Hard Drive Storage for Windows

I have an 80 GB hard drive on my white MacBook, but I don't seem to have enough space to install Windows (I need it to run SPSS, which doesn't run on a Mac). I have about 30 GBs free, but the disk won't partition. I'm sick of moving things back and forth from my external hard drive, so I'm thinking about getting a bigger internal hard drive--unless there's a simpler solution.
I've found some 250 GB hard drives at Best Buy for about $60-80, but I don't know how to install it, and I don't know where to go to get that done, that won't charge me an arm and a leg. So, basically, I'm just trying to figure out what my best options are in terms of cost and efficiency.
Should I go ahead and and invest in a new hard drive--my computer is 3.5 years old--or should I get a $300 mini pc laptop?

cristin:
should I get a $300 mini pc laptop?
No! You can upgrade your Hard Disk Drive and max out your RAM for that kind of money.
I've found some 250 GB hard drives at Best Buy for about $60-80, but I don't know how to install it, and I don't know where to go to get that done, that won't charge me an arm and a leg.
You did not identify exactly which MacBook you have, but here are some drives that should work for your computer. You can compare them with what you saw at BestBuy. You can also call Tech Support at OWC and they will give you useful information. Their website will give you video directions for installation, or else you will find step by step directions with pictures at iFixit. It is very doable. You can do it yourself and save yourself some money for other things. Look over the directions and if you have questions post back and ask. If you think you would like to try it, I will post additional tips to help you through the task.
Please let us know the processor speed of your computer, as well as how much RAM you have installed.
Good luck.
cornelius

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External hard drive /storage for use with mini and XP (bootcamp)

Never purchased an external hard drive (storage) before so not sure if this is possible.
Basically I have an intel mini with 60gb hard drive, which I have now allocated 20 to xp via boot camp. I'm quickly using up the 20gb with a few games so I want to purchase an external storage device that will work with both osx and windows - is this possible?
My mini hasnt 'seen' a few USB devices, can anyone recommend one which is compatible with the intel mini?
would any external drive have to be partinioned as well?

I still do not know which format would be the best. That is so that I can use it easily between mac OSX and windows. Is FAT32 the only true option? How limited is it? I heard it is limited to 4GB file size for windows and 32 GB for Mac. Are there other sources I have not found with more concrete information on the limitations of this format?
I really do still need this information and I need to back up my drive before I can take the computer in for service.

How can I transfer files off an external hard drive formatted for windows?

I just bought my first mac (yay!) and am trying to transfer my files off of my old pc. The problem is that I stored all my personal files on an external hard drive, which is of course formatted for windows. My mac will open it, but it is "read only." I tried plugging it back into my pc and using the Migration Assistant to transfer my files over, but it was not detected (rest of the pc was).
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Format the extra HDD to EXFAT as previously indicated. There are two ways that can use to transferr the data.
1. Connect both drives to the PC and the copy the files to the newly formatted (EXFAT) drive from the HDD with the data . Then connect the EXFAT drive to the MBP and transfer the data to same.
2. Connect both drives to the MBP and open DISK UTILITY>RESTORE. Drag the drive with the data on it to the 'Source' field. Drag the EXFAT drive to the 'Destination' field. Click on the 'Restore' butt is on. After the transfer has been completed, close DISK UTILITY and place the data on the MBP where you want it.
Ciao.

How do I expand the partitioned protion of my hard drive further for windows?

My name is Ryan,
I have and am running Windows 7 on my Mac, I went through bootcamp and partitioned 20GB from my Hard drive.
I need to add a minimum of 10GB and a max of 20GB to the partitioned Windows portion. I have more than enough memory on my mac to cover 20GB.
When I try to partition more in Utilities, it will only give me the option to delete the Windows portion, not to add to it, I can not contract the Macintosh (or expand it for that matter). I merely can only stare at them. How do I get over or around this wall?
Thank you,
Ryan Miller

You can't saw off the limb you are standing on, or resize the Volume you are booted from.
You may be able to resize that Volume if you boot to Recovery mode, and use Disk Utility from there.

External Hard drive partitioning for Windows

Hi I have a MacBook Pro and I am trying to download Windows via a Seagate 1 TB external Hard Drive. I have already used this external hard drive for backups and have it partitioned as an MSDOS with 500 GB and OSEJ also with 500 GB. When I use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 8 it says I need a single drive as FAT partition. How do I keep the memory on my OSEJ while still installing Windows 8. Thank you!
John

I don't know what OSEF is, but as far as Boot Camp is concerned only two partitions may exist - the original OS X partition and the Windows partition made by Boot Camp.
I don't know what you are downloading to the external drive. If it is the Windows drivers for Windows on Boot Camp then those you can put on an external drive. But the driver disk can only be used after Windows has been installed and running.

I have a an external hard drive formatted for Windows, and I want to move those files to a new hard drive formatted for both Windows and OS. Is this possible?

I just purchased a MB Air 13", as well as a Seagate Slim Backup Plus. I have an older external hard drive that I was using with a Dell laptop. I would like to get the files off of the older external hard drive, and onto the new Seagate drive. Is this possible? I'd also like to be able to add files going forward to the Seagate from either a PC or a Mac and be able to view/use them on the MB Air 13".
Thanks in advance.

You will have to format the Seagate external HDD to a format common to both Mac and PC such as ExFAT. That should allow you to transfer files from the old HDD and still allow you to use with your MBA.
Ciao.

I just purchased the Mac Mini Server with the intention of replacing Lion Server with Lion for the first hard drive while installing Windows 7 thru Bootcamp on the second hard drive. Is it possible for me to do this? Thanks.

I just purchased the Mac Mini Server with the intention of replacing Lion Server with Lion for the first hard drive while installing Windows 7 thru Bootcamp on the second hard drive. Is it possible for me to do this? Thanks.

I would use Parallels or VMWare and use the second drive to hold the virtual machine. That way the VM only uses the space that it needs and you can still use the remainder of the drive for other things, not to mention that you would not need to reboot to run windows.
Also Time Machine does not back up a boot camp partition.

I would like to be able to optimize my cc installation. I am using a ssd card as my primary hard drive on a windows 8.1 machine with 32 gigs of memory. I have additional spinner hard drives in this machine. Everything is SATA 2 or 3. How should I inst

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Barcode1 I would recommend you install the Adobe Creative applications included with your membership to your Primary hard drive which contains your operating system. For questions on how to optimize specific settings such as scratch disks I would recommend posting in the relevant point product forum. You can find a list of available forums at https://forums.adobe.com/welcome.

Hard Drive configuration for speed

I've got a question regarding the best hard drive configuration for my mac pro. I'm looking to increase the boot speed, application load speed and particularly the speed with which hard drive intensive photoshop processes complete. Right now I'm just using some normal SATA II drives. I'd appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on the various options I am currently considering.
-2x 64GB SSD in a RAID 0 for OS X and applications with some large SATA drives for storage
-4x 300GB VelociRaptor 10k RPM SATA HDD in a RAID 0
-2x 147GB SAS 15k RPM HDD in RAID 0 with some large SATA drives for storage
I am particularly in the dark about the controllers I'd use for each solution. Clearly, I would absolutely require a PCIe card for the SAS drives, but would there be a marked advantage to using a hardware RAID card for the SATA drives over the software RAID in OS X? Also, how easy is it to get the mac pro to boot off drives connected to a controller card rather than the standard setup? And lastly, if there is good reason to use a card, are there any in particular that you would recommend?
Thanks a lot!

2. No. Do not make two partitions unless you do not plan to use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on that partition. If you plan to create a Boot Camp partition then you must partition the drive as one Mac OS X volume. Boot Camp Assistant will then create the Windows volume.
3. This drive must be repartitioned and reformatted as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to two. Use the graphic resizer to set the desired sizes for each volume as you want. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the first volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. Select the second volume you created and repeat Steps 4-6.
4. Now here I don't know what you think is your best option. You can buy any two hard drives you want. The ones I identified were only an example of what you could purchase for under $300. There are others, slightly more expensive, that would work, and you would still be under your $300 budget. The Samsung drives are good drives and reasonably priced, but they are just one of several alternatives. You should do some checking on your own before making your decision. I'm just giving some guidance, not trying to tell you what you should do. I've provided three sites where you can read reviews and benchmarks before you decide. You need to "own" your decision.
As for how you configure these two drives that's a secondary issue. I would recommend using them for backup. Two possible arrangements are a Mirrored or a Striped RAID array. A mirrored RAID array would create one volume that has a 1 TB capacity. Everything saved to that volume is essentially saved twice - once on one drive then a copy is mirrored to the other drive. This is not what you described in your Item 4. That's not how it works. Anything saved to the mirrored RAID array is saved the way I described it just above. It makes no difference where the files come from.
Now you can use the mirrored RAID array as a Time Machine backup drive if you want, but then you should not use it for other data storage. You would need the entire capacity as backup for both of the 500 GB drives you currently have. A mirrored RAID provides some data redundancy by having a copy of everything one each drive. Thus, if one drive fails the other drive still functions and your data backup is intact. Mirrored RAIDs are generally no faster than an individual drive that makes up the array.
The second suggestion was to make a Striped RAID array. This type of array produces one volume that is twice the size of the the two drives that make up the array. Thus, you would have a single volume that is 2 TBs in size. You can use this volume for your Time Machine backups also. Striped RAIDs do not provide any data redundancy. If one drive fails all the data stored on the RAID will be lost. However, Striped RAIDs are nearly twice as fast as either drive that makes up the array. This would give you very fast storage and backup.
You could also just leave the two drives to operate independently. Use on for Time Machine backups, use the other for more storage space.
Other possibilities abound. It's pretty much up to you to decide what will fit best into your needs today and in the future. Don't feel obliged to do what one person tells you. Five different users on the Discussions will give five different opinions.
I suggest you educate yourself a bit on backup and restore by reading the FAQ about backup and restore at The XLab FAQs.
Following is more information on RAIDs:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?
OS X has software for creating RAIDs by using Disk Utility. Open Disk Utility and select DU Help from the Help menu. Search for "raid" without quotes. You will find information on how to set up mirrored and striped RAIDs using Disk Utility.

Hard drive failed on windows computer. all data lost. backed up most itunes on an older model my passport ultra external hard drive. How do I transfer from external hard drive to new computer hard drive?

The hard drive on my windows computer failed and the data is not retrievalbe.
I had a new hard drive installed.
I had backed up on a older model my passport ultra external hard drive my itunes up to about a year ago.
How can I move the back up extenal drive Itunes data onto my new hard drive- will it work on itunes?
===========
Meanwhile my ipod has all my music and podcasts up till a month ago. What will I lose if I put my external drive music back on?

Hi Perilman,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities! I understand that all of your iTunes media is on an external hard drive and you would like to move that media onto your new Windows computer hard drive. The following article has step by step instructions for this specifically. Part 5 in the External drive section is probably what is going to be most relevant to you.
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4527
Part 5: Copy music to your new computer
To copy all your music files (including the library file that holds all your playlists and other settings) to your new computer:
I hope this helps,
-Joe

Can I partition my hard drive to hold Windows 8 (Beta), instead of Windows 7, and can I do this with an external CD drive?

I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion installed, but my CD drive inside my computer is damaged*, and it's far cheaper to buy an external CD drive than to repair it entirely. Before I do either, I would like some grasp of whether or not it's worth my time and money, as I've yet to order the external drive or make a genius bar appointment.
Also, the reason I'm choosing Windows 8 (Beta) is because it's free.
*I dropped my computer once two years ago. I haven't even used my CD drive until recently when trying to install Windows 8. I assume the drop was the issue. I've used compressed air to remove dirt/dust as well as resetting the PRAM multiple times and nothing seems to work, but I'm not worried about it.
Thank you.

Can I partition my hard drive to hold Windows 8 (Beta), instead of Windows 7, and can I do this with an external CD drive?
No and No.
1: Apple only supports Windows 7 at this time in BootCamp (direct install into a bootable partition) because Win 8 is in Beta and no Mac hardware drivers are available yet from Apple for Windows 8.
2: You can't install Windows from a external cd drive into BootCamp, it has to be a internal one far as I know, perhaps a USB will work I don't know.
Yes:
1: You can download and install Windows 8 Beta into a the free virtual machine software called VirtualBox, which Windows 8 will run in a window in OS X. This is better as it's still in Beta and Windows Beta releases will expire. Plus Windows 8 is a pain in the behind and you will want to be able to have VirtualBox or OS X be able to regain control over the computer.
http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/03/try-windows-8-consumer-preview-virtualbox/
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS write

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS read files. Copies that would take seconds from a Windows based machine never complete. I have to close the transfer or shut off the machine half the time. Worst computer I have EVER owned, crashes non-stop, constantly freezes, and seems like EVERY operation is more complicated with this thing. Literally, my 1997 Compaq was FAR MORE reliable and user friendly.

This is one of the messages I keep getting; The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in -- File Whatever -- can’t be read or written.(Error code -36)
I have copied things to the hard drive in the past, but it has always been incredibly slow, and now just seems to freeze and fail

Moving Itunes Library from a Mac hard drive to a Windows hard drive.

We would like to move our Itunes library from our G5 that is on a external hard drive to another external hard drive that is Windows based to use on our other computer that runs Windows 7. We will not be moving it back to the G5. The hard drive contains over 700 GB of music on it. Is there any way to do this ? Any software ? I looked for answers but could not find any. Thanks in advance for your help.

This did not work. I signed into the iTunes store as the same user and I can still not play the music I purchased or the music I am authorized to play that others purchased. Can anyone help out with this question?

How do I transfer data/videos from a Mac-OS formatted portable hard drive to a Windows-formatted portable hard drive?

I was trying to drag-and-drop the contents (most of them are downloaded torrent movies) of my Mac-OS formatted portable hard drive to my Windows-formatted portable hard drive. It didn't work. How do I go about this?

Hi FornPLAY,
Your Mac will not be able to write to an NTSF formatted drive, as Mac OS X only supports reading from NTSF natively. You have a few options to be able to use that Windows formatted drive. You could try reformatting the drive using Disk Utilty to a format like MS-DOS (FAT). That would allow for both Mac and Windows cross-compatibility.
~~
Austin

Hard drive size for macbook pro

I have filled my hard drive storage and I would like to increase the storage size. What is the maximum size of drive I can go up to? I believe today that I have a 320 GB storage device.

A motherboard with SATA III - the first year of MacBook Pro with it didn't go smoothly as planned.
Apple has quietly introduced support for the next generation NVM Express (NVMe) interface to SSD Flash drives in their latest OS X 10.10.3 update as well as in the new Retina MacBook which was released on April 10th.
PCIe-SSD helps make things smaller, less watts and heat, as well as faster, but the heck with SATA II & III, where is our PCIe 3.0?
SSD tech has changed more and faster in the time since it hit mainstream in summer of 2008, constantly changing.
When the G5 came out, that summer almost no one expected or was ready to see and support an SATA disk drive.
Picking up a new tech interface and product? Apple? really?
Server Storage (and prices)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7152/new-elements-to-samsung-ssds-the-mex-controll er-turbo-write-and-nvme
http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_announces_industry_s_first_25inch_nvme_ssd

Hard Drive Storage for Windows

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