How do i back up my files to an external hard drive

I need to reboot my whole computer but i want to save my music, photos, documents etc... I have an external harddrive but am having issues getting my things into it. I've tried selecting and dragging but it's not working. Help?

How is the external disk formatted?
Allan

Similar Messages

IMac 10.5.8 is stuck on Apple logo loading screen , how can I back up my files with an external hard drive ?

so my iMac (10.5.8 its pretty old ) got stuck on the apple logo loading screen (as I call it lol) and it will not go beyond that .I've already made and appointment for the genius bar but now would I back up my files with an external hard drive ? No unfortunately I don't have any other laptop or computer just the external hard drive. how would I back it up? Does it have something to do with "target disc mode"?

Hi,
Thank you for great advice re SuperDuper.
You wasnt to know we didnt live in USA. We will try to get the full retail version of Leopard off the net. We will also phone round the apple resellers.
In the meantime, we are happy running Tiger with the knowledge that SuperDuper has cloned our hard drive in case of a disaster.
SuperDuper recommended backing up the hard drive with a new user account if we were using filevault on the master account. We backed up our hard drive without creating a new user with filevault as we could not read the pdf `Instuctions as preview was not responding.
Is this copy safe to use as a bootable drive or should we copy our entire HD again using a new user account without filevault?
Keith & Shem

How do i back up my files with an external hard drive

i just bought an external hard drive and im not sure how to use it. It seems as though i have to copy and paste files, is there an easier way to do this?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

How do I restore all of my itunes content onto my newly installed computer drive? All my purchase are no longer in my account but I did back up the files onto an external hard drive. Now how do I get them back? Please

how do I restore all of my itunes content onto my newly installed computer drive? All my purchase are no longer in my account but I did back up the files onto an external hard drive. Now how do I get them back? Please

Ummals wrote:
...I did back up the files onto an external hard drive. ...
Did you follow all the steps as detailed here...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

How do i back up my iphone to an external hard drive and not my computer

How do I back up my iphone to an external hard drive attached to my pc and not my pc? My disk on my pc is almost full and even though I selected the external hard drive it still seems to try to back it up to my computer, then says I don't have sufficient storage. I cahnged my folder under preferences to the External Drive folder.

This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
I would also move all of the files from the internal file system to the external since you have now told iTunes that is where they are...before deleting from the internal drive, test iTunes to see that it goes where you want it to go.

How can I store my music files on an external hard drive and listen to them through iTunes that way?

How can I store my music files on an external hard drive and listen to them through iTunes that way? At the moment they're both on the external hard drive and also stored on the computer but I'm quickly running out of memory on my iBook G4 so I'd like to only keep them on the external hard drive and, if possible, delete them from my computer's hard drive. At the moment, when the hard drive isn't plugged in a lot of the files won't play and I get the exclamation mark next to the particular song in iTunes, but everything plays fine when the hard drive is plugged in.
Thank you.

Sounds like your files are playing from the external drive already. To check go to iTunes - Preferences - Advanced and check the Media Folder Location. Change it to the external drive if you need to.

I replaced my hard drive and I backed up my files on an external hard drive but when I reloaded my iweb to my imac none of my files were on it so I can't make changes to my Published web site have I lost my files what can I do

I replaced my hard drive and I backed up my files on an external hard drive but when I reloaded my iweb to my imac none of my files were on it so I can't make changes to my Published web site have I lost my files what can I do

By default iWeb keeps its data in (user)/Library/Application Support/iWeb in a file named Domain. Without this file you cannot proceed (other than by recreating the site from scratch using the published version as a reference) so you need to locate it on the original disk.
To confuse matters, Apple have hidden the user’s Library folder in Lion and Mountain Lion to casual viewers, in an attempt to stop new Mac users messing their machines up. To access it, in the Finder go to the ‘Go’ menu and hold down the Option (Alt) key; the Library folder will appear as a choice.

How do i back up my computer to an external hard drive?

how do i back up my computer to an external hard drive?

Apples Time Machine for backups.
For a bootable clone of your OSX either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Clones.html
Stefan

How do i back up my purchases to my external hard drive?

how do i back up my purchases to my external hard drive?

Hi,
Why not use time machine to back up the contents of your library!
Jim

How can i copy specific music files to an external hard drive?

I'm trying to copy selected artists from my itunes music library to an external hard drive. I don't want to relocate any of my files to the external hard drive for regular use with itunes, I simply want to back up my files.

Open Finder. Go to Music>iTunes>iTunes Music. The folders are organised by artists. You can copy and paste them to your external hard drive.

How do you move itunes movie files only to external hard drive to free up space on imac

need to free up space on my hard drive wanted to move just my movie files to my external hard drive and leave my music on computer

Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357

How to back up 'new files only' to external hard drive?

not sure i'm doing this the best way.... any suggestions would be great!
i have my master photo/video library on my desktop (using a file tree that i've grown & know exactly where things are since 2003- (pre mac).
that file is on mac + saved to an external hard drive. i back this up to my external often, BUT I'm not sure if i'm doing it the best way.
i add photos, change the master file name w/ current 'added to' date, then drag or copy to the external hard drive and it copies/writes. then i go and delete 'older file date' to keep space on external. i've tried to copy using the w/o changing the file name, but then i have 2 copies of same file name on back up and i have to browse to see which one has the new photos?! is there a way to add only the 'new' photos/files to the external instead of doing a complete copy, then i can go and update the file name w/ a current date? concerned that my method of add new master file/ delete old master file will create eventual problems on the external?

BenB wrote:
The auto-backup is the database only, not the media.
To back up the whole Library totally, first make sure to Consolidate it, then simply drag-and-drop it on to the backup drive, that simple.
The KB article referenced by Karsten suggests one additional step: make sure your copy of the library is not at the root level of the drive to which you are copying it. I have not clue why this might be important.
Herewith:
Back up your Project Library and events using the Finder
To create a single backup copy of your Project Library and events, you can copy the Final Cut Projects folder and Final Cut Events folder to an external storage device.
If you are backing up incrementally, create a folder structure that helps you easily navigate through your backup folders. You could label the folders with the date you made the backup copy, for example.
Important: To avoid issues, it’s essential that you place the backup files in a folder (named “2012 Final Cut Pro Backups,” for example) that is not at the root level of your external storage device.
In the Finder, locate and select your Final Cut Projects folder and Final Cut Events folder.Your Movies folder is the default location for all project and event files:/Users/username/Movies/ Important: If you moved a project or event after you created it, it will not be in the default location.
Drag the Final Cut Projects and Final Cut Events folders to the external storage device.
The folders are copied to your external storage device.

How do I back up my itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary

How do I back up my entire itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary.
Thanks

This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
I would also move all of the files from the internal file system to the external since you have now told iTunes that is where they are...before deleting from the internal drive, test iTunes to see that it goes where you want it to go.

Backing up selected files onto an external hard drive

Hi,
I have partitioned an external hard drive in order to use it for both Time Machine as well as selected files. Is there a way to move over all data/documents/libraries as a whole rather than document by document? I thought that if you clicked on the user in the side bar, and dragged it onto the hard drive that would back up everything, but I can't seem to do that. I am beginning to use a new MBP and I want to only bring over select files and leave the rest on the external hard drive.
Thanks for any help!

Time Machine is a pretty sophisticated backup system - it will start by backing up your whole computer, and then it will do what is called an "incremental" backup every hour or so. That incremental backup will take a copy of every file that has changed since it previously backed up. So it will be fairly efficient with space usage, and it will allow you to recover files at many different points if you have a problem - for instance, you will be able to restore a document from earlier that day, from the day before, or even further back if it existed then.
Apart from an offsite backup, I rely on TimeMachine for all my backups, because the big advantage is that it works in the background and backs up often. The approach you seem to be considering is entirely manual, and therefore likely to be much less often.
You can definitely restore individual files with Time Machine. It has the benefit that you can also restore an entire computer if you need to, but that is not the only thing it does. You may wish to browse Pondini's excellent Time Machine website to acquaint yourself more with its features.
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
In answer to your question, yes, your important files are generally in your home folder. However, if you only back up the home folder, and your MBP has a disk failure, you will have to reinstall it from scratch, add all your applications, download all the updates again, and then copy in files from your backup. There may be issues associated with preference files and application versions, because you will be copying back preference files from your home folder but possibly installing later versions of applications. If you already have the disk available, I don't recommend this approach. I don't understand why the Genius Bar has put you off but then I am not privy to the whole conversation.
Hope that helps.
Ivan

Backing up all files to an external hard drive

I recently converted over to a Macbook Pro from PC and had all of my PC data saved to an external Hard Drive. I can retreive the data fine, but I can't save anything to the Hard Drive. I have plenty of room on my Macbook, but old habits are hard to break and I like to back everything up at least once a week.
I do not want to reformat my External Hard drive as there is ALOT of information on there that would be lost.
So, how can I copy things over there, or drag them over to the External? When I try, it gives me the circle with the line through it.
And if you have time, tell me about Time Machine. I am interested, but it seems like alot of work, because I would have to copy everything off the hard drive, let Time Machine reformat it, and then copy it back. Seems VERY time consuming.
External hard drive is 2TB and has approximately 90GB on it.
Thanks for your help.

Sorry for missing this addition:
Drive Preparation for OS X
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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the 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 Security 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.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

How do i back up my files to an external hard drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for