How to backup external hard drive that is not mounting

Hi sorry if this is too easy or if it has been answered--my 150GB WD USB hard drive won't mount on the desktop (I think there is a bad connection at the drive--the mini usb port seems to lose disconnect). I can see it in disk utility, and I tried repairing -- it showed an error "INVALID SIBLING LINK" and then "The volume could not be repaired."
I was hoping a reformat might fix it, but even if it is trashed, how do I back this thing up when it won't mount (still can see in disk utility).
Thanks,
J.

Thanks...the cable is pretty sturdy as is--plus the drive appears in the panel in Disc Utility, just not on desktop (?). Sorry can you elaborate on SMC?
I decided to try to recover some of the data using Data Rescue II--so far not able to get it off the drive, but I've had very good success with this app in the past. I was hoping for some similar suggestion like command-T (target disc mode as with firewire hard drives) but I don't know if this works with USB drives.

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How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility?
Last night i was using my external hard drive, for some reason the folder just closed and i couldn't find it on my desktop.
After googling solutions, i found it in the disk utilities, i clicked on the 'repair' button many times, but it said the 'error...' message.
So i ejected it to try again, now when i connect the USB external hard drive it doesn't show up on my desktop or disk utilities.
I really just want to either repair or recover the data on it because it literally has everything (documents, work files, photos etc) on it,
I downloaded an application to recover my files but it needs the USB to at least show up.recognise it which mine doesn't.
I know i should've backed it up on another USB, this definitely teaches me for next time to back up all my files.
Are the files lost forever or can i recover them by going to a shop or using a software?

Thank you for responding.
This might sound stupid since i'm not really knowledgeable with Macs,
but since all my files were moved from my mac computer to the external hard drive,
is it possible to recover those files through my Mac - like recovering deleted files?

How to backup external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ?

Hello,
i have an external hard drive which i store all my drum samples and sound library on and files are contantly changing, adding new sounds, deleting old ones etc ..
So my method of back up as of now is to just copy all the edited files and click and drag to the back up disk.
Now, my question is, how do i back up my external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ? I read somewhere that you can do this, i cant find the post however. It would be nice to automate the back up process rather than manually finding the files to copy over.
Thanks in advance !

The question you pose is conditional, in that you should have more than an exact
capacity replacement for a clone, if the drive you are going from (or one going to)
has insufficient free space and that has a bootable clone on the drive; any space
tied up in a partition for Time Machine backup, takes away from the running space
if you should need to run the computer from a clone on the external HDD's other
partition.... Better to have a good capacity of additional reserve unused free space.
Be sure any clone copy that you hope to use as a re-close, that each in turn is tested
after a clone operation. Also consider using each running system's Disk utility and
have First Aid 'repair disk permissions'. Preparation of a new drive or even an old
drive that may have questionable artifacts or errors on it, should be reformatted. To
even go as far as Secure Erase (overwrite) at least one-pass before reformatting it
again, could help.
However, I'm not sure if the drives and situation you are looking at would necessarily
be a good match. It could work, but you'd need a reasonable size partition or hard
disk drive for a system. Snow Leopard and all its associated applications, can do
OK in a 100GB HDD. (My computers have more storage capacity than is used; so
for mine to have 60% free space, is good.) Virtual Memory is drive space used by
OS X, that can be a substantial amount for swap and temp files. Some applications
make duplicates of works-in-progress, for each change in an open file; that adds up.
{This question (& my reply) should've been in their own thread & not at the end
of one that is nearly three months old, + marked 'solved' by the original poster.}
So I guess I don't have a direct answer to your question; having just returned from
a few hundred miles and automobile issues, too. I'm not really thinking on-topic...
The clone should be on its own separate drive, and up to 3TB drive dedicated to
Time Machine may be overkill, however that software will consume old backups first
when it uses up all the space. Or usually that is what happens in TM backups. If
that isn't happening, there may an issue in how Time Machine is set up.
Good luck & happy computing!

External hard drive that is not connected through a network

Will Time Machine work with an external WD hard drive that is connected through my network at home. I plan to connect the drive via by internet router or Airport Express. Can TM use any drive that my MacBook can see? (except for my local hard drive of course)

Thanks...the cable is pretty sturdy as is--plus the drive appears in the panel in Disc Utility, just not on desktop (?). Sorry can you elaborate on SMC?
I decided to try to recover some of the data using Data Rescue II--so far not able to get it off the drive, but I've had very good success with this app in the past. I was hoping for some similar suggestion like command-T (target disc mode as with firewire hard drives) but I don't know if this works with USB drives.

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories etc. I want to format it and use it on my IMAC for backup but I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories copied to it etc. I want to use it on my IMAC for backup. I see it on my my IMAC . I can open files etc. But I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. I don't care if I lose current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

You can't write to it because it's formatted as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you want to continue using the drive with both a PC and OS X you will need to download and install NTFS-3G so you can then write to it from your Mac. You can get NTFS-3G at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
If you want to use the drive exclusively with your Mac then move the data off it and reformat it in Disk Utility (Applications - Utilities - Disk Utilities) as Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

I have been storing my Aperture and IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive that recently died. Fortunately I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 2nd external drive. How do I restore my libraries to a new external hard drive?

I have been storing my Aperture and IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive that recently died. Fortunately I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 2nd external drive. How do I restore my libraries to a new external hard drive?

This is a tricky one.
Open up Time Machine and go back to a date using the timeline on the right side of the window when you know the drive was working and was backing up as part of Time Machine backups.
Click on the name of your Mac under the Devices heading on the left side of the window in Time Machine, and if things are working correctly you will see Macintosh HD (or whatever you have named it) and the name of the external hard drive that was backing up in the past.
Right-Click on the name of the external hard drive and then click on "Restore (name of drive) to....." You may be asked for your adminstrator password at this point.
It might be easier to restore the drive contents to your desktop if you have room on your Mac, and then copy things over to the new external drive where you want to store the Aperture and iMovie Libraries.
Once the libraries have been moved over the new external hard drive, you will likely need to "point" Aperture and iMovie to the location of the libraries on the new external hard drive.

Time Capsule can't backup external hard drives connected to it. Got that.

Hello Apple Support Communities! This is my first post. Hope this finds you all well My first year as an Apple user. I bought a 2-Tb TC and am running my first backup to my MacBook as I write this.
Problem statement: TC can't backup external hard drives connected directly to it, but the ones connected to the Macs that are connected wirelessly to it. Duly noted. However, the Spotlight will reindex the hard drives connected to the Mac and that will take hours; the whole backup will take days. Thus, excluding the hard drives at "System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab" will probably help reduce the time of backup, or just ejecting them will do too. That itself has not proven effective coz it's still taking forever (50Gb in 2 days, still going).
Questions:
1) Do I wait until my first backup to my MacBook's internal hard drive is done before I connect my hard drives to my MacBook and attempt another backup? If yes, how do I go about the excessive time Spotlight reindexing takes if I intend to backup my hard drives connected to my MacBook?
2) Is there any other way of speeding up the first-time backup?
*Note: All versions of OS and firmwares are up-to-date. TC is connected to an external wireless router. TC is intended to be used as backup device and / or file server only.
P/S: Apologee if this has already been discussed before, thus, a link to previous discussion thread would highly be appreciated)
- Shook Hashem, Malaysia.

How do I backup the externel hard drives connected to my MB. I was under the impression that that has already been done, because I've read it somewhere in a discussion that said it's done automatically unless I exclude it from a backup, which I didn't. So it's supposed to backup the external hard drivestoo because I had them connected to my MB the entire time during the backups.
By default an external drive is excluded.. the list is odd.. if I plug a drive into the mac.. it immediately is listed as excluded.
This is not the list of included.. this is the list of excluded.. remove it from the excluded list to include it.
It is kind of reverse polish notation in backups.
If I want to enter the Time Machine, should I enter it with the TM turned on or off?
Not sure what the question means. If you use the star wars display and want to recover files then use TM off.. but read up pondini.. how to do restore etc.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
15A in particular on the how to use TM.
When do I uplug the ethernet and use the wireless connection instead?
Once you have finished the main backup you can go back to wireless. The incremental backups are mostly very small.

When ever the power goes out or I restart my iMac the external hard drive that is used by Time Machine for backups is dismounted ?

When ever the power goes out or I restart my iMac the external hard drive that is used for backups by Time Machine is dismounted and all backups are gone. I can reselect it and it will start working again, but I am worried if the iMac hard drive should fail will I be left without a backup ?

fzgy wrote:
"Mac OS X can't repair the disk. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
It's possible a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app can fix it, but they're expensive (DiskWarrior is about $100), and there's no guarantee it can do it.
Am prompted to reformat but I don't have a good understanding of what this means and how to do it.
That will erase it. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #5.
It sounds very much like the disk is beginning to fail, although it's possible there's a bad port, cable, connection or power supply (if it has its own).
I'd suggest getting a new one, and using it for your Time Machine backups; once you have a good backup there, reformat the old one (and select Security Options to write zeros to the whole drive -- if that fails, you know the drive is toast). Use it for secondary backups, per FAQ #27. If it has failed, get a second new one for secondary backups.

HT4718 I have an external hard drive that I used as Time Machine Backup. I have not used it for a while and now, when I plug it in computer says: This disc is not readable. I want to recover the backups and not erase and reformat the disc. Thank you in

I have an external hard drive that I have used as Time Machine backup, but not for a while. Now when I plug it in, computer says this disc is not readable.
I want to keep the backups on it and not erase and start over.
Thank you in advance.
Gregor

It sounds like something went wrong with the drive. Did you drop it? How long has it been sitting around unused?

While starting my iMac after new hard drive installed, I created a admin user, I then pulled over a backup from an external hard drive that brought over the previous admin user settings. Need to merge to old user with the new user

I had to replace the hard drive in my iMac. Upon initial start up, I created a admin user name and password. Then I connected a WD external hard drive that had a back up of my orginal HD. Upon running Migration Assistant and pulling over the back up I found it pulled over the ORIGINAL user & security information from the original hard drive. In order to see iPhoto or iTunes libraies I must sign on to the "Old" user.
I want to Merge old and new users into only 1 user or delete the original user however need to have the iPhoto/iTunes libraies accessable by the "New" user.

Your best bet is to start over, by restoring your entire system to the exact condition it was in. Otherwise, the transferred user account probably won't have permission to its backups. See the pink box in Problems after using Migration Assistant for an explanation.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14 for details on how to do the restore.

How do I export video files from iPhoto to a backup external hard drive for safekeeping?

How do I export video files from iPhoto to a backup external hard drive for safekeeping? Each time I try, the video will not play from the external hard drive.

Use the File ➙ Export ➙ File Export menu option with Kind = Original. That should get the original video file exported. Try to export one to the Desktop first and open it with Quicktime Player. If all goes well export the rest to a folder on the EHD. How is the EHD formatted? It should be OS X Extended (journaled).

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

How do I use an external hard drive that has been used on a windows machine on my mac....

I have recently just bought a new mac and want to edit files that are currently saved on my external hard drive that I used on my windows machine.
Is there any way to be able to do this or will I have to transfer all files across to my mac and then re-format the external?
Thanks in advance.

Either copy files over, reformat drive from NTFS to a Mac format and copy files back, or tell your Mac how to write to NTFS drives with a third-party product. Tuxera NTFS has high ratings: http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

My aperture library lives on an external hard drive that is corrupt and I can not locate the library. I do have it backed up with TM. How do I safely restore the library from TM to my laptop? I am using the newest version of aperture on my macbook pr

My aperture library lives on an external hard drive that is corrupt and I can not locate the library. I do have it backed up with TM. How do I safely restore the library from TM to my laptop? I am using the newest version of aperture on my macbook pro.

Hello Sandra,
The article linked below details how to go about restoring items from Time Machine in Snow Leopard.
Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering items using Time Machine and Spotlight
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH6379
Sincerely,
Allen

How to backup external hard drive that is not mounting

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