Macbook Air and External Hard Disk

Hello ,
I have recently purchase MacBook Air (11", 128GB). I am planning to purchase an external HDD (1 TB) to copy my iTunes folder and bulk files. The question I have is, Users who are storing files on External HDD , Do you keep the External HDD connected to MacBookAir all the time?
Does frequent plugging and unplugging to the USB port cause any issue to the port?

I've been plugging and unplugging my work notebook for years and never had a problem with the computer or drive. Backing up is a good idea but I strongly recommend that you back up the entire system and not just some files. In the (rare) event that your drive were scrambled and you had to erase and reinstall, just downloading the OS can take several hours. TimeMachine is a great and convenient way to back up the entire system.

Similar Messages

Folders that I copy from my Macbook to my External Hard Disk does NOT appear on any other drive that I connect the Hard disk to (TV, PC, ... etc.)

I'm facing a bit of a problem.
Any folder I copy from my Macbook Pro to my External Hard Disk does NOT appear on any other device that I connect the Hard Disk to (TV, PC, etc).
The Hard disk format is "MS-DOS (FAT)".
The folders that are copied from Macbook appear when I connect the Hard Disk to my Macbook only, yet, the folders that I copy from a PC to the Hard Disk appear on Macbook, PC, and TV and are also available from editing from both Mac and PC.
I was advised to install "Paragon" software and I did but I'm not sure how to use it to convert the folders on the hard drive to any format that can be read on other drives or devices (NTFS or otherwise).
I'd appreciate some help. Thank you.

Hi Simon. How is it formatted, FAT or NTFS?
I only ask as OSX will only read NTFS partitions unless you install an App such as Paragon NTFS or Tuxera NTFS.

HD Video and External Hard Disks

Howdy.
I'm having a strange problem with HD video footage (1080p from various sources) and playing it back from external hard disk.
Here is the situation:
I have a new 17" Macbook Pro; if I play 1080p video directly from the internal drive, it plays with no problems at all.
I have a 1TB USB 2 external drive; 1080p video also plays back fine from this drive.
I also have 2 G-Drive's; both with a capacity of 1TB each and connected via FireWire 800 and when I try to play 1080p footage from either of these drivers, the video is very stuttery.
Now, it would be easy to say "well the G-Drives but be operating slowly", but if I copy files between them and the internal drive, the files copy very quickly; much quicker infact than copying files to the USB2 drive.
So for all transferring of files the G-Drives are much quicker than the USB2 drive.
To make matters even stranger, if I connect the same G-Drives to the MacPro we have at work, the 1080p video plays back fine.
So it seems to be the combination of my MacBook Pro + the G-Drives that dont like playing 1080p video (since the drives on another computer play fine, and my macbook pro plays the same video fine from both the internal and usb2 external drives).
It's got me baffled.
Anyone have any idea whats causing this?
Thanks.
James.

The USB drive is older but for my first tests, was actually NTFS formatted (since Id been using it on my windows PC); the files played fine even with the NTFS formatting and over 200GB of files on the drive.
I then wiped the drive and formatted as Mac OS Extended, transferred a couple of video files and played them, again they played back fine.
The thing is, if I simply move/copy files between internal drive and fire wire drive; and from internal drive to USB drive, the fire wire drives are clearly much faster.
So it's not like the fire wire drives are running slow, the problem is only in the playback of the files.
Also, as I have 2 of these fire wire drives, 1 drive is empty appart from the video files im trying to play (less than 200MB), the other drive has about 200GB on it and the video doesn't play properly on either of them.
But as i said, if I simply connect the drives up to the MacPro we have in the office, the videos play back without a hitch.
So it seems the problem is specific to playing video back from the g-drive in combination with the macbook pro (general file operations happen very fast); individually if separated and used with another device they work fine.
EDIT:
Forgot to mention.
I also tried setting the 2 fire wire (G-Drives) up as a striped raid.
Again, when moving/copying files between said raid and the internal hard disk, the transfers were very quick; but the video files (which come from various sources, i.e canon 7d slr camera, gopro HD helmet cam etc) all fail to play smoothly even from the raid.
Message was edited by: Skonk

Mpd and external hard disk

here is my problem:
I have a partition on my laptop's hard disk that has multimedia stuff -music, videos, books, etc. - in ext3
I have a external hard disk with the exact same structure because I ran out space on my partition, and it is in ntfs (because I want it to work with windows)
I don't want to duplicate the data from my hard drive into the external HD - it's 72G -
I don't want to replace my current partition by the external HD because I may not carry the external hard drive all the time
How do I do to my external HD be mounted on my current file system transparently? So that I can use it with mpd without it bothering me?
A dirty fix that I'm pondering is to move my partition mount point to another folder and make some scripts to make soft links int the /mnt/files folder, but I wanted to see if anyone has a better solution

It depends how you connect the external HDD. If it is permanently connected mount the disk thro' fstab on the directory of your music in mpd. or if you want to mount a particular folder only to that music folder use mount --bind from rc.local thro' a script. Normally starting mpd from .xinitrc is good imo instead of starting thro' rc.conf.

Menu bar items disappear, and external hard disks not mounting

Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
Looking at the Activity Monitor, I saw that sustemuiserver was not running.
Reading around, I discovered that this usually follows a FrontRow hack (which I haven't installed). I tried deleting the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file and logging out and back in again. Everything seems to work again, for a while. However, the same thing happened this morning.
Has anyone else experienced this, and anyone know a fix to stop it from happening?
Thanks!
Tom

I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

Macbook Air and external drive

I have a Toshiba 1.5 TB external hard drive that is formatted NTFS. It works fine with my Macbook Pro OS X 10.7.3 however II can only read files on my Macbook Air OS X 10.9;1. I have tried using the disk utility to verify the disk etc. and tried to change permissions, however the options are grayed out. I am not sure how to change the permissions to make it read and write on my macbook air. Do I need to reformat? If so, will that impact the ability of my Macbook Pro to read the drive? If not then does anyone have any ideas? Thanks

If you format it, just so you know, ....assuming you DONT,......that nukes all the data on that HD

MacBook Pro And External Hard Drives

My only Apple computer is a MacBook Pro. I've just got a new camera that stores both RAW and JPEG for each shot so my internal drive is filling up fast. I need to get an external hard drive and move my Aperture library to that.
When I travel, I wish to continue to use Aperture with the internal drive of the MacBook Pro. I'm not sure if I understand the workflow. Please would someone help me understand the best way to do this properly?
I think what I need to do is this:
Let's call the existing library on the internal disk home. After moving home from the internal to the new external drive, I must create a new library on the internal drive - let's call it travel. When on the road, I should use the travel library and, when I get back, merge it with the home library.
How do I do that though?
The documentation on merging libraries describes the scenario where you have two computers instead of my scenario. I'm guessing that you open the home library and import the travel library. If that's right, do you just then delete the travel library and start again on your next trip?
Also, what do you do about vaults? Have a second external drive and put them on there?
Thanks in advance for your help.

There are two things you could do:
Turn your Aperture Library into a referenced library and relocate the master image files to your external drive. You will be able to browse, grade, and tag your images even if the external drive is not connected, but you can only edit those images whose masters are managed. Sp perhaps you could keep the masters of the most recent projects managed. while you are on the road import the new images into the library and relocate them to your external drive when you get back.
To relocate to an external drive: Select the images and use
File -> Relocate Masters
What I sometimes do when on vacation: create a new, second Aperture Library on my travel MacBook Pro and import my new pictures from the trip into this library. When I return I import the new Library from the trip into my main Aperture LIbraryFile -> Import -> Library/Project
Regards
Léonie

Need help setting up Macbook Pro and external hard drive(s)

I apologize for the vague title but I was limited to so many characters.
Here's my situation (sorry for being verbose, I just want to be thorough)
Right now I have a Macbook Pro and a 500 GB external hard drive (Western Digital using USB 2.0 connection). I've outgrown the external hard drive and am ready to upgrade my external memory.
Here's my issues right now:
My iTunes library and music reside on the external hard drive. Using iTunes is painfully, I mean brutally, slow for some reason. For example: if I were to just change the genre of an average album, it takes upwards of 4 or 5 minutes to change the data. Compared to the POS Dell computer I used to run iTunes with (using the same external hard drive), the same task would take 5 seconds at the most. Likewise, if I try to watch a video that resides on that external hard drive right now, it skips and eventually stops because (presumably) the data is transferring extremely slowly. I have no idea, and haven't gotten any real answers, as to why this is happening with the Macbook and/or if using a Firewire connection would improve the speed.
Taking that into consideration, here's what I would like to do (and ask). I see myself having one 1T external hard drive for all my music and one 1T external hard drive for all my movies and videos. Ideally I would like to be able to access these two hard drives wirelessly with my Macbook and have it transfer the data very quickly - as it should IMO. Certainly a lot faster than it is now.
I would love to just be able to hook my Macbook up to my main stereo and run iTunes through it without having to lug around and messily connect the external hard drive which contains all the music. As well as being able to hook my Macbook up to the stereo and LCD monitor and be able to watch a video, again without the hassle of having to connect the external hard drive - which as I said prior, appears to transfer the data way too slowly anyway.
Any suggestions on what external hard drives I should get and any other hardware/software I need to run them wirelessly would be gratefully welcomed.
Thanks in advance (and I apologize for the long winded post)
MM

Obviously, FireWire is a fast connection, but for changing metadata, USB is plenty fast. Why it takes so long is anyones guess. Is it a USB 2.0 drive? Using external drives can be tricky. My father uses them for his gigantic library of almost 80,000 songs. When you have it setup properly, it works fine, but if you say forgot to have the external drive mounted when you launch iTunes, iTunes defaults the library back to your Music folder, then when you start importing, it puts in on the internal drive, then you have to go back and reset it, etc. Problem, with iTunes alone, you can only set one library, so if you want to use two drives, you will have to have one set at any given time.
So you could set the music one first, add to the library, then set it for movies, then add those to the library. Then keep the library set to the one you use most frequently, so you don't have to always switch. Once you import all media, and iTunes "knows" where to find the files, you can play them with no problems with two drives.
For wireless, you have a couple choices. If you have two Macs, you could keep one connected to the two drives, then with the other computer, just connect to the network and share the iTunes library so your other computer has access. If you want the music stored on a drive accessible wireless, you'll probably have to look to NAS, or some form of wireless storage. If you do that, their may even be a better third party software solution other than iTunes for managing multiple libraries.
This is something iTunes really needs. As libraries grow, one drive just isn't enough often.
Bryan

About time capsule and external hard disk

I have got rMBP. I also have got time capsule. External WD hard disk is connected to time capsule.
I have got 3 users in my rMBP:
(1) Admin : Administrator
(2) User A : I normally do all my work from this user.
(3) User B: I recently added this new user.
Here, using Finder tabs, User A can see time capsule and External WD hard disk. But, Admin and User B cannot. I also want User B to have the ability to see WD hard disk (and time capsule). For User B and Admin, time capsule does show up, but it shows as not connected. How can I provide User B the ability to see External WD hard disk (since User B needs to store large different files there)? Any permission issue on hard disk?
(Amazingly backup does take place automatically even if I am connected as User B or Admin).
I will appreciate your feedback. Thanks.

Emma1609 wrote:
Hi,
hi emma, and welcome to discussions
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
you could try a power cycle on your devices. turn off modem, TC, and HD for, say, 10 minutes. turn the modem back on for 2 minutes, followed by the HD, followed by the TC.
then go airport utility > manual setup > disks. see if your HD is showing beneath the TC

Transferring files(movies) from my macbook to an external hard disk

Hi,
can someone tell me how to transfer movie files to an external 1TB hard drive?

Your external drive is formatted NTFS which OS X can read from but not write to. You can either install third-party software on the Mac to enable writing to the drive or repartition and reformat the drive for exclusive use with the Mac. If you don't need to move files between a Mac and a PC, then I would recommend the latter solution.
Tuxera NTFS 2012.3.2
NTFS for Mac OS X 9.5.3
To repartition:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the external 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.

NEW Macbook air and external HDD with windows files

Hi,
I just bought (2 days ago) my first MAC (finally). After so many years of working with windows it was time to get of the dark side . Anyway, this is not my first time around apple products (I had iphones and ipads) so I know some basic stuff like iCloud, keychain etc. I bought 13inc macbook air, 128 GB SSD.
Now this is my problem:
Although I worked on a windows computer I was saving all my files (work related, movies, music, tvshows, photos- a lot of them) on my external HDD (500 GB). Now, when I transfered to Mac I would like to have my Word, PPT and music files on my mac but not the photos, those I would like to keap on my EHDD. Can this actually work without some work around file extensions and EHDD formating? Can I use my EHDD like this? I know that it is both for Windows and MAC (it was written on the box).

I depends in what format the external drive is formatted as to how easy this is going to be.
I bet there is a good chance it is NTFS. If so, some moderately bad news. The Mac OS can read it, but not write to it natively, unless it is a networked drive.
Sure, you can add third party functionality to the Mac, so it will write to the external drive, but I would avoid it if possible. If your drive is already formatted FAT 32, or ExFAT, then you can perform cross platform reading and writing, without issue.
Fortunately we live in a time where most external drives are now relatively inexpensive. If you don't want to, or can't reformat that drive, because you have no space to put the files in the interim (I hope they are not just in place, anyway), consider buying a new external drive for sharing purposes.
Just my 2 cents.

10.2.8 installation and external hard disk does not show on desktop

I just reinstalled OS X 10.2 (by erasing the hard disk during installation) and upgraded with the Combo pack to 10.2.8 . This is an iMac G4 1GHz with a 17-inch display. I tried connecting a Western Digital MyBook with 500Gb through both the USB port and through FireWire. In both cases the hard drive does not appear on the desktop BUT does appear in the Disk Utility program and in the System Information window. Finder, therefore, doesn't display the drive. The MyBook drive is formatted to Windows FAT 32. Before I reinstalled OS X 10.2.8, this machine was running 10.3.9 and the drive did appear (I'm still searching for the 10.3 disk).
Is this an issue with OS X 10.2.8? Given the drive is detected by the System Information section and by the Disk Utility, is there a way of forcing Finder to display it (and allow access)?

Sometimes I have found that I have to turn of the ext. hd and then reconnect the firewire cables. there is a cylinder that is an inch away from one of the firewire plugs, which should be connected toward the tower and the other firewire plug toward the ext. hd. have patience, sometimes it will show up. also a restart maybe...

Bootcamp and external hard disk?

ok so i'm going to be getting a mbp in the next week and was wondering whether boot camp can be set up on an external disk? this would be very helpful for me as it would allow me to be able to get a 128gb ssd in my macbook and keep that clean with just os x.
I am fully aware of the arguement that ssds are currently over priced but the speed factor is very appealing to me so that is why i am going for that option

thank you
this was just an option but i will most likely have both os' on the ssd and then just program files for windows games on the external drive, i know those games would not benefit from the speed of the ssd, but at least windows overall would

Hi, i'm new in my macbook air! i miss deleted my external hard disk few day ago and i had spend 45GBP to recovery the data! but the problem now is the text document is locked i not even can read and open the document! any solution??? urgent

hi, i'm new in macbook air, i was miss formatted and delete all my data on my external hard disk (pic, microsoft office document and etc). i spend 45gbp to install the software fianlly recovery all the data! but why my text document can't open and read?? what's is the problem?? because i'm still a student i hv alot of assignment file cant be read and open but nect week is the deadline of submission and i have no back up of all document. So any useful suggetion solution?? i've try the way alt+command+i to unlock but it doesn't work!! help! URGENT

when i open the file it appear some digits and word tat i couldn't understand. and the tool bar stated "Locked"
example: 422583321135679999=@ABBCCEEFGHIKJHMIFFFHFHDCEGFFBI\cb[C?@<=>=;;;<;>>>?<>B@>?==< =>?>@A?>?@<==<;:::899:89>:9;99;9:;<;66988;359<==9987789:8::9;>>=799<>:88856::;<: 99====<::98988;;96677998887866:89::;99647878665797698899;8466646763/121120+031/1 2/.1.,.0//.+/,+.0220/0.-/21-++--1---+-.+-.--/=Pdoxx
the digits and words tat appear on my document!
i used MiniTool Mac data to recovery! actually b4 tat i'm using hp computer and i saved all my files in my external hard disk. When i using mac i installed the NTFS-3G but it still cant read my external hard disk and i miss deleted and formatted all the data in my external hard disk. after tat my friends suggest me to purchased the software to recover all the data,finally i got all my photo back except my microsoft office files.
i purchased miscrosoft office software for my mac yesterday but the files still cant be read and couldnt recover back the document tat i saved! i was upset to spent alot of money but still cant get my document back!!

My 3 apple products, an imac, a macbook air and a macbook lost their contact with their external hard disks. They were LaCie make. And every time I turn my laptops, I find the positions of the keys on their keyboards changed. Why is Apple silent?

After the latest apple IOS upgrade my 3 apple products, an imac, a macbook air and a macbook, lost their contact with their external hard disks. They were LaCie make. And every time I turn my laptops, I find the positions of the keys on their keyboards changed. Why is Apple silent? There are so many people complaining about this issue and expecting Apple to correct this issue that they have created.

Probably because it's not an Apple issue. I have Lacie EHD's connected to my MBAir and iMac, all work perfectly on Mavericks. In addition I don't have any keyboard issues on any of my Apple products. BTW IOS is only for IOS devices such as iPads, iPods and iPhones, Macs use OS X. The two OS's are seperate products designed to run on seperate products.

Macbook Air and External Hard Disk

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