I need to take ownership of an external drive with NTFS file system from my previous laptop?

I have an external drive that was previously associated with my PC laptop that was stolen.
I wish to take ownership of folders.
Can anyone help me with this.

Use a third party tool to allow your computer to use ntfs formatted drives.
Or, just copy the folder/files to your computer then use them. OSx can read ntfs drives so copy will work. After you copy the files to your computer, format the drive for OSx then use the drive with your computer with read/write functionality.

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Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partition?

Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partitioned Time Capsule? I understand that the Time Machine (software) cannot backup a networked drive (the external) and that Time Capsule (the router/wireless hard drive) does not have its own backup software... so it won't backup the connected drive. What I would like is an alternate solution for having an automated backup of a networked drive. A 2TB Time Capsule has more than enough space for Time Machine backups of my family of Macbooks, so I had hoped to mirror a 500GB external drive (with shared media files) to a portion of the Time Capsule internal hard drive. I assume this would require a partition of the Time Capsule drive. If not, would the sparse file from the various computers being backed up need to be copied to the external drive as part of the RAID1 setup? This seems like overkill for the Time Machine backup, but it would cover the media files.

The complexity with this idea is the software has to run from a Mac computer on your network.. so you need a Mac turned on, probably most of the day.
It isn't possible to partition the TC although you can create a image area.
The software would have to copy the material, that means all files to be copied, go from USB drive, back to the Mac, then back to the TC, and written to the drive. In other words you have just added Network congestion, although a proper incremental backup type software will not actually use a lot of capacity.
Finally it will be slow.. network drives are slower than internal drives. Well USB connected drive is much slower than the same drive connected directly to the computer.. and if the drive is connected directly to a computer it can be shared with the network.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/4
Read carefully the speed of the USB drive plugged into the TC.

External hard drive -- old file path from a previous laptop is still where to find my songs, how do I change?

My iTunes library is a mess, it is stored on an external hard drive. My old laptop died unexpectedly and I didn't have a problem resetting the file path for the library on my new laptop. The other day my son was trying to update his iPod when I wasn't home and I don't know what he did.... GRRRR Any songs I purchased on my old laptop are now not able to be found. When I click on 'get info' on a song it shows the old file path from the old laptop. Songs that I purchased since the new laptop are still playable and great. I know my songs are still there but I can't seem to get the file path to reset on the old music. HELP!!! PLEASE

This happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or an external drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2

Reliably use one external drive with iTunes files with two computers?

Hi all,
I have an iMac with a 200GB external firewire drive as my main desktop. I also have a 12" Powerbook that I use around the house. I've also used the PB to stream music from my iMac to my stereo. I have the odd bit of trouble with this, music stopping and not reconnecting etc.
We had a party last weekend and to stop the problems with wireless streaming occuring, I unplugged my firewire drive from my iMac and plugged it in downstairs to my Powerbook.
To get the files to appear in iTunes on the PB, I had to drag everything across to from the finder to iTunes. After a while everything was there.
The party went well: one visit from environmental health telling us to turn things down, and one visit to accident and emergency.
Next day, I returned my firewire drive to to my iMac and now every track in itunes has an exclamation mark next to it.
I know how to sort this out, and I'm not bothered about losing my playlists: what I want to know is a safe method to allow me to move my harddrive around and make sure it's all OK when I plug it into my iMac again.
Any ideas?
I suppose I probably left on the "Organise the music into folders" option when I first plugged in the drive to my PB and the files have actually moved a bit. Would making sure that this was set on both machines be a food thing to do?
Cheers
Stuart

I suppose I probably left on the "Organise the music into folders" option when I first plugged in the drive to my PB and the files have actually moved a bit. Would making sure that this was set on both machines be a food thing to do?
That probably changed the file locations, presumed the 'Organize' option was turned off on your iMac.
Now your 'iTunes Library' file (iTunes' database) on the iMac can't find the files.
It's a good thing to have the option turned on (or off) on every Mac you connect your external drive to.
I used to have my library on an external disk too. The only thing I had to take into account was to copy the 'iTunes Library' file from one computer to the other when connecting my external HD.
Never ran into problems.
More info about the library files here.
If you're running OS X 10.4, you could create an Automator workflow to copy the file to your external HD and another one to copy it from the external HD to the Powerbook.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
a LaCie 1TB external hard drive.
Everything works fine.
But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
because diagnostics and repair programs
only works properly and fully when they run from
external drives. Anything on the internal drive can be repaired
and examine. Impossible to do if Techtool is on the same
drive that's been examined.
Any thoughts as to what I should do?
Thanks
iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

pitou wrote:
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?
As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.
But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

External Drive with invisible files

I have a MAC OS Extended format hard drive that I am attempting to clean up to make room for transfering some data. I have removed all the visible folder and files, but both finder and Disk Utility show that there are over 173 GB of data (over 2 million files) still on the volume. The drive is a 500 GB LaCie that I partitioned into two equal parts of 250GB. The other Partition was used exclusively for TM Backups. I want to reformat the drive ( the old back up partition I dont care about). but I am afraid of erasing files that I can't see.
Is there such a thing as an invisible file?
How can I find out what they are and why they are taking up so much of the drive?
I did run DU to Verify the volume and it checks out with no errors.
It is possible that they could be windows files that we used with Parallels at one time. But we no longer use Parallels. I would think that I would be able to see them even if I can't open the files.
I am running Lion on an iMac. The external drive is connected with firewire.

If you want a cleared (erased) unpartitioned 500 GB drive, then do this:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the 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.
Yes, there are invisible files. The OS has thousands of them that are kept invisible to the user.

External drive with PC files.

I have already backed up content from my older PC on my external harddrive .When I connect it to Time Machine it wants to delete the content. Obviously a way around this is to partition in Disc utilities but can it do this with the PC content already there?

Sylvester is correct. Time Machine cannot back up to a drive that has the +Master Boot Record+ (MBR) partition map scheme, which is most likely what's on it, and to change that you must erase the drive.
So you'll need to find somewhere to copy the data temporarily, while you reformat, and make two partitions; one for Time Machine backups, one for the other data. You can format the second one as +MS-DOS (FAT),+ which your PC should be able to handle.
But be sure you have room for a TM partition large enough to back up your Mac; see #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Also note there are detailed instructions for formatting the disk in #5 there.

How do I take ownership of a hard drive build in windows but installed as an additional disk in my new Mac Pro?

How do I take ownership of a hard drive build in windows but installed as an additional disk in my new Mac Pro?
I bought a Mac and have various HDDs, some Portable some SATA, I can right to them and dont seem to be able to take ownership of them, is this to do with the format or Security seting I can't find?
Any help would be great; thanks.
Stephen

Thanks Kaz-K, this was what I assumed it to be. I have started to move the stuf over to a 4GB internal drive, once done and verified, I will reformat the drive and move it back, blooming nusience.
Cheers.
Stephen

Re: Leone's post May 2014 about how to best use an external drive with Aperture

I am trying to find Leone who had a great post May 2014 to Diane. I posted tho same message as a 'Reply' to the Leone/Diane posts but then was worried it would not show up since that was some time ago so I decided I should post it as new. Apologies if it comes through twice. I am having trouble as indicated below:
I found this response to the question about Aperture and external hard drives from last May. I bought a WD My Book 4TB and need to back up photos I have in Aperture (many!) to free up space. I am a photographer and need to be able to plug the external drive in as needed, pull a photo out from the WD and back into Aperture to work on it if needed.
I read your directions to Diane and have the external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I read the two ways you suggest to move part or all of my library to an external drive and still be able to use it in Aperture with all the metadata saved, as I need to continue to work with the images. I am not completely clear about the advantage of the 'referenced' method but decided to go with the Split Library because it sounded like the Referenced method would still keep originals (and take space) in Aperture. I'm not sure about this, but that was what I chose.
I have backed up my computer, formatted the drive then went to Aperture to begin. I do the 'Export' and it shows the external drive it will go to but when I click 'OK', it says "EXPORT LIBRARY FAILED - Library could not be create because the file system of the destination volume is not supported." I doubled checked to be sure the drive was Journaled which it was. I did call WD and talk to them but they told me this was outside their area.
Also, in Aperture, I have my photos in Projects by yymmdd. Is it possible to transfer Projects into the ext. drive without having to break them out of the Projects?
Any direction anyone might give would be greatly appreciated, Sandy

Hi Sandy,
I suggest taking a week or two to get to know Aperture better before proceeding. Aperture can do many things, and can do what you want. It's important to be specific about what you want, however. From what you've said, it appears that you don't yet know.
bybeeler wrote:
[1] I found this response to the question about Aperture and external hard drives from last May. I bought a WD My Book 4TB and need to back up photos I have in Aperture (many!) to free up space.
[2] I am a photographer and need to be able to plug the external drive in as needed, pull a photo out from the WD and back into Aperture to work on it if needed.
[1] A back-up is a copy of digital files stores on a separate device. A back-up is recommended because drives fail, and humans make mistakes. A back-up is not used to free up storage space.
[2] Aperture can be set up in many equally-usable ways. The program files reside (almost always) on your system drive. The data files can be anywhere you want them, as long as they are on locally-mounted drive(s). The main data file is your Library. The best place for it is on the drive that has the fastest throughput to your logic board. This is, in nearly 100% of machines, the system drive. But Aperture functions well with Libraries of secondary drives — internal or external — with sufficient throughput. USB-3 and Thunderbolt I (& II) provide sufficient throughput for using an Aperture Library on a secondary drive.
Nearly all photographers will fill whatever storage space is available (making data is what photographers do). The question is: what do you do when your Library no longer fits on your system drive? (And remember, you should leave at least 10% (I recommend 20% for heavy users of Aperture) of your system drive free.) The answer depends, primarily, on whether your computer is portable or fixed in location.
If fixed, just buy a more-than-large-enough secondary drive of USB-3 or faster throughput, mount it permanently, and move (using Finder) your Library to it.
If your computer is portable (and you can't increase the on-board storage), you have to select the best from several confusing alternatives:
• Put your Library on an external drive with throughput at least as fast as USB-3
— Pros: Easy to maintain and back-up.
— Cons: Must have drive with you in order to use your Library.
• Leave your Library on your system drive, but relocate your Images' Originals to an external drive.
— Pros: You can work on your Library without having the external drive available.
— Cons: You can't export (except Previews), Print, or make adjustments until your external drive is mounted. Significantly more difficult to administer, especially importing and backing-up.
• Leave your Library and and _some_ of your Images' Originals on your system drive, and relocate most of your Image's Originals to an external drive.
— Pros: You can do any work on those Images whose Originals are stored in the Library regardless of where the external drive is.
— Cons: Yet another level more difficult to administer.
If you are comfortable with the administrative overhead, the third set-up will be the most rewarding. Keep all _current_ Images Originals inside your Library, and routinely relocate the Originals of Images no longer current to the external drive.
In no case is it recommended that you at any time remove from your Library an Image (not the Original — the Image in Aperture) that you expect to ever use again.
HTH,
—Kirby.

Recover external drive with file salvage

Hi guys, By mistake I hit erase on disk utility on the wrong drive. I didnt use the drive at all after that so file salvage did recovered a lot of stuff. My problem is the media is grouped in the folders dv and quictime but Im not able to see the video, on the dv folder the quictimes have all square colors around the screen and the quictime folder is all white. and on both cases theres no audio. Im doing the process again and see if it works but does anyone has any experience recovering an external drive with it? is there another way to recover the media?
Please let me know, im desperate to recover this drive!
thanks a lot

My recommendation is use one Caldigit in RAID 0 for editing (we'll call it C 1) and use the other Caldigit (C 2) as a backup.
When you get new material, copy it to C 1, then to C 2. Take C 2 off line. You can not accidentally erase a drive if it is not connected and/or turned on.
Edit your projects.
At the end of the day, back up C 1 to C 2.
As C 1 and C 2 fill, you will need to move older and/or finished material off of them. Get a MacBurly or other 2 drive enclosure with swapable drive bays. You could also just get a simple bare drive housing like the Voyager Q. Purchase a pair of bare drives (always purchase your drives in pairs). We'll call this first pair: Archive01 and Archive01.back. Backup whatever you need to remove from the Caldigits to your Archive01 and Archive01.back drives. Test that the material transferred ok to the new drives then take them offline. If you are using the Voyager, put them on a shelf. Delete what you just copied from the Caldigits.
Rinse and repeat as necessary.
Keep in mind, a drive placed on a shelf and not used is probably more prone to failure than one used constantly. So, every few weeks, spin all the drives up and run disk utility on them to verify they are ok. This gives the heads a workout and keeps the drive from seizing up.
Aren't you glad you asked?
Good luck,
x

Trying to backup one of my iPhoto libraries I keep getting a error message that basically says that the file could not be backed up because there is another file on the external drive with the same name, etc. There is no other file.

While trying to copy one of my iPhoto libraries to an external hard drive I get the following error message "You can’t copy “iPhoto Library old” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames." There is no other file on the external drive with this name. I have asked this question before and was told that there are some duplicate photos (files) in my library and I needed to go to "show file contents" and look at certain files to find duplicates and delete the duplicates. I did all of this and the library will still not copy and always stops copying in the exact same place on each attempt. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You've been deleting your actual Photos.
Don't change anything in the iPhoto Library Folder via the Finder or any other application. iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things, deleting them or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
Best way forward now is to recover the surviving Originals from this library and start over from scratch.
Regards
TD

How to use an external drive with 2 Macs?

Using an external drive for LR 5.4 files and can download and view without any issues on my MacBook. However, when the same drive is attached to my iMac I cannot download or view any files on the external drive that were added after March of this year. Any ideas on how to go about resolving this issue?

The following screenshot might be helpful. It shows where in Lr preferences you can configure which catalog Lr uses as the default. If you need to direct it to an external drive then use the 'Other' option to point to this drive then next time Lr launches set it back 'Load most recent catalog'

ITunes Library on External Drive - NO .xml file

i recently had some serious hard drive corruption on my old computer, and figuring it was time for an upgrade anyway I decided to buy a new MacBook.
i had been storing all of my iTunes music on an external hard drive. i'm trying to figure out how to get my new MacBook to be able to access the music. I've changed the location of my library to the external drive in iTunes preferences, but no luck.
I know that iTunes has an .xml file where it stores things like song titles, data, etc etc -- unfortunately, that .xml file is on my old, ruined hard drive -- all i have is my external drive with my MP3s.
what do i do at this point? how can i access all of these songs using iTunes on my new MacBook without that .xml file?

There are 2 files that give iTunes and other apps the info the need to perform. The files are iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml.
The default location of the 2 files is HD>Users>User Account>Music>iTunes - do not move regardless where your actual tunes are located. If the files are not present in the default location then iTunes will create new files with no info in them until you add the tunes back to the library.
This is from the iTunes Help Menu with a search for "files":
What are the iTunes library files?
The iTunes library is a database iTunes uses to organize your music. Two iTunes library files are created and maintained by iTunes for different purposes. They're both in the iTunes folder.
Mac OS X
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
Microsoft Windows
\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl
\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml
The two different iTunes library files serve different purposes.
iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl in Windows)
This file is a database of the songs in your library and the playlists you've created. Some song-specific data is saved in this file. If you delete the file, iTunes creates a new, empty copy when you open the application, but any playlists, song ratings, comments, or other information you created is lost. The iTunes Library file is only used by iTunes.
Note: The library file name for versions of iTunes prior to 4.9 was "iTunes 4 Music Library" for Mac OS X and "iTunes 4 Music Library.itl" for Windows. After upgrading to iTunes 4.9 or later, the older library files are moved to a "Previous iTunes Libraries" folder.
Tip: New versions of iTunes sometimes include enhancements to the iTunes library. When you open the new version of iTunes, iTunes upgrades your existing library to the new format and places a copy of the old library in the Previous Libraries folder. If everything goes fine during your upgrade to the latest version of iTunes, you can delete the older iTunes Library files.
iTunes Music Library.xml
This file contains some (but not all) of the same information stored in the iTunes 4 Music Library file. The purpose of the iTunes Music Library.xml file is to make your music and playlists available to other applications on your computer. In Mac OS X other iLife applications (like iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie) use this file to make it easier for you to add music from your iTunes library to your projects.
MJ

Had to wipe my drive so I could do a clean install of snow leopard Now I look every where on how to move bookmarks, address book and I cal settings. I have them back up on a external drive with Time machine but can not move, copy or restore my old sett d

Had to wipe my drive so I could do a clean install of snow leopard. Now I have look every where on how to move bookmarks, address book and I cal settings. I have them back up on a external drive with Time machine but can not move, copy or restore my old settings. The instructions I have found or no help or needs more clarafication on what to do.

Use migration assistant to move your files. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4889

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini (256gbSSD + 2tbHDD)?

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup what I have on my Mac Mini?
My Mac Mini has one 256 SSD and one 2tb HDD. I want to use Time Machine to do a backup of everything.
Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
Might I suggest as an alternative that you not use Time Machine but a third-party backup utility that simply overwrites older files with new ones such that the backup drive can be the same capacity as the drive backed up.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

I need to take ownership of an external drive with NTFS file system from my previous laptop?

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