Is it possible to use an external hard drive to just copy files off a Mac?

I am looking into getting a WD Passport as my MacBook's hard drive has recently crashed. All I want to do is use it like I use a USB stick, so take it out, plug it into another computer occasionally and generally just store info and photos etc externally as a back up. Is TimeMachine the best thing to use or just manually take it from the MacBook and onto another PC when I need without using any software?

If you wish to use Time Machine as your backup system, it is best to use an external HDD dedicated to that one application.
If you want to use the new WD HDD on PCs as well as your Mac, the make certain that it is formatted so it is compatible with both systems, Macs can read PC formatted HDDs but not write to them. FAT or exFAT are two choices you may consider.
Ciao.

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Is it possible to use an external hard drive for time machine backup and also as a regular hard drive?

Is it possible to use an external hard drive for time machine backup and also as a regular hard drive?

I am using an external drive in the exact way that you described. You just keep it plugged in to the computer when you want to access the movies and files. In order to put files on it, just go to finder open up the drive under devices and drag and drop files onto the drive. It is just like using a usb drive with a terabyte of space.

Can some please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my Mac

Can someone please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my new Mac. I ended up getting a bunch of duplicates. My old Mac has an older version of iPhoto while the new Mac has iPhoto '11. Is that the cause of the problem? Please advise. Thanks.

Simply copy the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder on the old Machine to the Pictures Folder on the new Machine.
Then launch iPhoto. That's it.
This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.
Regards
TD

How can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory?

i don't know if this question has been asked before: how can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory? just like itunes all my song are save on my external hard drive. make sense?

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

Using an external hard drive to connect the camera to the Mac Book Pro

I am about three weeks away from a 9 to 4 pin firewire cable. In the meantime, I am logging and capturing from my Canon AX HI through my external hard drive. I am not super amazed at the quality of the image, it's noisy.
I am using HDV tapes, and I don't beleive the lighting should be causing the issue.
Does anyone know if using the external hard drive to connect the camera to my Mac Book Pro is compromising the quality of the image? Can I expect a beautiful strong image on a lap top?
Thanks for any help.

There is ZERO quality loss when you capture via firewire. It is a digital transfer of files...that's it. The issue you have is that you are trying to judge the quality of your image based on what you see with your computer monitors, and that is simply the LAST thing you should be doing.
And since this is HDV, the only way to monitor that is with an HD card or I/O device, and an HD monitor or TV. Like the Matrox MXO2 mini or AJA I/O Express mini and HDTV.
Shane

Is it possible to use an external hard drive wirelessly w Leopard?

Upgrading to Leopard seems to have ruined my wireless home network, which worked very smoothly with Tiger. After a couple of tries, I was unable to connect wirelessly to my external hard drive (connected directly to Airport). I was then unable to even access the data directly. I am right now using Data Rescue II to see how much of the data on the hard drive can be retrieved.
I tried an old external HD with airport to see if that would work, and it failed also.
Is it even possible to set up a wireless network with Leopard that will let me move data to an external HD??
Any help is appreciated.
Message was edited by: Joe Mondo

I may have phrased my question poorly.
Pre-Leopard, my external HD was connected directly to Airport. I used it wirelessly.
When I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard, it was almost impossible to access the HD wirelessly, and then outright impossible.
I tried the same setup with another external HD and that didn't work either. When I try to access the HD wirelessly, I get nowhere.

Is it possible to use an external hard drive as the windows partition with boot camp?

I am looking to get a Macbook Pro adn was researchin the different software advantages over PC and found a program called oot Camp that allows you to run Windows on your Mac. I thought that this was interesting as it was sort of the best of both worlds. I wanted to know from people who have used this before: How well does it work? Does it slow down the computer at any noticable rate? Etc.
The last question that Ive been trying to find an answer to, but have no conclusive results, is wether you are able to select the partition as an external hard drive or not. Also how it affects your ability to use an external drive as well. Answers are much apreciated, thank you.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Boot Camp is an application that emulates a BIOS so you can install Windows on a second volume on your hard drive. It can't be installed on an external disk because Windows can't be installed on an external hard drive. It works well if you need performance

Is it possible to use an external hard drive to store my music?

I am attempting to clean my internal hard drive. Is it possible to have my iTunes library on an external hard drive? If not, what about on a different internal hard drive?
Thanks.

Sure, it's possible to move your music library to a different drive, internal or external. You do have to be a little careful, though, or else iTunes can get very confused about the location of your files. This Apple knowledge-base article describes the exact process to follow:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
If you search these forums, you'll find both many tales of success, and the occasional tale of woe, most typically from someone who didn't follow the correct procedure and ended up with an iTunes library full of little exclamation marks next to each song - the sign that iTunes has lost track of a file. But if you follow the documented procedure above exactly, you should be good to go.

Should I use an external hard drive to store the files while editing and how should I do this?

Getting used to FCPX and want help learning how to store my Canon D60 Video files on either my internal Mac book pro or on an external hard drive while editing projects?   Do the files need to be transcoded on the computer drive or can that happen on an external HD?
Thanks,
Greg

Well, in my opinion, it all comes down to speed. There are a lot of editors that swear that working with footage on your system drive will do all sorts of horrible things, cause crashes, etc. Really its a bunch a malarkey. The most it will do is slow you down when your system needs access to the drive. Bandwidth is bandwidth is bandwidth - its all the same. If working with video on your system drive caused crashes, so would doing thousands of other things and we would all have dumped apple long ago for Microsoft or linux.
Here's what I tend to get for sustained read speed on various drives (ie reading a few large files like video files):
USB 2.0: 25 - 30 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since USB is limiting factor, unless you're running a system.
Firewire 400: 28 - 34 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since FW is limiting factor
Firewire 800: 55 - 60 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since FW is limiting factor
internal drive on SATA II or III connection, or USB 3.0 external drive:
    7200 RPM: ~100 MB/sec
    5400 RPM (most laptop drives): probably ~70-80 MB/sec
SSD: 250-500 MB/sec if installed internally or over USB 3. USB 2 or firewire connection for an SSD is a waste of SSD speed *except* that they have fantasticly fast random access for reading many small files, so I got a really fast launching system in an experiment installing a system on an SSD and connecting it via FW 800 - but that's not relevant here
so - to make a short story long - do whatever works for you. avoid using USB 2.0 or firewire 400 drives if you're editing HD - you can't play transcoded ProRes 1080p footage from them reliably. And once you have more than one clip overlapping, like at cross dissolves, you're sunk. You're internal drive is likely much faster, even with the overhead of the system using it too.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the app store is a good HD speed tester. Ignore all the video specific stuff at the bottom - its mostly for uncompressed video, which I doubt you're working with.
Since i have a recent macbook pro (late 2011) and my edits are usually not more dense than 3 layers of video at a time (mostly concert video rather than narrative film), I actually almost never transcode, or even render - and this is for 1080p HD video - because FCP X is so good at playing the imported original h.264 files. I store my media I'm working with on my internal laptop drive (which i upgraded to a 7200 RPM) or a FW 800 7200 RPM external drive.
h.264 files from the camera are much smaller than transcoded ProRes files, so they will play back from USB 2 or firewire 400 drives, but I would only do it in a pinch.
enjoy your editing.

How do I use my Time Machine as an external hard drive to just dump files no longer needed on my computer?

How Do I use my time machine as an external hard drive?

Time Machine is software that allows a Mac to backup to a Time Capsule or other hard drive, so I think you are asking about the Time Capsule here, correct?
http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/
How do you plan to connect the Time Capsule to your network, or is it already connected and configured?
When you have it configured on the network, you can use the Finder to copy/paste or drag/drop files from your Mac to the Time Capsule disk.

If i backed up my iPhotos on an external hard drive can i delete them off my mac?

I recently backed up my Macbook pro on to an external hard drive. I was wodnering if i could delete my photos from my iphoto library to save space, and if so can i then get them back on my computer from my external hard drive?

Depends on exactly what you did
And if you delete the information from your main computer then you do not have a backup - to have a backup you need hte original on your computer and an exact copy on another disk
What format is the external drive? It must be Mac OS extended (journaled) to have your iPhoto library on ti
What did you copy to the external drive? The iPhoto library or your photos?
What you probably need to do is to run your iPhoto library on an external drive and to have a second external drive to backup to - Time Machine is a good choice
To run your iPhoto library on an external drive verify that the drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) and drag the iPHoto library to it intact as a single entity - depress the option and command keyus, launch iPhoto and select the new location - fully test the library on the external drive and after one successful backup cycle verify that the external drive is being backedup - then delete your iPhoto library on the main drive - test one more time before emptying the trash
LN

Is it possible to use an external hard drive to use the music collection at home and at work?

I recently started using iTunes both on my home notebook as on my desktop computer at work. I also discovered it is not possible to download the songs I bought on both machines. It's a pitty, but I can understand Apple's point of view.
I was thinking of bying a small portable USB powered hard drive to store my music collection on but I'd like to know whether this is possible before I buy myself a USB drive only to find out it's a waste of time and money. I assume it is possible the USB drive is assigned a different letter on each machine, but I think I can work around that. But is there anything else I need to keep into account?

Sync iPod/iPad/iPhone with two computers
Although it isn't possible to sync an Apple device with two different libraries it is possible to sync with the same logical library from multiple computers. Each library has an internal ID and when iTunes connects to your iPod/iPad/iPhone it compares the local ID with the one the device normally syncs with. If they are the same you can go ahead and sync...
I have my library cloned to a small 1Tb USB drive which I can take between home & work. At either location I use SyncToy 2.1 to update the local copy with the external drive. Mac users should be able to find similar tools. I can open either of the local libraries or the one on the external drive and update the media content of my iPhone. The slight exception is Photos which normally connects to a specific folder on a specific machine, although that can easily be remapped to the current library if you create a "Photos" folder inside the iTunes Media folder so that syncing the iTunes folders keeps this up to date as well. I periodically sweep my library for new files & orphans with iTunes Folder Watch just in case I make changes at one location but then overwrite the library with a newer copy from the other. Again Mac users should be able to find similar tools.
As long as your media is organised within an iTunes Music or Tunes Media folder, in turn held inside the main iTunes folder that has your library files (whether or not you let iTunes keep the media folder organised) each library can access items at the same relative path from the library folder so the library can be at different drives/paths on different machines. This solution ensures I always have adequate backups of my library and I can update my devices whenever I can connect to the same build of iTunes.
When working with an iPhone earlier builds of iTunes would remove any file not physically present in the local library, even if there was an entry for it, making manual management practically redundant on the iPhone. This behaviour has been changed but it will still only permit manual management with a library that has the correct internal ID. If you don't want to sync your library between machines on a regular basis just copy the iTunes Library.itl file from the current "home" machine to any other you want to use, then clean out the library entires and import the local content you have on that box.
tt2

It keeps saying my hard drive is almost full even though I delete as much as possible and use an external hard drive, cant figure out where else I need to look?

I've tried to keep my computer as organized and clean as possible. I only have 400 songs and not a ton of pictures. I can't figure out where else I need to look on my hard drive. Any suggestions?

I can't really figure out how much I have left in memory but here is some basic info:
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          2 GB
Is there somewhere to look to see a breakdown of what memory is used where?
Thanks for your help!

I'm need to sell my MacBook and need to back up all my files includingn itunes will I be able to do so using an external hard drive?

I'm need to sell my MacBook and need to back up all my files including itunes will I be able to do so using an external hard drive?

To copy your current hard drive I like the free application Carbon Copy Cloner. It makes a bootable copy of everything on your hard drive http://www.bombich.com/index.html Check that it's set up right by booting up from the external drive.

HT201250 if I used external hard disk for backup time machine, is it possible to use that external hard disk to save another else from diffrent computers?

If I used external hard disk for back up time machine, is it possible to use that external hard disk to save another else from diffrent computers?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can do this, but you should make a new volume on your external disk. Time Machine needs a volume that is only used to store backups, so you can't store other data in the same volume as the one you are using for making backups.
If you want to create another volume on your external disk, use Disk Utility to do this > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Anyway, you should get another external disk to store other files, but if you don't want to, you can create another volume in it

Is it possible to use an external hard drive to just copy files off a Mac?

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