MacBook and an External Drive

I'd like to backup my entire laptop, I have an external USB drive. I'd like to have a seperate partition for my backup files.
How do I partition my external USB drive?

Can you see the drive? Does it mount? You'll have to format it and then you can partition it. You can do both these things with Disk Utility which is in Applications->Utilities.
From Apple Help:
"1.If you're partitioning an external hard disk, make sure it is connected to your computer.
2.In Disk Utility, select the disk that you want to partition in the list.
3.Click Partition.
4.Choose the number of partitions from the Volume Scheme pop-up menu.
5.Click each partition and type a name for it, choose a format, and type a size. You can also drag the divider between the partitions to change their sizes. If a partition's name has an asterisk beside it, it's shown larger than its actual size in order to display its name legibly.
6.If you will use the drive on a Windows computer, click Options and choose the Master Boot Record partition scheme. It might be called the PC partition scheme.
7.Click the Partition button, and then click Partition again.

Similar Messages

Time Machine 1 iMac, 1 Macbook and one external drive

This must be a very simple question as I cannot find anyone else that seems to have this problem.
I have a Macbook that is just a few months old and a very new iMac each running Leopard. I have an external drive connected via Firewire 800 to the iMac. I have shared the drive on the iMac so the Macbook can access it. I mount the drive under Devices in Finder on the Macbook. In Time Machine preferences on the Macbook I select the drive to be used by Time Machine. When I do a Back up Now I get the Preparing message for a few seconds and then get a Failed message. The status is: 'Latest Backup: Delayed'.
Oh and I have just clicked on the red I next to the Failed message and am told:
Time Machine Error The backup volume could not be mounted.
Is Time Machine an idea before its time (I speak as an old Windows user that is used to stuff being released before it is stable - and I am beginning to wonder if I should have stuck with the devil I know)

See this article: Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine - "The backup volume could not be mounted" alert.

HT4878 Why is this data chart Timeline multi colored (in About/Storage) and the external drive is only pink?

1. When viewing the Storage Timeline for my Macbook and the External Drive for the Time Machine backup instead of multi-colored bars the data is only showing a one pink one. Is that because it is all "backup" on the external? 2. Is the discrepancy in size the OS being left out? Thanks.

Time Machine makes full backups of the hard drive. If you want to change this, you can open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add excluded items. However, I recommend you to keep backing up the whole drive, so you will be able to restore the whole backup in case of a hard disk failure

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

The external drive must be connected to the Mac using either USB or FireWire
You must remove the external hard drive from the list of items that are "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Preferences.
Here's how:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click Options
Look for the name of the hard drive in the list of "excluded" items and click on it to highlight it
Click the -- (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the hard drive from the list of "excluded" items....so it will now be backed up
Strongly recommend that you do the first backup using Ethenret from your computer to the Time Capsule since the entire contents of the external drive will be copied on the first pass. Ethernet will be 3-5 faster than wireless.
Once you have the first backup done, you can use wireless for subsequent backups since they will nornally be much smaller....unless you add large files to the external drive.

Using iTunes, MacBook and the external HDD.

Hi there, however much I love iTunes, I absolutely despize the lack of function when it comes to splitting the music library between my MacBook and an external HDD.
I have a rather large Library and it is a real issue when using a HDD limited MacBook.
Why is there no simple function to allow a user to pass data back and forth between these?
iMovie has a very simple and wonderfully easy to use 'drag n drop' function which allows a user to move video between any or multiple external HDD and the HDD on the MacBook.
When connected, the media on the HDD is available to use in iMovie. When it is not connected, only the media on the MacBooks HDD is available.
Would it be conceivable to adopt a similar system whereby iTunes would 'show' an external HDD and allow a user to drag and drop media straight over?
Now THAT would be amazing! Please, it is terribly limiting and self-defeating to have a portable device without being able to EASILY move ones media from a 'home' based large external HDD and the more versatile, smaller portable MacBook HDD.
iMovie does it, can you adapt iTunes to do the same?
Yours,

click here and here for information.
also, peruse this user tip:
In iTunes 9.
iTunes prefs -> Advanced.
Set the iTunes media folder location to the external.
Then select the movie files (or any files in iTunes) and right click Consolidate.
This will copy only the movies to the external location.
After it finishes, iTunes prefs -> Advanced and set the iTunes media folder location back to the internal. This will tell iTunes to use the internal drive for new files.
You can then delete the movies from \Music\iTunes\ on the internal to free up space.
To copy a movie back to the internal, simply right click - Consolidate (since you pointed iTunes back to the internal).
just edit these instructions to meet your needs.
JGG

Mavericks and unmounting external drive issues upon sleep

Greetings fellow Mavericks users,
I'm hoping someone here can provide some insight as to how to correct the issue I'm experiencing.
Little background:
I was using 10.6.8 for years on a 2008 Mac Pro. I saw no reason to update the OS until I recently acquired a USB 3.0 PCI card and an external drive. In order to use my new hardware, I had no choice but to upgrade to a new version of OSX. Rather than spend money, I took advantage of the free 10.9.2 upgrade available for my machine. The upgrade went surprisingly well with no major hiccups or problems encountered. Yes, a few apps and programs I had running prior to the upgrade were no longer compatible but in the grand scheme of things, my Mac Pro was still alive and kicking along with my most important programs and data. In fact, the upgrade to 10.9.2 fixed a sleep issue I had with 10.6.8 which required the use of an app called PleaseSleep. I don't need that app anymore as the machine goes to sleep and wakes up fine.
Now, on to my dilemma. Prior to the upgrade, I was using an external USB 2.0 drive to house media that I'd share between multiple network devices around the house via SMB (AFP stinks in this regard, hence my refusal to use it); i.e. BoxeeBox. I had run out of space on the USB2 drive hence the need to move everything to my new external USB3 drive that's connected to an internal USB3 PCI controller. The first problem I ran into was that Mavericks now uses Apple's own iteration of Samba (SMB2). After a bit of head scratching and research, I used an application called SMBUp as a replacement to Apple's SMB implementation. That's one problem solved. The next thing that I kept running into was that whenever the machine would sleep then wake up again, I'd get an annoying "Disk was not properly ejected" error message. After more head scratching and research, I've discovered that this appears to be a bug in OSX and how the OS interfaces with 3rd party USB controllers. Fine. I purchased a small app called Jettison which for all intents and purposes unmounts any external drives automatically before allowing the system to sleep. This is where my long-winded (apologies) description above starts to come into play. Now that I have the SMB issue figured out and am using Jettison to eject this USB3 drive when the machine sleeps, I've discovered that I'll still get the "Disk did not properly eject" error message despite Jettison IF there are users connected to the USB3 media drive. Is there a work around this where I can either get Jettison or Mavericks to kill the network connection to the share drive before it's unmounted prior to the machine sleeping?
TL:DR?
Using Jettison with Mavericks, I'm still getting "Disk did not eject properly" when waking the machine from sleep mode. Any way to fix this?
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions provided.

I had the same problem with Time Machine and solved it by enabling "Enable Power Nap" in Energy Saver:
System Preferences...
Energy Saver
Restore Defaults
Check "Enable Power Nap: While sleeping, your Mac can back up using Time Machine and periodically check for new email, calendar, and other iCloud updates."
2013 21.5 iMac
OSX Mavericks
Seagate 1 TB slim USB 3.0 (power is drawn from USB port), formatted to Mac Journaling File System

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
iTunes: library on EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
Roger

Can photos be transferred back and forth from/to iPhoto and an external drive? If so, how?

Can photos be transferred back and forth from/to iPhoto and an external drive? If so, how?

When in iPhoto for iOS you can share your photo to iTunes and then connect your iPad to your computer and use the file sharing window to move the photo to any connected hard disk. Sharing to iTunes is the only way to maintain original file size when sharing a photo in iPhoto for iOS.

Imovie9, 13"macbook aluminum and USB external drive

I know firewire is better, but is it totally impossible to use USB. Others have said its ok. Tom Wolsky on the FCE forum said that many people are returning the macbooks without firewire. I did a search on other discussions and some say its ok, while others say no.
Please do i really need a macbook pro or a white macbook. I will be editing HDV and eventually AVCHD.

Thank you! Yes. I have HDV today with an imac. I am deciding between the new macbook and the new white macbook. I really want the small form factor. I should really just buy the white one since it has firewire, but I don't want plastic and i like the new touchpad. I also want to get a flash drive HD camera that uses USB. I got concerned using a USB External drive for the AVCHD because of file sizes and making the USB drive unstable. I think i will ensure that i keep enough hard drive space on the macbook to do all editing and then move as much as I can to the external drive.

UPS Energy Saver on MacBook Pro for External Drives

A search here has shown this topic come up before -- such as at https://discussions.apple.com/message/1886738#1886738 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/8162836#8162836 -- but I can't find a resolution, so I'm bringing it up again.
I have multiple FW drives connected to my MacBook Pro. The MBP is connected to an APC Back-UPS RS 1200. OSX does not make the UPS Energy Saver autoshutdown preferences available on the MBP, the reasoning being that a laptop shouldn't need UPS autoshutdown because it has its own battery which is likely to run for far longer than the UPS would.
That's all well and good for the MBP itself, but it doesn't account for the multiple FW drives which are attached to it for backups and other purposes. In the event of a power outage, without UPS autoshutdown, the UPS will run down, and the drives will abruptly power off, exposing them to potential data loss and damage.
It's also not a solution to suggest that I manually power things down once there's a power outage, because the power can go out while I'm away for more than the few minutes of UPS battery back up time. The only real solution is to have UPS autoshutdown available on all portable machines. Unless and until Apple offers a (surely very simple) OS update to make that happen, I'm still interested in a solution.
APC's own software for autoshutdown stopped being updated long ago, so there is no version compatible with Snow Leopard.
The only potential solution I've found so far is http://www.apcupsd.org/ -- but its documentation is overwhelming and it appears that it may need other supporting software, a fair amount of Terminal usage, etc., all making it not very user-friendly for the very simple usage I'd want to make of it.
Does anyone know of any other solutions, software that can run on a MBP to add UPS autoshutdown functionality?
Re: Apcups, is anyone using it successfully on a MBP? If so, does anyone know if the version listed here -- http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Apcupsd.shtml -- is a simple application that I can easily install and configure like regular Mac apps? If yes, then I'll likely be very happy with no need for the following question. If no, can anyone provide simple instructions to set up Apcupsd to do what I want?

"You are not doing anything on the computer so no files should be writing to the drives."
Big assumption there. With today's notebooks so capable of acting as desktop substitutes, they are often left running unattended to complete demanding tasks overnight or while the user does other things.
To be able to suspend such activities and gracefully power down an external drive or drives in the event of a power outage, the Mac would have to have instructions from each third-party application or process that is running about how to interrupt its activity safely and without jeopardizing the integrity of whatever hard disk directories are in use. Then it would need to unmount the drive(s) and, if they were bus-powered drives, turn off the power to each of them at the port to which it was connected. I bet it would be possible for all app developers to write such instructions into their apps' code, but where's the incentive for them to do so? This isn't a feature that most users would gladly pay extra for, I suspect, and the cost of adding it to apps that don't have it now and testing it for reliability and proper function under all conceivable circumstances would not be trivial.
If the drive(s) were AC-powered, the computer wouldn't be able to power them down itself -- the UPS would have to do that, or simply leave them on and power them until its battery was depleted or the AC was restored. It wouldn't matter which happened as far as the drives and their contents were concerned, because once the computer stopped using them, powering them off would be safe at any time.

TC and WD500 External drive - Locks up when copying large files

I have a TC with a Western Digital 500GB my Book connected to the USB port on the TC that I use for network Storage. Everything works fine until I try to copy large files or directories from the Finder mounted share. After the copy freezes the external drive can no longer be seen by airport utility. If I look at disks it sees the disk but no partition. I have to power cycle the external drive to have TC see the drive again. Then I disconnect the drive and plug it in directly to the MAC and run disk utility and his repairs the journal. I have to do the repair every time it locks up. Should the external drive be formatted different or does it have to be connected to a USB hub. Or is this just a bug with the TC and afp ?

I have this very same problem.
I tried to copy a 4GB+ folder from the Macbook to the 500GB MyBook attached to my TC and it froze.
Now the the files on the MyBook are invisible when attached to the TC ("0 Items") but are available when the drive is connected directly to the Macbook. I have run disk utility but it hasn't helped. The disk is FAT 32 formatted and the files on the MyBook are still invisible over the network.
When the drive attached to the Macbook directly I can see a 'phantom' file with the same title as the 4GB+ folder I'd tried to copy. This file is "ZERO KB" and it cannot be deleted (error code -43).
Anyone have a clue what is happening here?

Emptying trash isn't freeing up any space on MacBook Pro or external drive. Time Machine is OFF.

Yesterday, while using Final Cut Pro X, I noticed the program/my computer was starting to run slow--and then I was totally caught off guard by a warning that my startup disk was full. I checked Storage and Finder and both my MacBook Pro and external drive had less than 1gb of space each! I usually use Secure Empty Trash and have no problems...but for my drives to be full, it clearly hasn't been working for a few days, possibly weeks.
I'm using a MacBook Pro (early 2011) and a LaCie Thunderbolt external drive. I'm running Mavericks (10.9.2)
I am not using Time Machine. When I look at Storage under About This Mac, my Backups on my MBP and LaCie drive are both at zero KB.
I read through the forums and tried going into Terminal and entering sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash ...but all that did was free up about 10gb on my external drive (I'd emptied upwards of 90gb from my trash).
Right now I'm basically stuck with a slow laptop and very little storage space, which has slowed my work to a halt. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Some space suggestions.
Disk Space - Free Up
Disk Space – Free Up (2)
Disk Space Filling Up – OmniDiskSweeper
Disk Space Filling Up - WhatSize

Copying files to other folders and to external drive takes forever

I am assuming at this point that it is a hard drive issue. Here are the details.
I am using a Macbook Pro 2.4 ghz, 4 gb RAM, 250mb HD that is 3 years old. This is a recent problem. I can move large files (1gb) from my external drives to another external drive AND from an external drive to my HD. But if I move a file from my HD to an external drive OR try to copy the file to another folder on my HD then it goes very very very slow and usually freezes up the computer.
To solve the problem I re-installed Snow Leopard from scratch and then upgraded to Mountain Lion. So clean install... Disk Utility reports no errors. No permission problems.
I was able to just backup 22gb using Time Machine to external drive.. took forever but it did work.. but then when i try to copy a 1gb file using Finder it hangs. It also seems to hang just randomly, especially when two programs try to run at the same time.. such as Time Machine and Safari. it does not like multiple things hitting the HD.
I am assuming I need to replace the HD but wanted to check here for any advice first.
Thanks,
Clint

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.
Isolating an issue by using another user account
General information.
Isolating issues in Mac OS X
Troubleshooting Permission Issues
Step by Step to Fix Your Mac

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.

Can't boot my Macbook from an external drive

Hi there,
After my internal hard drive failed, I put an older (temporary, and somewhat small -- 100gb) internal hard drive onto my Macbook, and using a time machine used an external drive to recreate the data and OS that were on the internal drive that failed. Part of the reason I did this, rather than just buying a new internal drive, is that I live in Germany and my family is coming to visit in a month with a brand new mac, so I'm hoping to just run everything off this external drive until I get the new computer and can transfer all my data over.
Anyway, I can't get the computer to boot from the external drive. It has the right partitioning scheme (GUID), my mac is willing to assign it Bootup Status, and when I browse the contents of the external drive, it basically looks fine. The termporary internal drive, incidentally, is running 10.6.7 as well, and using time machine I put my old applications on it, but not my user data. I can boot from that internal drive, but when I try to boot from the external drive I get stuck on the grey screen. Any idea what might be the problem and how I might fix it? Or a suggestion about how I can run my computer off this external drive until the new mac arrives next month?
A few technical details:
My macbook is about 5 years old, and when I check the "about this mac" tab it says it is running 10.6.7 OS, with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor and its memory is 2BG 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
The external hard drive is LaCie, 500gb, firewire 800 cable (and with the option to use a USB port too), which uses the macbook as its power source.
Thanks for your help and advice.
Bernie

Hi,
Thank you for your time.
Even if Disk Warrior can help recover/restore my files i think replacing the hard drive is necessary, right ?

MacBook and an External Drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for