Keeping external hard disks cool?

Folks,
I have my wonderful Powerbook hooked up to needs by 3 hard disks. I'm not that much of a geek that I'd know what to do if I had to open up any of these hard disks but anyway, 2 of them are 500 gig each drives (1 of these is firewire) and I also have a 150 gig USB external drive. Sometimes they feel a little hot and I'd really like to pile them on top of each other to get some more space on my table. I was told by a PC person to get a "case" with a "fan" and put the hard disks into this. I looked at some online and was completely overwhelmed as it seems I'd have to open up these disks and somehow install them into this case and then attach that to the Powerbook. I got these external hard disks at the Apple store. What is the solution here and could you please explain it keeping in mind I'm not the type that solders or knows THAT much about wiring, et al tech.
Thanks.
PBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 2 gig RAM

Got a chiller for the laptop and also at BBath and Beyond they have for around $8 a little standing grill like shelf (Apple store has for around $30!) which allows air to circulate under the laptop keeping the HD in THERE cool.
External HDs - put them standing upright next to each other like books and got rid of the one that was always so hot.

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I keep getting "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files/documents to an external hard disk

Dear all,
What should I do? I keep getting the "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files and documents to an external hard disk.
Thanks a heap.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning your files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Is it safe to keep downloaded movies in the Macbook Pro or do I need to use an external hard disk for those ? Please suggest.

Is it safe to store the downloaded movies from iTunes in my Macbook Pro or do I need to store those separately in an external hard disk ? Please advice.

It will be no better or worse than any other video file and should not be responsible for any system instability. As I alluded to earlier, video takes up a lot of space and you can quickly use up that 200 GB of space. Download a few files to you MBP and see what impact it has. I have a couple of external HDDs dedicated to video files (and backups of same) due to the large file sizes.
If you find that space is getting tight on your MBP, then get an external for the video files and another one to back them up. I have a couple of external HDDs dedicated to video files (and backups of same) due to the large file sizes.
Ciao.

Upgraded to 10.10.3, the external hard disk keep working and spinning after I ejected successfully, and the HHD keep lights up, feel unsafe to unplug it

I tried on two macbook air, same situation.
This never happen on 10.10.2 or previous version. (The HDD light will off and it will stop running after I ejected before.)
I feel unsafe to unplug the external hard disk when its still light up and running.
I am using Macbook book air 2012 and 2013 with seagate backup plus....
Anyone have same problem? how to fix it?
or its ok to unplug the HDD while the HDD light is still on and running?
MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

I have a G-Tech external hard drive that continues to spin after I have unmounted it and if I disconnect it while it is spinning it makes a very nasty sounding clunk noise. In my case it started doing this after I enabled FileVault a couple of years ago. I have found that if I unmount it and then wait 6 minutes it will stop spinning. It is inconvenient but I only use it once a week and the clunk sound is scary enough that I put up with the wait.

Disk write cache corruption on an external hard disk

Recently I purchased an external hard disk, to put all of my pictures of my baby due to space limitations on my internal laptop drive. Since my Canon camera 10 megapixel pictures take up a ton of space this was occurring at an alarming rate. My intention was also to back up to DVD but never got to it. This is both a comment and a question.
Now said baby, is getting really good at pulling cords etc. He managed to do this on the external drive firewire cable. As far as i know the drive was not in the process of actually writing. However, after a few minutes and trying to re-plug the drive the OS crashed with a Grey Screen of Death hardware error that tells you that you need to push the power button..
This apparently corrupted the drive's directory. Upon reboot the drive would not mount. Since there were time machine backups on the drive too Diskwarrior was not able to reconstruct the drive in the built in memory available on the computer. Time machine stores millions of files and Diskwarrior apparently wants to keep it all in memory at once. Since my computer has 2GB you would hope that would be enough but apparently not. So that failed. Other utilities seemed to be able to find the files but not restore the directory. I also took it to the apple store they were not able to recover it.
I have to say this is extremely distressing, and hard to believe that a simple accident like this could cost the loss of thousands of pictures. I did send it to a rescue company but that was expensive but I think apple needs to do something about this situation.
On Windows there is a way to disable the write cache for external drives. This is not available for Mac OS X. This would prevent this rather common occurrence of a plug accidentally becoming disengaged when the drive is not in the process of writing. This reduces the odds but I still think apple, in order to become clearly superior, needs a better solution.
I know Apple has experimented with ZFS would this not eliminate this possibility of this kind of disaster? Is this in Snow Leopard desktop? I know they are thinking this is a business customer focused technology but clearly if it can eliminate this kind of thing then I think it is extremely useful to their non server customers. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this issue but ZFS is designed to deal with these issues. HFS+ is extremely fragile to disk corruption.
I know my situation is not that uncommon and this is not the first time this has happened to me with an external drive. You would think I had learned. I hate to think of how many other people have had the same thing happen to them.

Disabling a write cache would not help you with the problem you are having. Besides the write cache is on the hard drive and operates independently of the operating system. But nothing can protect you from disconnected an external drive improperly, and if the drive is in the process of being written to, and the problem comes from directory corruption, not file corruption, as in the case you have described, disabling a write cache would not have made any difference.
For the future the magic word is: Backups.
< Edited by Host >

I can't copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive!!

this is my first time at the forum and i dont find a better way to ask, i want to copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive for have a back up, but when i try to copy it it appears this message "the item "itunes music" has 1 or more items that are in use and cannot be modified", i dont know why, then i search for help in apple support and this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751, but i do what it says and i still having my problem, i can't copy my music, that message keep's appearing and it dont let me copy my music.

forget it i discover my problem, this message gives u 2 option stop or continue i just click continue and it get copied, i think this is normal but like this is my fisrt time i dot this i get confused, i think i still used to windows, i cant believe because i have a ear with this computer. well anything is a good experience.

Help, I installed parallel and windows, and opened videos (on an external hard disk) with windows, and now cannot open them with Mac, and use i movies. How do I reverse this?

Help, I installed parallel and windows, and opened videos (on an external hard disk) with windows, and now cannot open them with Mac, and use i movies. How do I reverse this?

Paragraphs help the reader, just saying.
What are you actually trying to do? Why do you need "DVD size" folders if you're creatng an Archive on an external hard drive?
Also, I understand burning folders instead of individual photos or albums gives you more space on a DVD.
It makes no difference at all.
How can I keep the captions on my photos (not events) when I print or transfer to a new folder?
You can export while writing the metadata to the file in most cases.
Tne only way I know is to copy photos from the Windows to folders on my HD, then copy and paste photos or albums or events to HD, then create a new folder and fill it to the appropriate DVD size.
HD? Another HD? You use HD there in a way that makes no sense. What's the point of 'DVD size'?
I also thought I should download future photos to my Canon programming that comes with EOS cameras and edit and then decide which photos to save to iPhoto library and which to save only to my archival HD?
Does this have any relation to the previous questions? You know you can delete from iPhoto, right?
You're somewhat confused and you need to
1. Decide what exactly you want to do
2. Then go about it.
If I understand you correctly - and there's no guarantee that I do - the easiest thing is to bring all your Photos into iPhoto and do everything from there.
You can have an archive on an external disk, you can sort and select and edit with or via iPhoto
Regards
TD

Can I store my Aperture library on an external Hard Disk?

I have a MacBook Pro with very few free space on its internal hard drive. My Aperture library is getting very heavy and i would like to move my Aperture library to an external HD. I know that you can keep files where they are and see them in your aperture library, but the thing i'm trying to do is to STORE AND OPEN MY APERTURE LIBRARY (.APLIBRARY FILE) FROM AN EXTERNAL HARD DISK. Is this possible?

It is possible to put the Aperture library on an external HD as long as the HD is formatted correctly see: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture
However keep in mind that depending on the HD type and the way it is connected to your Mac performance may be an issue. For the best possible outcome the external drive should have a large cache, high RPM and be connected via firewire.
The other option to explore is to put the masters on an external drive and keep the library on the internal. This will give you relatively good performance using a standard USB drive.

I have transfered all my library on an external hard disk and lost the itunes library files.

I transfered all my library on an external hard disk and lost the itunes library files. Itunes created new ones but I lost all the playlists.
How can I copy the playlists presents on the Iphone directly on Itunes ?
If I want to syncronise now, I lost all playlists datas.

Hi,
I did the same XP to Windows 7 upgrade about 18 months ago. I decided to keep iTunes permanently on the external drive than the c drive to save c: drive space.
ITunes database has pointers to MP3 files located in Artist's directories. If you want to use a different location than the default C:\ drive for iTunes, then you need to recreate the Itunes database by deleting all songs in iTunes, then change the default location for iTunes files to your external drive. Then import the MP3 files from the external drive into the empty iTunes database through the iTunes import facility.
If you screw up the timing of the import and find you have multiple iTunes directories (instead of just the default location), then iTunes has a new feature to consolidate all iTunes MP3 files back into the central default location. In iTunes, FILE, LIBRARY, ORGANIZE LIBRARY, then CONSOLIDATE FILES.
To change the default directory for MP3 files, in Tunes go to EDIT, PREFERENCES, ADVANCED and then CHANGE the location to where you want the Itunes MP3 files to be located (including the iTunes subdirectory under which all the artist directories are held. Mine are on the F: drive or whatever your computer states is your drive assignment for the external drive.
Note iTunes 10.5 has many problems that Apple hopefully are working on....we seem to have gone backwards on working components in this iCloud based release. So maybe keep on using old computer until 10.6 is released.
Enjoy
Steve Mc (Sydney AUSTRALIA)

I have Itunes on an external hard disk, now it's not possible to upgrade my Itunes.

I have an external hard disk drive for my Itunes. Until now it's always been possible to upgrade Itunes.
Now I keep getting message E-drive not found. The hard disk is on the F-drive. And I can't find where I need to select the correct drive before installing.
It seems that it's not possible to select the drive where you want to upgrade your Itunes.

For "Invalid Drive" errors when uninstalling or reinstalling try b noir's user tip:
"Invalid drive X:\" install errors.
For other problems see Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates.
tt2

Library on an external hard disk

I have my itunes music on an external hard disk and I want to install itunes on a new laptop and view the existing itunes library that is on the external hard disk.
I have installed itunes on the new laptop and changed the default location of the itunes library to the path of the external hard disk and clicked on consolidate library but it will not show the music on the external hard disk.
Is there something else I need to do to view the library?

When using ext HD's for my iTunes I find it easier to keep the iTunes Library File and .xml on the external drive.
I also re-name the library file - ie: iTunes Master Library. So I would have a path of HD>iTunes>Master Library> Then the library files, art work etc>iTunes Music which is where the music folders reside. I use the 'keep' and 'copy' features enabled in iTunes prefs.
I rename the library file to differentiate each library from another.
MJ

The iMac doesn't recognize my external hard disk

My iMac doesn't recognize my external hard disk. The iMac also keeps a DVD inside. It doen't throw it out despite "eject".

Sounds like you might need to make that call. In the meantime here are a few of things you could try that may help:
To eject the disk try a restart holding down the mouse button - hopefully it'll eject.
If you are running either Mountain Lion (10.8) or Lion (10.7) try booting into the Recovery HD:
Restart holding down Command+r. At the screen with 4 choices choose Disk Utility and then select Macintosh HD and click on repair disk. If it fixes anything click on repair disk again until you get a clean pass. Restart as normal from the Apple menu.
If you are running an earlier OS you would normally carry out this process by putting the grey restore disk that came with your Mac in the Disk drive and restarting holding down the C key. Choose your language and at the next screen from the menu bar select Utilities>Disk Utility and then follow the above instructions (I realise you won't be able to do this if you have a disk stuck in the optical disk drive).
Try an SMC and PRAM reset: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3603
Try a Safe Boot: Restart holding down the shift key until you see a grey progress bar. Once it's booted restart as normal from the Apple menu.
If none of this helps, I guess you need to make that call. Good luck.

How to move all or partial data from Mac to an external hard disk?

Hei,
I need to learn how to move the movies/projects/events from mac hard drive to another external hard drive.
So basically, I have always imported all events from my video camera (the original clips) to iMovie located in my MacBook Pro hard drive. But after videoing for one year, the hard disc is starting to get full, and I cannot continue using only the laptop's hard drive.
So I would like to move part OR all of my iMovie related stuff to another external disk drive (connected with USB wire). How do I do that? Is it possible to have some events located in Mac's own hard drive, and some clips/projects in the external hard disk? How to arrange all this?
I know that "projects" are linked to the original event clips, so if I would be able to export some part of my iMovie data to the external hard drive, I should export both, for example, everything from the same year (the events) which is linked to the projects that are using those data.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

ok First with IM9, you can easily move stuff around. Here are some lessons learned from my experience managing projects across 6 different drives.
1. All Drives must be formatted macos extended journaled
2. The large terabyte drives are great for long term storage of events
3. When you are working on a project, if possible, try to move the clips the current clips you will need to your internal hard drive. This is only necessary if you care about any time machine back ups.
4. I have also worked on project straight from the external drives. I also use portable drives such as WD passports. These are small 500 gig drives that can travel with you. I have three of those. LOVE THEM.
5. One way to move projects and clips and keep things organized is to move the project using command drag. It will ask, do you want to move just the project or project and clips. Then voila all clips and project are then moved to that drive!
6. REMEMBER...MOVE WITHIN IMOVIE using COMMAND Drag. NEVER EVER USE THE FINDER. This is for both projects and events. Using the Command Key will ensure the projects are moved and not just copied!
7. Last but not least, if you have changed the dates of events using change date function in imovie....For some reason, there is a bug. It inconsistently will change the date. Don't know why and have reported the issue, but it is still not fixed!
But its still a great little app!

Need advice for SAP installation on External Hard disk

Hi Gurus,
I have HP laptop with configuration of 512 MB RAM and 50 GB hard disk...i recently bought 250 GB segate external hard disk for SAP installation...My doubt here is if i install SAP in external hard disk and will it work properly if i connect my laptop?
ur advice is much appreciated
Regards
Dinesh

Hi Dinesh,
I have installed SAP on external harddisk.
And it will work properly.
But i think you need to increase your RAM.
After installation, please keep in mind one thing.
You will have to attach your external harddisk before your machine starts, because your OS will be in internal harddisk, so SAP and oracel services won't be able to run without external hard-disk.
and in case you attach after system startup, please start all services.
Regards,
Payal Patel

Cannot copy files from external hard disks

This is happening often enough to be really painful:
I insert a hard disk. I browse the files on it. I open a new window of Finder and drag some files from the external hard disk into my own machine (OSX Leopard 10.5.5). It croaks, telling me some "permissions" are wrong (Error -36).
Browsing Google and Macosxhints and all of that, the suggestions indicate that I should "repair permissions", "repair disk", and reboot. All done. Still doesnt work.
What now? I never had this problem with Windows. What's with this permissions drivel on OSX and how can I fix it once and for all? I only use my machine to browse on Firefox/Safari, talk with Skype, edit with Coda/Transmit, and then Office documents. Which of these tools changes these mysterious permissions so that I have to keep "repairing" again and again???
Thanks for any pointers or advice!

I am on shaky ground here because I am totally ignorant about about Windoze and MS-DOS. What I can tell you, though, is that the Unix underpinning of Mac OS X is heavily reliant on the concept of "ownership" which, apart from other factors, has security implications. FAT32 has absolutely no concept of file ownership. (That's why Microsoft encourages everyone to use NTFS instead - mainly for the security implications).
You need advice - Sorry! - from someone more knowledgeable than me as to how to change both the format (to Mac OS Extended, Journaled) and the Partition Scheme (to GUID) *+while preserving your data+*. I presume that you would need to find a temporary home for that data, after which altering the drive's structures would take only a moment - but as to how to then correctly replace the data onto that drive I would prefer not to say. I would guess that simply transferring the data back onto the drive now with a 'Mac-appropriate' structure would suffice - but PLEASE do not entrust your data to my 'guess'.
Wait patiently for someone who knows how to advise you to respond in this thread, or post again with a possibly more descriptive/pertinent title.
Sorry not to have been of any help.
Andreas

Keeping external hard disks cool?

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