive was not connected,+
Either that, or Windows nicely changed the drive letter on th exHD when you plugged in another USB device like a digital camera or even your ipod. The exHD MUST be connected before you start itunes. It's just the way it's designed.
+1)Will I have to "locate" all of these items individually, or is there an easier way to do this? And, is there a way to avoid this problem in the future if I accidentally download an item when the external hard drive is not hooked up?+
If the drive letter changed from what it was before, all you have to do is assign the correct letter to your exHD permanently.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844
+2)How do I move the files that are now on the internal hard drive to the library on the external hard drive so that iTunes recognizes them?+
Make sure iteuns preferences > Advanced tab are set to have the iteuns folder on the exHD. Then run the library > consolidate command. itunes will move them over to the exHD without losing track of them,.
If you move them in Win Explorer, itunes will lose track.

FW800 v eSATA & External Hard Drive set-up questions

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