If I drag a external drive from devices to favorites, it disappears

Whenever I plug in an external drive or USB drive it shows up in Devices, as usual. But if I drag it into the Favorites section, it disappears, and there is no way for me to access the files inside. The mac still recognizes the device but it is not accessable in finder. Even if I unplug it and replug it it still does not show up again. Even rebooting does nothing. Call me stupid, but what did I do? How can I access my files again?

You could try Data Rescue from Prosoft, but since you didn't have it installed prior to reformatting it most likely won't work. Since you reformatted, your best option would be professional data recovery services. None of which are cheap. I'd recommend OnTrack.

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Can't save multiple folders to external drive. Get: "The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items." when dragging large folders to mac os extended journalled external drive from OS 10.6.8

Hi
I am feeling VERY desperate!
After losing an external drive [dont ask....] -   I got another one : 2TB WD formatted properly [ OS extended journalled for mac ] ready for action to move my thousands of files and images and ppts in hundreds of folders across from the laptop to this drive because I travel a bit with the laptop and this is too risky not to back up at home.
But this message came up after starting on moving folders across [** and not straight away, sometimes after moving a folder when 4 of 6 gb of files across then the message comes up = very frustrating]:
"The operation can’t be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items."
I am dragging mixed sometimes large complex folders to this os extended journalled external drive from my mac book pro OS 10.6.8 - it would take decades to move items one by one or even folder by folder and really confusing.
I have dragged-copied various small folders and files across successfully, but it is only working 50:50 and I can't leave machine with the idea of things copying eg: overnight - it just won't work....
I have been browsing google and find some people describing in CODE how they overcome this 'message'   .... but I [and I guess some other viewers of this in future & also in desperation] would need instructions for beginners.... to try this type of thing. I don't know any code.
How can this be happening - I feel ANGRY at APPLE !!!! for not posting easy fix instructions yet re; this, or better still updating software so it doesn't happen [ that I can find at least !!! ] .   There seem to be hundreds of people stuck with this stupid message and inability to back up their projects etc.
Can anyone help ?
Many thanks
Julie
15 August 2011

hi Samberl
thanks a lot for the fast reply.
I was dragging folders from main folders on the laptop-desktop onto the external drive icon - to copy them across....
Your suggestion sounds very promising - I didn't know about 'cloning'.
Yes the idea is to backup the laptop -    I thought I would just move it all now, new - and then keep saving/dragging physically   across to the new drive myself each day or two...
Would this be the sizeof the internal hard drive = c.500 gb ?   =   under the HD icon on desktop is written :
" 499.76gb , 311.5 gb free "
I can erase and start agin on the new external drive - so this plan is to make two partititions, rather than the one at present, and make one of them 500 gb ?
I have found CCC [carbon copy cloner] googling - looks good.
When CCC site says it backs up the hard drive - would this mean all my files [over 100 gb] that are mostly in folders on the desktop, plus the others in itunes, iphotos etc found in the HD icon, would all copy across successfully [wherever they are in the computer ] ?
thanks again, hope you can clarify these things and then I will go for it.
It would be great and amazing if this 'lack of permission' message doesn't show up in the process of doing this ccc transfer - hopeful!
Julie

How do I have itunes use/detect my external hard drive and place music on the external drive from the itunes store? There are no music files on my pc yet. I will like to do this after installing itunes 11 on my pc for the first time. I am using windows 7

How do I have itunes use/detect my external hard drive and place music on the external drive from the itunes store? There are no music files on my pc yet. I will like to do this after installing itunes 11 on my pc for the first time. I am using windows 7. HP computer intel Dual Core. Thanks for any help!

Hey idw3,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities, and thanks for the question. Follow the instructions on this article to move your iTunes Media folder to an external hard drive:
iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364
Regards,
David

Clone a Mac Partition to an External Drive from within Windows 7 Bootcamp?

Anyone know if it is possible to clone the mac os x partition to an external drive from within Windows 7 bootcamp? I (like a few others) had a problem with the latest 10.6.3 update and I cannot boot into the mac partition but I can access it via bootcamp so I was thinking about trying to clone it to an external drive and then boot from the new clone and see if that works.
Appreciate your comments.

setup a 30GB partition on an external drive, along with a partition of 150% the size of your Mac OS X volume -- or larger.
Install OS X to 30GB.
While booted from DVD, before you install, you'll need to go to Utility Menu => Disk Utility to do the partitoning. While there, in DU see if you can repair your system.
And where is your TimeMachine or clone backup? The "Step #1: Backup before beginning your Boot Camp project."?
No way to backup or clone from within Windows, though you may be able to write to NTFS backup volume, UNLESS you bought MacDrive8 which allows read AND write to HFS+ from within Windows.

How to remove an external drive from time machine backup

In time machine I also backup to an external drive. I recently bought a new external drive and thats working fine. However, it still wants to backup to my previous drive which I dont want to use. In time machine preferences I see the old and new drive listed. Both are greyed out so I cannot deselect the older drive.
Suggestions?

mhattonmd wrote:
So when I open time machine preferences I see time machine and both external drives listed. If I click on options I see both external drives but I cant select either as they are both greyed out.
If you see them both listed on the initial screen of TM prefs, they are both selected as backup drives. They are not being backed up. They are being used by Time Machine as a destination. You need to use “Select Disk…” to remove the external drives from the destination drives. Select Disk does not choose the drives you want to back up. It chooses the drives you wan to back up to.

Can I install os9 on an external drive from mavericks

Can I install OS9 on an external drive from Mavericks? I'm running Mavericks 10.9.4 on both my MBP and 27" iMac. I have my original OS9 install disc. I'd like to install OS9 on an external drive so I can use some classic apps that I'd like to use.
I tried to install directly to an external drive, but when I click on the Mac OS Install icon, I get the message "You can't open the application "%@" because it may be damaged or incomplete." The icon for Mac OS Install is the generic page with an A. Figuring that Mavericks doesn't recognize the app. Then I restarted and held down the C key - no luck.

I understand, but was hoping I boot off an external drive in 9. Thanks for your response and I apologize for my late response.

I have scanned a document, how do I save to a specific folder on an external drive from the Preview application?

I have scanned a document, how do I save to a specific folder on an external drive from the Preview application?

There is no 'Save as' in Lion. If it's a new document then select File -> Save will bring up a standard 'Save' dialog box which will allow you to specify the location. Otherwise select File -> Duplicate and then save the duplicate.

Format an Ethernet Connected External Drive from PC to Mac System

Hi there, apologies for my ignorance however after suffering Windows PCs for 35 years I have finally changed over to 2 iMacs and loving it.
I have a new model WD 1 TB (MsDOS formatted) external drive attached to my router via ethernet.
My iMac (imac7,1 a running OS X 10.5.2) recognises the external drive as a "PC Server" fine and I can access it from Finder and copy files to it.
Unfortuneately NEITHER Disk Utility nor Timemachine recognises its existance.
I believe I may have to format the drive for the Mac system. However how can I do this if Disk Utility does not recognise it as a drive? Is there some utility available that allows me to format an Ethernet attached PC drive to the Mac system.
Thanking you in advance

Time Machine can't use a NAS drive even if it's formatted with a GUID partition map scheme and HFS+ Journaled. Apple dropped support for network drives before they released Leopard last year.
Apple does support their own Time Capsule device and network backups to Leopard Server running Time Machine Server.
There's not much point in formatting the drive at all if you ever plan to be able to connect to it with a PC.

Create shared library on external drive from scratch

I have seen many posts about creating shared iTunes libraries on external drives with many different configurations, but mostly with pre-existing libraries. My question is creating the library from scratch. The purpose is obviously to share songs among several computers AND only have one copy of a song as to not take up unnecessary disk space on several computers.
All of our songs are on an external USB hard-drive attached to Airport Xtreme. Every song is in album folder, and every album folder is in an artist folder (very organized). All the artist folders (with their album and then song contents) are in a root folder called "Songs" on the external hard-drive.
We have upgraded our three Macs (iMac, MBP and MacMini) to Leopard and deleted all iTunes folders on each local hard drive (there was nothing in them anyway). We now want to create ONE iTunes folder on the hard drive so that each computer can access it. What are the steps? Here is what I "think" I've learned here on the postings with my questions:
1) First I opened iTunes on my first, main computer (iMac) and went into "Preferences" to change the iTunes music folder to [Ext HD]:iTunes:iTunes Music. The option, "Copy to music folder..." is deselected. (This will also be done on the other computers).
2) Now what to do? I could just move all of my song artist folders with their album subfolders and music files inside them, into the "iTunes Music" folder. But then what do I click to get iTunes to see all the songs and put them in its database? The other option is click "Add to Library" - but then don't I have to select all the individual songs? (I actually tried the latter method and it kept crashing). Can I just move all the folders into [Ext HD}:iTunes:iTunes Music folder and click something to get it to create its database based on all the music files that are now in its subfolders?
3) Next step. I have seen many people write that they then create an "Alias" and put the Alias in their "Music" folder on their LOCAL, computer's hard drive. Could someone now explicitly, step-by-step, describe how this is done? I assume I go to the external hard drive. Am I creating an alias of the entire "iTunes" folder, or of the "iTunes Music" subfolder, or of the library file??? Please answer this specifically.
So now I have "XXX alias" that I copy to my local, computer's hard drive and put it on my desktop. I take out the "....alias" word, and drag it to my local "Music" folder. It asks me to replace the existing folder/file, and I say yes. Correct? And then I do this on all three computers, correct?
4) Finally, after I've done all of this, I still have the following functionality questions -
4a) When we now add to the library, either from a CD or online purchase, ONE copy of the music should go in the "iTunes Music" folder on the external drive, correct?
4b) This system means that all three computers MUST have the same iTunes library, playlists, etc, correct? The downside of this system is that you cannot personalize libraries for each computer and just share the actual music files, correct? (If so, is there another process [steps 1-4 above] that results in a more customizable system where *ONLY ONE COPY* of the actual song file is shared?)
Sorry for the length of the message, and the questions. Truly I have read all the postings but was unable to map out my plan before I go and creating, finally, this one set of music that we can share. In advance, thank you all for your help.

I was afraid you'd say that, because I'm a long time Mac guy and I don't have the perfect answer. Have you ever messed with remote desktop? That'd seem to give her full access and control, something I personally wouldn't do, although it may work for you.
Another thought came to me that might work: copy over the complete library to her machine, and then when you do another major shoot, create a new catalog, edit, etc.and then import as catalog to you main one while sending her the new one.
I am sure there are more elegant solutions, but these are a couple of ways.

Moving photos to an external drive from iPhoto

I'm exporting from macback pro iphoto library to an external drive (passport for mac) and getting message unable to create/volumes/My Passport for Mac. I use this drive as my back up drive for the macbook. Does this mean I need to get a new drive or just that the passport is too full (1Tetrabyte)

to move the iPhoto library you need to move it as a single entity -
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Transferring my external drive from mac to windows

Hi,
I have been having problems w/my itunes (taking forever to update my library). I have and use my iMac. Since Apple doesn't help with this problem (based on my seaches through apple support here), I called Geek Squad through Best Buy. They were able to identify the file that is causing the problem. The file is on my external hard drive, which is also where I store all my music. She attempted to take it from my external and drag it into the garbage, but it won't allow for that b/c my external has to be reformatted (another error message I have had for a while). Her suggestion was to hook up my external hard drive to a windows computer to get that problem file off and then re-hook it up to my Mac computer. This wont' reformat the external drive (I have to figure out this problem later) but she said if I can get rid of this on a PC, I should be able to access my itunes w/out waiting hours for the library to be updated.
So, my question is this: If my external hard drive has been formatted for an apple computer and has only been used on an apple computer, is it going to damage anything if I hook it up to a PC? I have all of my songs on this (they aren't on my iMac hard drive) and I don't want to damage these. I am also considering just buying another external hard drive and transferring these tunes to that new one. Thanks.

cjmandel wrote:
I don't know if I understand how to tell waht size the internal drive is. When I click on the "About this Mac" option, I see that this says " 2GB 800 MHz" I don't know if this answers the question correctly though.?
Compressing my music using the default itunes setting? How would I know if I am doing this?
Thanks for the help!
To tell what size the internal HD is open a new Finder window and on the left look for a drive probably called iMac HD then type Command I (I as in Ivan) and Command is the key next to the spacebar on your keyboard. It will tell you the capacity and look similar to:

Reformat external drive from mac os to windows

the windows partition on my mac book pro is close to full.
i would like to use an external drive formatted for windows for my growing number of pc games (gw,tdu,fsx,dirt - which run great on the mac book pro windows partition btw).
i tried to reformat a mac formatted external drive using disc utility, erase, format volume, but only choices were mac os extended and unix - no fat32, dos, or windows choices.
if i start up my mac book pro using windows, the drive does not show up in the 'hard drives' section of 'my computer'
please let me know how to reformat this mac formatted external drive so i can use it when the mac book pro is running windows.
thanks

Hi Stefan, Turns out my old ext hd was corrupt. Bought a new 300G G-Drive and got a brand new problem which you may have heard of - the dreaded hal.dll crash. My windows partition crashed and after much effort I finally have everything working.
Had to go to the mac store to get a boot camp 1.4 disk (mine was the original) was able to save files from the corrupt windows partition to my mac partition. next i used boot camp to revert to a single partition on my internal drive, saving my mac system and files. next used boot camp to partition the internal drive into big mac and 31G windows. reinstalled windows. next using disk utility i split my 300G external into 10 30G partitions using your GUID suggestion and formatting in ms-dos(fat32) so my mac could read/write to it. dragged the files i saved to the 30G partitions and they work fine. loaded more games into the 30G partitions and they also are working fine.
could not have done it without your pointing out the GUID option.
vielen dank, john

Upgrading my intel iMac to internal SSD and running 1TB external drive from firewire 800 for mass storage while still using a second external drive for backups...my goal-speed with a SSD, to still have 1TB of room for everything i have now..possible?

I seem to kill HD's every two years...the last two i've installed were WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives. The speed gains over stock drives have been remarkable. I don't blame the drives for the failures, my machines are up and running 16 hours a day, every day, year round. They die from 'mileage' so to speak...i assume...there's no viral acvtivity or questionable downloads to gunk things up...just lots of work.
I have my third new drive ready to install in my intel based iMac...but i've had a thought...I want to install a SSD in my iMac for the speed gain (and recent price drops)...for standard storage i want to use this new WD Caviar Black 1TB in an external drive bay and connect via firewire 800 for storing everything except the OS and my most commonly used software...am i crazy? will the firewire 800 external drive negate the speed gained with an internal SSD??
I have four iMacs in my office, and one at home. I buy second hand and install new drives and boost memory. I'm going to do this on my 'home' machine...if it works out well i want to upgrade the other three this way...but first i need to know if i'm just dreaming, or will it really make a difference? or even possible??
Thanks!
2.66 intell core2duo
2009 iMac
8gig ram
1 gig hd
OSX ver. 10.8

The SSD gives great bootup and Application launch speed. I think it also speeds up the video rendering a bit, I do all that on the SSD and then move the finished project to the external drives. As far as the speed for the external drives they are quick enough for viewing video and the file transfer rate is good. I had initially put the SSD into an external cradle (FW800) and the system was faster than on the internal drive. I only got a 1.5GBs SATA drive, perhaps yours could benefit from the 3GBs. I know the 6GBs would be too fast and costs a lot more, even the MacPros need special hookups to make use of the 6GBs.

Format an external drive from mac to pc

How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?

kwnola wrote:
How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?
1: Remove the data off the drive
You can do this by installing MacDrive on the Windows PC to access the Mac HTFS+ format
Or you can use a Mac to remove the data.
2: Format the drive on the PC (preferably) by right clicking on the drive and choosing format
A: If data on the drive will have larger than 4GB sized files, then the format you want is exFAT
(if your using Windows XP, you can download exFAT from Microsoft)
B: If the data on the drive will always have less than 4GB sized files, then you should choose FAT32 for most compatibility with all other machines.
3: If you can only format the drive on the Mac then open Apple's Disk Utility in the Utilities folder
Select the drive on the far left, it should have the makers name and a size, then click Partition.
Now select the box and click Options: MBR Then select Format: exFAT or MSDOS (FAT32) and click Apply.
4: If any chance you need to secure delete any data remaining on the drive form being recovered, use the Erase with Zero (or 7x for very secure) before formatting.
Note: Formatting a drive on the PC there will be a option for NTFS, this is for access by Windows only, but software can be installed on the Mac to read/write this format.
If you use exFAT or FAT32, the Mac can read and write this format just like Windows can, no need for extra software.
Linux can read/write just about any format.

How do I access a library already on an external drive, from a new computer?

I moved my library from an old hard drive onto a larger external drive, following the online instructions and then continued to use the old machine to access the library. I now want to swap computers completely (the library can stay where it is) but am baffled by how to do this.
Looking at the folders on the external drive there are noi library files just media filders and files.
I've ensured that the new laptop sees the external drive as it was (ie its ths G drive on old and new machines).
I have pointed iTunes at the relevent folder
I have deauthorised everything and then authorised the new laptop
When I open iTunes I have nothing....
The helpdesk are trying.....
Old machine was XP, new machine is W7
HELP!

The library file is still on the old computer in the iTunes folder.
Move the entire iTunes folder from the old computer to the new computer.

If I drag a external drive from devices to favorites, it disappears

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