Lion on external hard disk?

Can I install Lion on an external hard disk and run main MBP computer from there, leaving that main computer with Snow Leopard?

Yes. However, better is to put a bootable backup/clone of your SL installation onto the ext HD and install Lion on top of it. That way all of your users, settings, and documents will be there.

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Mountain lion ejects external hard disks

After upgrading to Mountainlion (March 5, 2013), my LaCie external hard disk (500 GB, used for TimeMachine) was spontaneously and improperly ejected, presumably by the OS.
(1) The disk had worked without problems under OS 10.7.
(2) The disk mounts properly on an older Mac (OS 10.3.2).
(3) The disk would not mount on a newer Mac also running OS 10.8.2.
I am currently reparing the disk using Disk Utility on the old Mac, but I hesitate to attempt mounting it again on my iMac (June 2008) running OS 10.8.3. Can anyone shed light on this problem? I know I am not the only one with this difficulty, so is Apple doing something about it?

It is very probably dying (I just had to replace a Lacie disk 250GB form 2008).
This disk has originally been formatted on the 10.3 and then never again?
You can format it again on 10.8, but you will loose the TM backup, so if you do that you have to make a new TM on another disk.
I would no longer trust this disk, and buy another (5 years is not bad at all). Take all you want to preserve off the Lacie on the old machine and copy it to the ML machine.

Hi i had made internet recovery for my mac, and now trying to instal the osx on external hard disk

Hi , i had my mac showing the question mark box. So i made internet recovery, and now i'm trying to download the osx lion on external hard disk as it shows , but its failing again, i dont know why

mamdouh elchami,
which model MacBook Pro do you have? If I understand you correctly, you have already made a successful OS X Internet recovery to your internal disk, and now you would like to install Lion on an external disk. Was it Lion that you had successfully downloaded and installed to your internal disk?

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine.
installed new internal disk first with fresh 10.7.3 Lion software. Also upgrade ram to 4GB. Work great, super fast.
BUT.... my WD 1TB firewire400 external disks no longer work with the Lion enabled machine now.
FURTHER... I read somewhere that WD is problematic with Lion but Seagate was not... so I went and bought a new 3TB Seagate GoFlex.
When it didnt work properly either, I patiently searched and found a software/firward upgrade and applied.
I re-partitioned disk to extened/journaled standard, etc.
Then assigned the particition to Time Machine. Drive turned the blue/grey color, so I thought it would work.
But, it has now been in "preparing" mode in Time Machine for HOURS....
What is up Apple? So dissappointed. Ive read these type of problems are notorious with Lion and I wish I never upgraded.
Are you trying to make issues with External disks, to drive people to iCloud? That trick ont work in me. I will not reward bad behaviour Apple.
Please provide a fix... I wasted hours/days screwing around with this, instead of using the Mac for what its intended!

Solved by Pondini, on another thread I opened...
Answer:
Sounds like either:
A directory problem on your internal HD. Verify your internal HD, and Repair any other volumes being backed-up per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Something in OSX may be damaged. You've tried the "combo," so a fresh copy of OSX (that won't disturb anything else) would be worth a try (and you don't need a tech for that). See Installing the ''combo'' update and/or Reinstalling OSX.

I have macbook pro 13.3 inch ..mac os lion 10.7.5 i want to tranfer data from macbook to external hard disk without loosing data which in already in extrnl drive

i want to take back up of my macbook . so i have external hard disk around 1 tb and already have 230 used ...when i transfer manually with out time machine ....because i want to tranfer into windows .....so how to change ntfs into fat32 without loosing data in external harddisk ?

You don't have to change NTFS to FAT.
Just install Paragon NTFS and you'll be able to transfer your data to your external HDD even if it is NTFS.

How do i retrieve file vault protected files from an external hard disk that used to be my mbp's hard drive? the hard disk got corrupted and will no longer boot. I put it in an enclosure and attempted to copy my files but failed because of FV encryption.

This external hard disk used to serve as the main drive of my mbp. It got corrupted and the OSX would no longer load. I upgraded to a 500gb hd and used the old hd as an external drive. I tried to copy my files but i could not access them because of the filevault encryption. 110gb of hd space appears as used which means that my files are still in the drive. Is there a way to retrieve these files? thanks

According to your post, you're using Leopard, so FileVault only encrypts your user folder (unlike Lion). On the mounted external drive, in your user folder, you should see a file called username.sparsebundle, with username being your user name. Double-click that file to open it and it should prompt you for a password. Type in your password and the file will mount as a volume in Finder. You should be able to copy all of your files over.

Finder freeze when opening folders of my Western Digital external hard disks

I'm facing a big issue. I'm runnin' Mac Os Lion, I realized a clean install a few days ago. Everything is going fine, but every time I plug an external hard disk on my MBP, I can see the disk appearing on my desktop or in the finder, and when I open it, the finder freezes, I have to reboot manually, or wait to relaunch the finder. My disks are in HFS format, used to work great on Snow Leopard no longer than a week ago... What is weird is that my time machine (external hard disk usb) works fine... Moreover, I can see the disks in the Disk Utility, I can't click on "verify permissions" but on "verify disk" and it says that the disks are fine... Any idea ?
PS : I could have erase everything on them and reformat, but I need the files inside...
Thanks

Hi!
Here's a suggestion from BDAqua:
In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes".
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra number on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a number, and reboot.
cornelius

External hard disk not recognized by time machine

I have an external backup disk, Passport, that is no longer recognized by time machine or my computer. I used it a couple of weeks ago to restore my wife's MacBook. Hers is an older model and uses Lion. Since then my MacBook Pro--mavericks will not mount the external hard disk.
OKAY==after leaving the Passport on for a couple of hours it now is mounted. Don't know what happened, but it is now working.
CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

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.

Partitioning of an External Hard Disk

Hello everyone, I just bought a Western Digital External Hard Disk (500GB) and I will like to partition (I assume I need to partition it into two separative drives - 1 for Windows and 1 for Mac) it for the following uses:
1. Able to read and write files from my Macbook Pro (Lion OS)
2. Able to read and write files from the Boot Camp Partition in my Macbook Pro (Windows 7)
3. Able to read and write files from other user's computers (Either an Apple OS or Windows OS)
4. While on my Lion OS, I'm able to read and copy files from the Windows Partition of the ext. hard disk
5. While on my Windows 7 OS, I'm able to read and copy files from the Mac Partition of the ext. hard disk
Your advice is greatly appreciated and I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you very much!

The simplest method is to format the drive in exFAT. Each OS can read/write to it.
However, it doesn't support user permissions.
All Windows versions back to XP (with a patch) can read/write exFAT. OS X back to 10.6.5 can read/write exFAT.

Help reg what formats to be used for my new 4tb mini stack to back up my macbook and 2 external hard disks

Hey Guys,
I need an advice from you experts regarding the different formats to be used to format my New 4 Tb ministack from OWC. I have a Mid 2010 Intel macbook pro with 500gb hard disk using Mountain lion and two external hard disk from Samsung and Iomega 1Tb each. I want to format this ministack into 4 partitions each of 1Tb each.
1) 1 Tb for time machine to back up my macbook pro.
2) 1 Tb of Free space to be used to store extra data using both windows and mac os.
3) 1 Tb for Samsung back up
4) 1 Tb for my Iomega back up
I know that for 1st option i need to format the partition (volume) to Mac os extended (journalled). I need help for others.For the 1 Tb free space, can i use NTFS so that i can use it on my wifes windows laptop and use a third a party application like tuxera NTFS for use on my macbook which i am already using to use my samsung and Iomega Ext HDD.
Also What format is required for these two 1 Tb volumes dedicated for external hard disk backups and how can i back up my external hard disks to these formatted volumes. Do i need to format them to Mac os extended (journalled) as well as i shall be using macbook pro to back up these hard disks.
Which would be the best software to back up these Ext hdd,can i use time machine? or CCC ?
Your help help shall be gretaly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Get Disk Warrior that will repair the problems without requiring that you reformat the drive - $99.00 on a bootable CD. Will not work on a FAT formatted drive.
You will need to use Drag and Drop to save your files by copying them from the bad drive to a good one.
To reprep the drive:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your 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.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

I have the latest Mac Air 13" and I have a Seagate 500MB external hard disk I cant copy or Cut any files on the hard disk and I cant even delete any files. I have the settings as Read and Write in the get info tab. Please help

I have the latest Mac Air 13" and I have a Seagate 500MB external hard disk I cant copy or Cut any files on the hard disk and I cant even delete any files. I have the settings as Read and Write in the get info tab. Please helpand also note that my hard drive was formatted on a Windows 7 Laptop.

thats the problem, its in MSDos (Fat) or NTFS for Windows.
Options.....
1. offload all that data on the HD onto your PC, THEN format the HD in EXFAT for use on BOTH PC and Mac for read/write.....then reload all (or as you need) that data back onto the HD
2. get another HD, and format it for Mac OSX extended journaled.
FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
Maximum file size: 4GB.
Maximum volume size: 2TB
You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB.
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:
For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install Paragon (approx $20) (Best Choice for Lion)
Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and Lion, but is not advisable, due to instability.
AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
Maximum file size: 16 TB
Maximum volume size: 256TB
You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems.
HFS+ ((((MAC FORMAT))) (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Don't use case-sensitive)
Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! backups of Mac internal hard drive.
To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
Maximum file size: 8EiB
Maximum volume size: 8EiB
You can use this format if you only use the drive with Mac OS X, or use it for backups of your Mac OS X internal drive, or if you only share it with one Windows PC (with MacDrive installed on the PC)
EXFAT (FAT64) ------Can read/write from both PC and Mac
Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
Not all Windows versions support exFAT.
exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
Maximum file size: 16 EiB
Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
You can use this format if it is supported by all computers with which you intend to share the drive. See "disadvantages" for details.

If i move my iphoto & iMovie source library / Events and Projects to an external hard disk, due to size, will my existing slideshows work ?

I need to move my photo library and Movies (Events and Projects) to an external hard disk as my 700gb drive on my iMac is now full (*see note below)
I have brought 2 Samsung External drives (3TB each) which I plan to partition each for Photos and Movies i.e 2 partitions on each drive, and will use one for use with iPhoto and iMovie, and the other drive for a dedicated backup. I will backup the remainder of my iMac hardisk to a seperate disk.
What has just occured to me is that after I have moved the libraries I cannot see how existing iMovie projects and iPhoto Slideshows will work, as each Application will be looking for the source files on the original iMac hardisc (I assume).
I am running Snow Leopard v10.6.8 ( I did not want to upgrade to Mountain Lion as I was told the iPhoto and iMovie changes were a 'backward' step. However I now want to upgrade to Mountain Lion, for security updates reasons mainly, and so need to free up my hard drive.
Can anyone advise on the best way to proceed ?
* - the iMac hard disk become full very suddenly, possibly due to duplicates, as I have noticed duplicate events and clips in my iMovies event library. I have noticed that some events are also now not showing, with message 'No video clips match the current selection' (I have not search criteria set).
Thanks

I was planning on manually backing up my external to the time capsule - but is there a way to set it up to back up automatically instead?
Time Machine will backup up automatically - you can not have your iPhoto library on the same volume as the TM backup (it will not work and it would not be a backup)
Dragging the iPhoto library to any external drive will backup it us also
I was also thinking about having the library copied to another external (I mean we're talking about irreplaceable photos here) - would i just drag a copy of the library to that drive as well?
Yes - that is a good idea - I run TM giving me hourly backups and a daily clone of my entire system giving me a bootable backup - plus do an occasional TM backup at our second home so I have one off site
is it possible to deal with my imovie library in the same way? so all my movies and photos are on my external?
Probably - but I use iMovie very little - better question for the iMovie forum
LN

Is it possible to run two different versions of Apple operating system (for ex. 10.6.8 and 10.9) on a MacBook Pro, either on the same disk or from an external hard disk? If so, where would I find the details?

Is it possible to run two different versions of Apple operating system (for ex. 10.6.8 and 10.9) on a MacBook Pro, either on the same disk or from an external hard disk? If so, where would I find the details? (In order to be able to use the older applications no longer supported in 10.9)

If you want to add a second partition to the internal drive (in Disk Utility, select the drive, then open the partition tab and just click the + button), you should first be sure that you will have enough room to accommodate whatever the second volume will be. I am currently doing this for Snow and Mountain Lion.
To get to whatever volume is not the startup disk, restart and hold down option/alt at the chime, which will bring up a selection of the two volumes. Use the left or right arrow keys to select it and then hit enter/return.

Sharing disabled for external hard disks?

After installing Lion, I find that I could not enable sharing for my external hard disks. I right-clicked each hard disk in Finder, checked the Shared Folder box and after I close the window and reopen it, the Shared Folder box is again unchecked. In System Prefs, I have already enabled File Sharing. Also, I could not do Screen Sharing as well. What could be wrong? I didn't have all these problems with Snow Leopard. Now my media player (on the same network) cannot see the two hard disks attached to my iMac.

If the external hard disk is connected via network, I found that if you connect to that hard disk through its IP address in a web browser and change it's folder preferences to (everyone can read/write), that will allow Lion to access the files.
I had the same situation, and this worked. You can use a program called Magical Finder to locate the IP address.
http://www.iodata.jp/lib/product/m/3022_mac.htm
The site is in Japanese, but the software has English support. Really easy to use, but you could probably use any kind of network scanning software to find the ip address.

Lion on external hard disk?

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