Hard Drive Shot - 2nd Time!!
In August of 2007, I got a MacBook to use for college. My sister got the exact same model, on the same day. She has had no problems with her machine. I, on the other hand, have had hard drive problems not once, but twice, in the short period of time that I've owned the machine.
The first time this happened, I turned the machine on, and it made clicking noises and soon displayed that dreaded gray screen of death. Soon, a folder icon with a question mark appeared. I had one friend look at it, then she asked her boyfriend, who is much better with computers, about it. He doesn't particularly like Macs and told me to throw it out the window, but as far as real advice, he couldn't help either. I took it to Computer Care here on campus, and they called me a little while later to say the entire hard drive was shot.
I was obviously upset, as I had had the machine for about a month and had nothing backed up. I had to order a new hard drive, and after a lot of hassle involving a very rude customer support person at Apple, problems with shipping, and finally a fairly helpful person at support who helped me figure out the shipping issues, I got my new drive, and Computer Care installed it for me. Needless to say, it wasn't something I wanted to go through again.
The other day, I had my computer on sleep mode, and when I went to use it, it wasn't responding. After I let it sit and let the cursor rotate for a few minutes, I restarted the machine. To my horror, when it started up, once again it was making loud clicking noises and showed the gray screen. Pretty soon the folder with the question mark showed up and I was ready to panic. I called home to get help from my Dad, who knows more than anyone I know about Mac products and swears by them, and to have them look up service centers. We tried a couple of things but I was pretty much resigned to the fact that my hard drive was again damaged and I had once again lost everything. (I had just that day deleted extra stuff from my desktop and was going to back-up as much as possible this weekend. The only thing I have backed up is my iTunes library of music.)
I was shipped the installation disks, and brought my computer to Computer Care once more to have them take a look, just in case. The verdict was the same, and they said it was extremely rare for it to happen twice to the same machine in such a short amount of time. I've now ordered ANOTHER new drive, and called technical support tonight, hoping Computer Care just thought the easiest solution was to replace the drive and that there might be something else I could do to try to salvage what I could. I was walked through trying to see what was on the drive with the first installation disk, but was told once again that everything was probably gone.
When I get the hard drive in the mail, Computer Care will install it once more for me, and I'll use the start up disks again.
I'm here now to see if there's any possible way to get some of my work back, but also to inquire as to whether this has happened to anyone else. Why would this happen twice in such a short amount of time? I've been raised with Mac computers (I remember having a black and white one years back) and have tried to defend them against PC friends in the past, but quite honestly, I'm not sure I want to stick with them after all of this. How do I know this isn't going to happen again?
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Apple has sent me a hard drive free of charge in the past and is doing so again, but they shouldn't have to in the first place. I was upset the first time this happened, and am now as well, but I'm also really confused that I'm having so much trouble with a product from a company that I've stuck by until now.
Anyone had a similar experience?
thanks for your time.
Also, I keep trying to find a way to e-mail Apple about addressing this issue and about the information I am now finding on MacBook HD failures, but I keep getting led in circles in the support section of the website. Anyone know which email I'd use to contact them about this?
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I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8
Unfortunately, Time Machine backups that are stored on a drive that has been connected directly to a Mac are completely different than Time Machine backups that are stored on a Time Capsule.
Frankly, it is not worth the effort and trouble to try to transfer the old backups to the new Time Capsule.....my opinion....having done this in the past.
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http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
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Ciao. -
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That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
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Alway, always consider RAID system one disk.. backup onto another disk.. and if the photos or movies are at all important to you.. ie your family .. make another copy and store in a relatives house.. There is no such thing as too much redundancy. -
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When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
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Tirrel wrote:
I had the same idea as you however when I tried going to Disk Utility and I tried to erase it an error message came up telling me that it is unable to erase.
Unable to erase, or unable to unmount?
If Time Machine is trying to back up to it, or some other process is using it, Disk Utility won't be able to unmount it. Turn Time Machine OFF; if you have the drive open via the Finder or any other app, close it or quit the app(s).
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I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives. Is this possible? Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
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That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives.
Let me be clear.. you want to partition the one disk.. use it for TM and move your files to the external disk.. and then backup to the same disk.. You can do it.. but that is not a backup.. that is an experiment in how long you can get away with running files and backups on the same disk before you lose everything.. like Russian Roulette.. pull the trigger enough times and laws of probability will do you in.
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Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Why not just connect the PC directly to the TC by ethernet and copy the files over?
It is hugely faster and much less mucking around.
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There is more info here.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331 -
I want to run both my macbook pro and imac from a single external hard drive.
i bought a time capsual and set it us as my network and plugged my external hard drive into it. so now both my computers can access it and work on the same image and film files. the time capsual does a lovely job of backing up both my computers and my wifes. but i cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
I did the upgrade to maverics on my imac which has caused me a major headache as now all my apature albums have been updated to 3.5.1 but my macbook pro can no longer open them because im unable to upgade it to maverics, but thats another story.
If anyone can help me with my time machine issue i would be very greatful.
many thanksi cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
The TC for whatever it is promoted as,, is still a simple hard disk in a router. It was designed for laptops to use as a backup. A desktop can use a USB drive, faster cheaper and more reliable than a network drive but the laptops need a network wireless storage. Hence the TC. It is NOT nor was it ever designed to do the job you are trying to use it for.. it is not a NAS.. it has no internal backup.
What is more Time Machine has no ability to backup network drives no matter what their format.
So the solution is to either use a real backup software.. eg Carbon Copy Cloner which can do far more than TM can or ever will. It is around $40 so hardly expensive. But since the TC was never designed for it, this will be slow.. and the next question is where are you going to back to. Using the TC as backup location for your files is less than great. Primarily because all your files are still on the same device albeit on different disk. It is also because mixing data and TM backups is not so great. The TC cannot be partitioned although you can alleviate some of the issues..
See this info.
Q3 here http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Let me go back to the question.
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
Fundamentally the TC is the wrong place to do this.
The right place is to plug the USB drive into the iMac.. since it is a desktop machine and you are probably not lugging it around. Simply share the USB drive to the network.
The MBP can then access the USB drive, and it will be around twice the speed of networking to the same drive on the TC. TM on the iMac can then also backup the USB drive to the TC as part of the normal TM backups.
The only thing is the iMac needs to be turned on to allow MBP access. -
Using an external hard drive now my time machine is broken
Hi All,
i have an external hard drive now my time machne has overheated and failed
this works fine with time machine
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JasonI guess the external drive is hanging off the Mac..
Getting access to the drive from PC should be possible.. you may need to move public directory onto the external drive and then set up permissions to do it.. I have not done it and simply would not do it.
External hdd are cheap enough buy one for the pc.. That is then formatted NTFS which windows is going to natively read.. this will be much easier if the backups are ever required than to use HFS+ formatted disk hanging off the Mac.
You can also get your dead TC fixed.
https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repairers -
HT201250 how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up
how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up so that I may view the files independently on apple tv please?
To elaborate on above. I am looking to add about 300gig of photos on an external hard drive to TC.
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