How do i copy files and folders from one external harddrive to another on the iMac?

For some reason when i drag the folder or file that i want to transfer or copy from one external harddrive to another, nothing happens when i drop it on the destination folder or drive. however, when i drag and drop to the desktop or any location on the Imac internal hardrive it works without any issue. The only problem is that i dont want to transfer or copy stuff to the computer. i want to copy it to an external harddrive. please help if your have answers to my question.
Thanks!

Check the formatting of the external hard drive. To do that, right click on the drive icon and select Get Info. (Or click once on the drive and type command +i ) The pane includes information about the drive format.
The drive should be formatted as Mac OS Extended. If it is not, run Disk Utility (App;ications / Utilities) and format the drive.

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Transfering files and folders from an external hard drive to my new iMac Lion

I recently bought an iMac Lion and today attempted to transfer applications folders and files from my old computer( tiger) using migration assistant.I was though only partially succesful in as much as my applications and office files were copied, but not so iTunes, iPhoto and iMovies content .I then decided to attempt transfering the files and folders using my external hard disc(La Cie).I have activated Time machine and can certainly see the two partitions i had originally set up in my old computer but cannot figure out how I can the User Files which contain the media i want.? I originally used Super Duper to do my backups but its not recognised on this new computer so i am inclined to think I need to re buy it
Can someone please advise me? Thank you

I have found the files and made the transference succesfully except iMovie as i except they are not compatible with Lion

How do I transfer files and documents from one user account to another?

How do I transfer documents and files from one user account to another?

You haven't understood me. Follow these steps:
1. Log in the user where are the files you want to transfer, and open a Finder window.
2. In Finder, select Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type /Users/Shared. Now you're on Shared folder, so leave that window.
3. Open a new Finder window without closing the old one, go to the folder with the files you want to transfer, and copy them to Shared folder.
4. After copying the files to Shared folder, go to  > Log Out, and log in the other user.
5. Repeat the step 2, and you will get access to the transferred files. Now, you can open them directly from this folder, or you can copy them to a folder on your user folder

How do I copy an address book from one user account to another?

How do I copy an address book from one user account to another?

You haven't understood me. Follow these steps:
1. Log in the user where are the files you want to transfer, and open a Finder window.
2. In Finder, select Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type /Users/Shared. Now you're on Shared folder, so leave that window.
3. Open a new Finder window without closing the old one, go to the folder with the files you want to transfer, and copy them to Shared folder.
4. After copying the files to Shared folder, go to  > Log Out, and log in the other user.
5. Repeat the step 2, and you will get access to the transferred files. Now, you can open them directly from this folder, or you can copy them to a folder on your user folder

How do I move an iTunes library from one external drive to another?

I need to move my iTunes library from one external disk to another, because the original disk is about to fail. So, I went into iTunes Perferences --> Advanced, and set the library to a new, empty folder on the new drive.
Nothing changed. I expected all my music to vanish from iTunes, so that I would have to re-import it. However, all the music remained, still on the old disk. At this point, if I were to recreate the library on the new disk, I would have all of my music twice.
Is it possible to move an iTunes library from one external drive to another, or am I stuck with my original choice until I buy a new machine? If I can move it, can one of you clever folks explain how it could be done?

Paul Seymour1 wrote:
However, those are all dealing with old versions of iTunes that still contained the Advanced --> Consolidate Library command which is no longer part of the app. (I'm on iTunes 10.6.1.)
Consolidate is still part of iTunes.
It is in iTunes menu File > Library > Manage library > Consolidate.
The article you linked to is old and it is (and was) a hacky way of doing it.
Just copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to new location, hold Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) when launching iTunes.

How Do I Copy File Names & Folders From A Hard Drive To A Word Document?

Hi Gang:
This may sound silly but I am having a herd time with the following - seemingly simple task.
I have data DVD-Rs with audio files organized into folders. Each folder contains audio files related to the folder name.
I would like to copy the file names and folders from a DVD-R and paste them into a MS Word file. I am just looking to get a listing of files as they appear on the DVD-Rs in their folders.
The problem is that when I copy and paste, the order changes (seemingly randomly) and the file names are no longer under the folder names. In fact, the whole thing looks to be really random.
Anybody know how to copy file/folder names from a hard drive or DVD-R to a word document and retain the file/folder structure?
Thanks!
LAHD

There is an even easier method with no Terminal magic required. In the Finder, select all the files you want the names of, press Command-C, switch to Word and press Command-V. Poof, your done.
If you view the DVD in List VIew, you can expand the folders you want the files for, then select all the files (and their folders if you want them too) and then do the Copy/Paste thing.
Message was edited by: petrock

How to recover hidden files and folders from memor...

When you connect your memory card to a PC or connect your phone as a mass storage device to a PC which is infected by a virus, the virus may hide all your files and folders.
The virus also changes their attributes to "hidden" and "read only" and may move all memory card content to another hidden folder, though the size of the disk looks unchanged, files are still invisible.
Steps to recover hidden files and folders:
First, change the settings in "folder options" so that we can see all hidden files and folders,
Open any folder > select organise > folder and search options, select view tab and under hidden files and folders setting, select "show hidden files, folders and drives", and uncheck the option "Hide protected operating system files" and click ok, click yes if a prompt appears for confirmation, now you should be able to see all hidden files and folders.
Second, connect your memory card to PC using a card reader or you can connect your phone as a mass storage device and note down its drive letter. (L) is the drive in my case as shown
1. If you have autorun.info file, you can manually delete it or use tools like autorun eater(or any other you like).
If all the folders are moved inside a hidden folder, select all the items inside that folder, cut them and paste them to root directory of your memory card.
If you select properties of any folder on your memory card, the hidden attribute might be locked as shown:
To solve these issues, type cmd in the start menu, right click on it and click run as administrator.
2. In the command prompt window, type the following:
L: [Press Enter]
Here, I assume L as your drive letter.
3. Type the following code to reset the attributes of all the files and folders to their default:
Attrib *.* -r -h -s /s /d [Press Enter]
After few seconds, all the files and folders will be reset to their normal attributes settings.
Hope you enjoyed reading the post and was helpful.
-------------------If this post helped you, click on accept as solution.------------------
-----------------------------Appreciate by clicking on white star.----------------------------

Check the formatting of the external hard drive. To do that, right click on the drive icon and select Get Info. (Or click once on the drive and type command +i ) The pane includes information about the drive format.
The drive should be formatted as Mac OS Extended. If it is not, run Disk Utility (App;ications / Utilities) and format the drive.

How to transfer/ copy data and setting from one iPhone to another

Hi,
I recently cracked the screen on my 3G iPhone and a have fortunately managed to convince the insurance company to pay for a new one.
I'd like to be able to transfer all my contacts, apps aand setting to the new phone. Only problem is I have to give back the old phone to get the new one.
Any advice much appreciated, and thanks in advance to anyone who spend time to help

The iPhone is designed to be synced with the supported applications on your computer for contact info, calendar events, and bookmarks. To transfer iTunes content and photos from your computer to your iPhone requires syncing with iTunes. Photos captured by your iPhone should be imported by your computer as with any other camera. The imported photos can be transferred back to your iPhone via the iTunes sync process.
iTunes also creates and maintains a backup of your iPhone that includes data such as most iPhone settings, email account settings, SMS messages, notes, recent calls, call favorites, 3rd party app settings and data created and stored by 3rd party apps, contact info, and photos captured by your iPhone - but not a good idea to depend on the backup only for the last 2. Sync contact info with a supported application on your computer and import photos that were captured by your iPhone before giving up your iPhone. You can restore your new iPhone from your existing iPhone's backup followed by a sync.

Can i migrate my files and programs from one mac book to another

I have 2 macbook pros 13.3 april 2010 release
one has a 250gb drive and the other 500gb
both are running lion - after upgrading from snow leopard
I have al my adobe creative suite and mac office on the machine with 250gb hard drive - i want to transfer all my files and applications including adobe and mac office to the 500gb machine - can this be done via migration assistant? are there things i need to check etc before doing this
i am assuming the 250gb will be empty afterwards- i am not expecting to have 2 copies of the files and applications
Thanks for taking a look at my question

You can do that through Migration Assistant without any problem. See > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4889
There are different ways to connect both Macs in order to transfer the files. As both computers have got FireWire, I recommend you to buy a FireWire cable, connect it to both computers and run Migration Assistant. Doing this, the transfer will be faster and much reliable than with Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Also, check > http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html

How do I move from one external drive to another, without the "Relocate Masters" command?

I have my masters referenced on an external hard drive, and I've been mirroring that drive with another so that I have a backup (the volume names were ApertureLib1 for the primary drive and Photo7 for the backup). I've filled that drive, so it will no longer be my primary master drive (i.e. all new masters going forward are going on a new, separate drive). I want to keep one of the two drives online and put the other away as an offsite backup.
The catch is that the primary drive (ApertureLib1) does not place nicely with my Lexar Firewire 400 CF reader; when I insert or eject a card, it has a habit of disconnecting itself. The backup drive (Photo7) does not exhibit this issue. So I decided that I'd just rename Photo7 to ApertureLib1 and be on my way; the folder containing all the masters (PhotoLib) is mirrored by using Arrsync (an rsync GUI), so all the files should be there.
Great theory, except that Aperture does not recognize the renamed Photo7 drive as ApertureLib1, despite the system seeing it as such (both in the Finder sidebar and showing up in /Volumes as "ApertureLib1"). The "locate referenced masters" dialog shows ApertureLib1 as 'offline' and does not give me any opportunity to point to the second drive as the master location.
I assume that Aperture is somehow tracking a separate unique identifier for the drive. Does anyone know what this might be and how I might convince it to treat the was-a-backup drive as being the One, True Location for this set of masters?
Many thanks.
(and I really don't want to use "relocate masters" because I'd first need to delete the exsiting copy on the second drive and then move over all of the images from the first drive, before copying them back to have a backup)

Hi Kevin,
I understand what you tried to do but it doesn't work that way. Swapping drive names will just mess things up.
You should be able to reconnect the files though: in the Locate Referenced Files dialog make sure you click the Show Reconnect Options button — this will give you access to all the connected drives. Locate one of the files and hit Reconnect All. Should do the trick.
Best

How to move a large iphoto library from one external drive to another

Hi all (my first ever post to a forum!)
I have a large iphoto library (379 GB) on an external drive (Lacie 1TB w/usb 2.0) and want to move it to a another ethernet connected external drive (LaCie Network Space 2) so I will be able to access it from other computers.
Moving it with drag and drop or copying is calculated to take 66 day's!
Wander if that could be explaned with the fact that these are around 70.000 individual pictures/files, and if it could be speed up by first compressing the library.
Wander if anyone can shere their experience on that? (what software to use or?)
I have an 21.5 inch, mid 2010 iMac (3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 with 12 GB 1067 MHz DDR3).
I also have the new Macbook Air (1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz - with 3MB shared L3 cache).

iPhoto needs to be connected to the computer you are using it from via a sired connectin both for speed and also for data reliability
THe copy estimate is often way off - let it run and see - it will probably drop a lot quickly
Compressing would not help (assuming you shoot JPEG) since the JPEGs in the library are alread highly compressed
LN

My experiences copying Time Machine backups from one external drive to another

I am reposting this. The first one was rejected because it contained 'product feedback' and I was directed to the 'Terms of Use'. The 'Terms of Use' say feedback is welcome...***?!?
My 3TB external drive started to die a few weeks ago. It was still under warranty and I just got the new one yesterday. I wanted to preserve all my backups (I had every backup for my late 2012 iMac) on it.
The short of it is that there were like 20-25 million files there or something crazy like that. Finder was going to take forever to count the files. cp and rsync would take like a week. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle, so I just securely erased the old disk and did a new initial backup on the new disk.
The old disk would only mount in read-only mode, so I couldn't prune the backups down to a manageable size. Unless you only have a handful of backups, or you can internally mount the drives to make it go faster, it's going to take forever to do this.
Regards, Patrick

Hi Eric,
Thank you for your response. I came across another thread yesterday which suggested the Restore via Disk Utility method. It worked for me, too. This was after I had tried following the method suggested in the Apple article above three times but each time the message was the same ....
The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items.
I dare say that Apple would like to have us believe that it's a simple matter of 'drag and drop' but it certainly wasn't for me. From what I've read the permission problem crops up fairly frequently. Before the second and third attempts I had already amended Permissions on the Time Machine backups so that everyone could read and write, so that mustn't have been the problem. I'm the only person who uses my computer so that's not a problem.
The next problem I have is that I decided I would use the Restore route to transfer my SuperDuper clone rather than start from scratch. Unfortunately, the partition size on my original backup disk where SuperDuper clone is is 350GB and the size of the SuperDuper clone partition on my new backup is 300GB.
Of course, Apple says you can resize partitions using Disk Utility. What they don't say is you can downsize partitions but (in my experience and that of many other frustrated users on various forums) you CANNOT upsize using Disk Utility. I have 100GB spare on my external hard drive (from downsizing two partitions by 50GB each) BUT there is no way Disk Utility will let me increase the size of SuperDuper partition to 350GB :-(((
Cheers
Tricia

How do I copy mail mailbox folders from an external drive

My old Macbook Air (2009) has died - logic board failed - so I have removed the ssd drive and mounted it in a Runcore usb enclosure from C Memory - worked a treat. I would like to copy a number of Mail mailboxes I used for archiving old email messages from this drive on to my new Macbook Air but cannot see them or the user library folders on the now external drive. Any ideas welcome. Tim

Copy the contents of the folder on the external drive to your user folder on the new hard drive. Example - replace the Music folder with the old one. If you have folders that are the same name it should ask you if it is okay to replace the new ones. Be sure you don't have anything in the folders you replace, as you would lose any contents.

How do i copy my iTunes folders from one user to another?

i am setting up a duplicate user account on my MAC and wand to replicate my itunes folder and set up the same on my new user account as my original one.

Before you change the country, note the following:
- you must use any remaining store credit on your account
- download all purchased content
- ensure you have no current rentals(if you do, you'll have to wait for them to expire)
- provide a new payment(such as a credit or debit card) associated with a valid billing address in the UK or an iTunes Gift Card purchased in the UK
- content purchased from the iTunes Store is country-specific. If you wish to upgrade any of your iTunes Store content to iTunes Plus, you'll need to do this before you change countries. The content you purchased while your account was set to the previous country will not be eligible for upgrade once you've changed countries.
- after you change countries, you will no longer receive application update notifications in iTunes for the apps you purchased in your original country. However, you'll still receive update notifications on your iOS device for any applications installed on it. In addition, you'll be able to download previously purchased applications again for free if they are available on your new country's store. You will not be charged and the download will not appear on your Purchased page. If a previously purchased application is not available in your new country, you will not be able to download it again for free.
- If you have an iTunes Match subscription, you can't change countries until the subscription has expired.
- If you have purchased a Season Pass, you cannot change the country associated with your account until that season is done airing and the last episode of the season has been added to the iTunes Store.
Taking the above into consideration, here's how to change your country:
1. Open iTunes and click Sign In.
2. Enter your iTunes Store account name and password, then click Account Info.
3. On the Apple Account Information page, click Change Country or Region.
4. Enter the updated information and save your changes.

Can you copy music and apps from one iTunes account to another?

My nephew got an iPod touch for Christmas and for some reason my husband decided to add it as a new device to my iTunes account and purchased games and music and put these onto the iPod. So now he has access to my password, etc.
What I really want to do is set up a new iTunes account for my nephew, but will I be able to transfer his games and music purchased under my account onto his new account or will we lose them all?

This Apple article will walk you through changing the Apple ID -> iOS: Changing the signed-in iTunes Store account
And this one will walk you through creating a new account -> iTunes: How to set up an iTunes Store account (Apple ID)
You won't be able to transfer the apps to the new account, you'll have to purchase them again with the new account.

How do i copy files and folders from one external harddrive to another on the iMac?

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