How to back up to external hard drive? and DVD?

I am having a terrible time trying to back up my iPhoto Library. About 1,000 photos, using about 1.6 GB of space. I want to back up to both DVD-R (4.7GB,16x speed).
When I go to iPhoto Help, it tells me I "can back up to DVD and/or external hard drive," but it doesn't tell me how.
I've tried going to the DVD by "Selecting All" in iPhoto, and then dragging to the DVD icon. Nothing really happens when I do that to show me copying progress, or something like that. When I do double-click the DVD, it shows icons taking up no memory. It also did not pick up all the photos, about a half dozen short. When I tried to "Burn," it failed. (I do have the combo-drive capable of burning DVDs.
Haven't tried to go to the external hard drive yet. What would be the correct process there?
What I need, I think, is the step-by-step instructions on how to do this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also, those blank icons that showed up on the DVD prior to my burn attempt seemed to indicate JPEG format. Is that the format I want? Is that the default in iPhoto?

The best way to back up is to use a utility such as DejaVu or any of the many, many alternatives that you can find on MacUpdate.
Essentially, to back up iPhoto you make a copy of the Library on the external Disk.
The most basic way to do this is to drag the Library from the Pictures Folder to the External.
You can back up to DVD in two ways: The Share -> Burn command will create a disk that is readable in iPhoto. Or you can simply drag the Library from the Pictures Folder to the DVD and burn it using the Finder.
Regards
TD

Similar Messages

How to back up an external hard drive?!

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I use to store a very large photo catalogue. I also have a 1TB external hard drive that I have set as my Time Machine volume.
TM isn't backing up my 500GB drive, and I've verified that it's not on the exclusion list in TM preferences.
Anyone know how to get this going? I need TM to back up that external hard drive as well as my computer's internal drive.

Don't forget that repartitioning/reformatting will result in a blank HD; put the goodies in a safe place beforehand. If you have problems getting rid of the existing format, [check this writeup which I did for NTFS|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7783365#7783365], but applies to FAT32 as well.

How do I encrypt my external hard drive and subsequently a specific file within it, using my Mac? I tried creating a disk image but permission was denied.

Encrypting an external hard drive and specific folders within. Permission denied using disk image.

VKP90 wrote:
When I tried to encrypt a single file within the hard drive itself, I got the following: Disk Utility Progress: Unable to create "Name of my file" (Permission Denied).
When I tried encrypting the entire hard disk itself, I got: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required.
I have also currently used Time Machine on the external hard drive, along with saving other data. Hence, I am not sure if partitioning is going to delete any of this (a video I watched mentioned that using the + button when creating partitions retains current data). Backing up the external hard drive is out of the option since it is the back up to my Mac.
You can't encrypt a single file. I'm not sure what you did to try. You can make an encrypted disk image which begins with a folder, if desired. Or, you can just create a blank, encrypted disk image, then move your desired files into that.
While you could partition off the free space without erasing the disk, you cannot encrypt it because you need a GUID Partition table which requires you to repartition the entire drive, not just the free space.

Back up to External Hard Drive and then updating IPAD in the future

If you back up your ITunes music to an external hard drive and delete the music on the computer do you have to re import the music when you want to updated your IPod or can you just do the updates from the external hard Drive as long as the Itunes are loaded on the external hard drive as well?

The best way to back up is to use a utility such as DejaVu or any of the many, many alternatives that you can find on MacUpdate.
Essentially, to back up iPhoto you make a copy of the Library on the external Disk.
The most basic way to do this is to drag the Library from the Pictures Folder to the External.
You can back up to DVD in two ways: The Share -> Burn command will create a disk that is readable in iPhoto. Or you can simply drag the Library from the Pictures Folder to the DVD and burn it using the Finder.
Regards
TD

How to back up an external hard drive using Time Machine

I have a Macbook. I have iTunes. I have my iTunes folder and contents stored on an external (Lacie) hard drive. I want to be able to back up that external (Lacie) hard drive and my mac using Time Machine to a separate external hard drive. At the moment it is only my mac that is backed up, and not the Lacie. How can I also back up the Lacie so that only the recently added iTunes content is added? Cheers.

You may consider reading the detail in what third-party clone utilities could
do in regard to a backup clone and then use their utility to update that clone.
Once the copy/clone is made (a bootable backup, btw) the same utility can
be used to update the clone. Not certain how it works, and am a bit behind
on making backup bootable clones of my several Macs as it is. I do a whole
backup clone, though a partial or update supposedly is possible.
SuperDuper or CarbonCopy, I don't remember if one of them or both, do this.
Good luck in any event!

How to back up my external hard drive to another hard drive?

So I dropped my external Iomega 1TB hard drive and now it wont allow me to back anything up however I can thankfully access everything in there. Basically I read that I need to back THAT up and format it and start from scratch. I sucked it up and finally bought a second External Hard drive a Seagate 1.5TB (great deal at costco BTW for $79). So now I connected both to my MacBook and tried to copy everything in my iomega to paste it to the seagate and I got the error message "The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup." What does that mean? How do I do this efficiently?
I greatly appreciate any info! Thanks in advance!!!

I've not seen that error message but did you partition and format the new hard drive for use with Macs? It needs to be partitioned with the GUID scheme and formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled. If you have a lot of data on the original drive it's best to not try to copy it all at one time, of there are separate folders copy them one or two at a time. If your original drive is a Time Machine drive it's more complicated than simply copying and pasting http://pondini.org/TM/18.html

How to back up to External Hard Drive b4 reinstalling OS?

I have WXP Home version. ITunes v7. I have done a lot of work cleaning up my music file info on ITunes. Now my OS needs to be reinstalled. How can I back up the many hours of work I've done onto my external hard drive? ITunes looks for a cd drive as I do not desire to back up to. That's what I bought the XTRNL HD for.
Any help would be appreciated.
Dell Windows XP

First, and perhaps most importantly, deauthorize your
computer in iTunes. (Advanced..Deauthorize computer).
You need to backup a few things:
1) Your Library - this should be 2 files in "My
Documents\My Music\iTunes\" - "iTunes Library.itl",
and "iTunes Music Library.xml".
2) Your Music - by default this is again in the
iTunes folder, under "iTunes Music". Otherwise,
backup the folder containing all your music. If
you're not sure where this is, look in the
Preferences in iTunes, under the Advanced tab,
General tab. It will show you the path of the
folder.
3) Your downloaded Artwork, again in iTunes, in
"Album Artwork"
4) Optional - your iTunes preferences -- the folder
"\Documents and Settings\username\Application
Data\Apple Computer\iTunes". You won't see this
folder by default -- you have to turn on the "view
hidden files" option in Explorer (Tools...Folder
Options..View tab) first.
Also, after you reinstall, you probably want to use
the same user name you had before. Copy all the
stuff above back to their previous locations, install
iTunes, and everything should be there.
If for some reason you can't or don't want to use the
same user name, you may have a problem with iTunes
locating your Music. Try holding shift when you
start, and select the "iTunes Library.itl" file when
prompted.
Thank you for your time spent on your reply. I will try your suggestion.
Happy New Year

Incremental back ups to external hard drive and importing to new computer

I need some clarification on precisely how to back up additional pictures on a PC to an external hard drive to keep all the pictures in the same catalog and folder structure.I have exported my existing catalog (exporting the negative files and including the previews) to an EHD to a folder I have created called My lightroom Photos.Within this folder there are three sub-folders:(1)My Lightroom Photos previews.irdata, (2) My Lightroom Photos.lrcat LRCAT file and (3) Pictures (which contain copies of all the subject folders I have created on import-the original pictures being retained on the computer hard drive). When LR opens you have the option of backing up the alterations to pictures in an EHD (but not the pictures themselves).So if some alterations in the develop module are made,these are backed up as a fourth sub- folder on the EHD with the date recorded.However,if certain pictures are added to Lightroom following the earlier catalog export, how can these pictures together with the alterations be added to that same exported catalog with pictures added to various established folder names -eg France, Italy etc? LR is currently set to back up to the parent folder-My Lightroom Photos.
Secondly, I believe that to import the catalog into LR on a second computer,all that is necessary is direct LR to open the last dated LRCAT file from My Lightroom Photos folder on the EHD.However,my last backed up "fourth" LR folder only imported two grayed out images with no previews visible.
Any advice would be appreciated.

I assume that what you really need is some form of keeping the photograph folders on your internal hard drive in sync with the folders on your external hard drive (the catalog itself can be backed up from within Lightroom). This downloadable little utility works for me when I want to keep my spreadsheets, letters, iTunes files ...etc... backed up;
http://www.goodsync.com/download/update
It's nothing to do with Lightroom. You first set up simple jobs within the utility, telling it which folders on your internal drive should be backed up to which folders on your external drive. It will then run, and copy to the ehd any items in the source folder that have changed since the last sync. Then, if your internal hard drive fails, you can copy these folders and catalogs from your ehd to the replacement hd, using the original folder structure.
In Lightroom, the catalog is the main organisational tool, rather than the folder. I let LR decide on it's own folder structure, because I never refer to my RAW files outside of LR. Hope this helps.

Problem with backing up to external hard drive and then " recovering " files, apps etc.

Hi there,
I hope you can help me please, I have messed some things up from not knowing what I was doing : ( and would like to fix them if possible.
I will try to be brief and concise. Here goes....
1. My 2006 iMac 4 running Leopard OSX was starting to run very slowly. My hard drive had 232 GB of which 220 GB were being used. The thing using most space was iPhoto, over 60 GB of photos.
2. I downloaded Mackeeper and ran their cleaning program, getting rid of duplicate files, clearing caches etc. but it didn't release much extra space, just a couple of gigs.
3. I read an article from Maclife " 25 ways to speed up your Mac ". One of the tips was to reinstall the operating system which I did, using the " archive and install " instruction.
4. I now have Leopard OS under a new account name which is running faster but I cannot access various apps such as iPhoto, Photoshop CS4, Keynote, Pages etc.
5. Everything prior to me messing around is now in a folder called " previous system ".
6. I realize now that I should have first bought a new external hard drive, which I now have done ; an Iomega 500 GB with USB 2.0 and that I should have backed up everything first before messing around. Hindsight is a great thing.
7. Having connected the ext. hard drive, I was looking for info on what I should do next when Time Machine kicked in and automatically started copying everything, without me having to do anything such as formatting etc.
8. Everything that was on the hard drive ( 220 GBs ) has been copied to the ext. HD so I hope I haven't lost anything, especially my photos on iPhoto and CS4.
9. Other 3rd party apps haven't been effected but now I would like to integrate everything back into one seamless, quick flowing system.
10. How can I do this ?
Any advice or help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Sean.

UPDATE : I have re-installed from disk, various apps that were no longer functioning such as iLife, iWork etc. So, I now can access my photos again.
Also, I had to re-install all the software for my printer ( Stylus Pro 4880 ) and reset it so the printer is working again.
Photoshop CS4 won't open. I think I will have to get in touch with Adobe as basically, I guess they have a built-in "blocker" which prevents me from opening the app as the license is for only 1 user and having re-installed the OS, there are now, in effect, 2 users ( Me and Me 1, I think ).
So, having added on a new external HD, Time Machine has made a copy of most of the files, folders, apps etc onto the external HD. The internal HD is still nearly full ( 220 GBs out of 232 GBs ).
I am guessing the way to go now in order to free up space on the internal HD is to delete/trash older photos from my iPhoto library and hope that if needed, I will be able to access them on the external HD.
Am I correct ? Please advise before I do something I will regret.
Thanks, Sean.

How to import photos from external hard drive and exclude duplicate images

Hi,
I apologize if this is easy, but I can't seem to find out how to do it. I have an external hard drive that I used to back up my photos when I was in the Windows environment. I want to import these into iPhoto and/or Aperture, but how do I exclude duplicates that I may already have in iPhoto?? Also....should I import them into BOTH programs, or just bring them into iPhoto and selectively bring them into Aperture when I want to edit?
Thanks,
Ron

You really should choose between Aperture and iPhoto. Both are Photo organisers, both manage your photos. You need to decide which one is primary. Then only import to that one.
Aperture is the more powerful of the two. If you’re shooting RAW then deciding on Aperture is a no-brainer. It’s easier to have files in Aperture and share them with iPhoto than the other way around.
If you’re not shooting RAW, if the volume of photos is small, then stick with iPhoto.
just bring them into iPhoto and selectively bring them into Aperture when I want to edit?
Aperture is not an editor, like Photoshop. Like iPhoto it’s a database application.
Regards
TD

Backing up an external hard drive and internal drive to Time Machine

Hello! I have had my new iMac (21.5 inch, 10.6.6, 2.5 ghz Intel Core i5) for three days now. I am really nervous about losing my files. One thing I was really looking forward to on the Mac is Time Machine.
Here is my current setup. Time Machine is backing up my internal hard drive (500GB) to an external hard drive (500GB). Lets call the Time Machine backup drive "black" for simplicity. I have another external hard drive connected as well (500GB). Let's call it "silver." The silver drive has all the files I created on various PC's and Macs. It is formatted so that it can work on both PCs and Macs (MS-DOS FAT 32). There is 350GB on the silver drive, leaving 149 GB available. The black one is the Time Machine backup; it was formatted by Time Machine into Mac OS Extended journaled and is currently using 31 GB.
I would really love for Time Machine to back up the Silver drive (that has all of my files) and the internal Mac drive to the Time Machine black drive. In Time Machine's exclude list, it shows the Silver drive, but will not let me exclude it (it will not let me select it at all).
Is there something that I am missing? Why won't Time Machine include the Silver drive?
P.S. I am new to Time Machine, and most of System Preferences, so a little more explanation may be needed.
Thank you in advance!

Just curious, why is it a bad idea to share with Windows? The files I created on Windows that I want to use on the Mac are things like PDFs, JPGs, MP3s, Adobe Creative Suite files, etc. I don't know very much about cross platform files other than I haven't had issues over the last four years sharing files with a PC here and a Mac at school (and now this Mac that I own).

How do I find my external hard drive and move files?

Im totally a non tech person so please bear with me. I have had my imac for several years. I started getting a message every time I went to do anything saying that I didnt have the space available to do whatever I was trying to do. I finally bought a 2tb external hard drive. It didnt come with instructions or anything so all I did was plug it in. The computer seemed to recognize it and something having to do with timemachine came up and I just clicked yes and it did its thing for about 2 hours and it was done. I didnt get the message about the available space again so I assumed that corrected it. Well today when I went to update my software its telling me I dont have the space available for the update. I have no idea what is going on. I dont even see an icon on my desktop for the hard drive, just timemachine. What am I doing wrong?

AS you drag files to an external drive, a little Plus sign + will appear to indicate the files will be copied.
You need to delete some files ASAP. Best to have greater than 2gig of free space. Many posters to these forums state that you need much more free space: 5 gig to 10 gig or 10 percent of you hd size.
(0)
Be careful when deleting files. A lot of people have trashed their system when deleting things. Place things in trash. Reboot & run your applications. Empty trash.
Go after large files that you have created & know what they are. Do not delete small files that are in a folder you do not know what the folder is for. Anything that is less than a megabyte is a small file these days.
(1)
Run
OmniDiskSweeper
"The simple, fast way to save disk space"
OmniDiskSweeper is now free!
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/
This will give you a list of files and folders sorted by size. Go after things you know that are big.
(2)
This will save you a gig of space.
Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X,in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It worked for me on 10.4
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
A detailed write-up on how to use Monolingual:
http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/monolingual.html
(3)
These pages have some hints on freeing up space:
http://thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

How to back up to external hard drive?

OK, I got an external HD, so that I can take back this computer to Fry's for a refund, and buy one directly from an Apple store. I won't be able to do a transfer of settings and all that via firewire from computer to computer, as I've done before. So I bought this external HD,an acomadata firewire. I want to basically put everything I have on this computer on it, so when I buy the new one, I can transfer it over to it. Plus, I got it to save photos from Aperture in the future. Sounds like I'll have to partition the external HD? But I don't know the best way to even get a copy of my computer's HD to the external. Do I need to buy a program to do so? Or do I just plug in my firewire, and do it manually?
Thanks!

Here's the easiest solution:
A. Open Disk Utility and select the external drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) in the left side window. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of partitions desired from the drop down menu. You need to select at least one (1). Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format drop down menu. Click on the Options button and be sure your have the GUID partition scheme selected then click OK. Click on the Partition button.
B. How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
3. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
4. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
5. Upon completion select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked.

How do i reformat a external hard drive and how do i partition a drive?

hi,
i have a seagate free agent desk 1.5 tb external harddrive! i have the back up software installed on the home pc. i have a macbook now! so i still want to be able to use the pc for photos and stuff because if i were to transfer everything onto the macbook i wouldnt have much room to spare. so the pictures are all on the pc.
this is my problem: i have a pc and a mac that both need a external harddrive for backing up things. so i was going to set up time machine, but it said i need to use a different format so i need to re-format the drive, into a format that is mac and windows readable. is there any format that allows me to do that? the drive is currently in nfts format!
i was thinking that if i partioned the drive i could format one side mac and the other nfts! does anyone know if this is possible? i need to find out! i have a dell windows xp sp3 i have a macbook osx10.6.8. does anyone have any step by step steps? in order for time machine to work i have to reformat everything (witch will delete every thing on my external harddrive). so is it possible to reformat the other side to nfts? i was thinking i would do the reformate/partion on the mac. can you do it on the mac? or the pc? for free?
thanks all your help would be nice because i dont want to call apple because i am past the 90 support.
austin

Item #5 of this post implies that Time Machine is happiest with a drive with a "partition map scheme" of either APM or GUID. I'm not sure if either of those is compatible with NTFS. It might be better just to get another disk drive.

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.

How to back up to external hard drive? and DVD?

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