MBP internal drive failure causes external drive probs. Weird...

I've been booting off an external drive for some months now. I figured it would save wear on the internal drive, and when my boot drive eventually failed (the external one) it would be quicker and a lot cheaper to swap that out with another external one than to have to change the internal drive. I use FW800 and not seen any performance hit.
Yesterday (with the whole system booted from the external drive) it started going really buggy, everything was painfully slow - like, virtually at a standstill, and with a very slow wi-fi internet connection.
I tried rebooting. It would only boot from the external drive, and only if I held down the option key and selected a boot from the options that appear. Otherwise just the apple symbol and an endless twirly. It wouldn't boot from the internal drive +at all.+
Eventually I booted from the SL disk and ran disk utilities. To my surprise the internal drive was corrupted in some way and couldn't be repaired. I wiped the drive and restored it using Time Machine (stored on yet another drive). Everything then worked fine, except for the slow wi-fi.
So, +why should a corrupted internal drive stop the MBP booting from an external drive?+ This is worrying for me if the machine ever goes down at work and I have to rely on booting from another drive, which then might not boot properly and is buggy.
To complicate matters (or does it offer a clue?) this morning I booted from the usual external drive. It worked ok, but wi-fi was still slow. Another Mac here was showing the same internet slowness, so I figured it was maybe the ISP.
Then the MBP itself started going slow n buggy again. A check on the internal drive showed no return of yesterday's probs. On a hunch I unplugged the router from the mains and plugged it in again. The wi-fi then worked properly as did everything else.
+Why would a buggy router affect my MBP? Could it have corrupted the internal drive?? Why should any of that affect the machine's ability to boot from an external drive..?+
Thoughts anyone?

clicked 'solved' but the credit went to the wrong place!
it's solved, thanks to clinton:
Re: Re: clone no longer sees MBP internal drive

Similar Messages

Clone no longer sees MBP internal drive

When I boot up from a clone on an external drive, the internal drive of my MBP no longer appears in the Finder -
nor does it appear as a startup disk in System Preferences.
In fact, none of my clones are recognising the MBP any more.
The MBP drive is only 3 months old, and Apple branded, and all drives are formatted OS Extended (Journaled).
Everything was working perfectly until recently - without there being any changes to the setup as far as I know.
Any idea what’s happened, and how to fix it?
It’s a mid-2009 MBP running 10.9.4.
(I originally posted this in the Mavericks forum, but maybe it's even more relevant here.)

Apple does not produce any drives on their own - so any "Apple branded" drive would be manufactured by a third-party.
Have you tried booting into your Recovery partition (hold down the command and R keys whilst booting) and using Disk Utility to Verify and, if needed, Repairing your internal drive? Does your machine boot with all of your clones as well as your internal drive, but does not show up on the Desktop when booted from a clone? Have you used Disk Utility to see if the machine actually 'sees' the internal drive?
Call back,
Clinton
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X 10.??, 16GB Crucial RAM, Crucial M500 960GB SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

Boot Camp on MBP internal drive (disk1), attempts to boot off CD bay drive (disk0).

Hi. I have an early 2011 MBP running the latest version of Mavericks with two internal SSDs. The HD bay has a 1TB (disk1) and the CD bay has a 512MB (disk0). Boot Camp is installed on the 1TB. When I boot up the system and hold down the Option key, I see Windows as a boot option. If I select it, however, it starts to boot and then goes immediately to a black screen with a white underline cursor blinking in the upper left. It remains like this until I reboot.
After spending a lot of time looking into the cause of this problem, I've come to the conclusion that the system is confused by the drive in the CD bay and is attempting to boot from it before it attempts to boot off the drive in the HD bay. I installed Boot Camp originally by using Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive and then using WinClone to copy over a previous Boot Camp partition. I'm pretty rusre that as a result, one of the following two things is happening:
Whatever setting Boot Camp Assistant made to tell the Windows install DVD to boot first is still in effect and Boot Camp is attempting to boot from the CD bay.
The Boot Camp partition is set from the previous drive it was on to boot from disk0, which is now being assigned to the drive in the CD bay.
To test these theories, I've unplugged the drive in the CD bay and rebooted, at which point Boot Camp boots perfectly off the drive in the HD bay.
The drive in the CD bay is set to a single HFS+ partition. I've looked at the GPT and MBR on both drives and they seem fine (the Boot Camp partition is bootable). Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing here?
Thanks in advance.
Craig

Still having issues, any suggestions would probably be helpful.

External Hard Drive Failures after iMac internal drive replaced

I was one of those lucky ppl who had to have my internal 1TB Seagate HDD replaced due to the recall. It was replaced on Friday.
After the drive was replaced (with another Seagate, ***?), I cloned my previous system back to the new drive (restoring from Time Machine required me to re-download Lion, which required me to re-download to a newer version of Snow Leopard, and just, Oi, vey, I used my clone).
I then had to create another bootcamp partition, and after that, I restored my previous bootcamp from an image backup with Winclone.
The next morning, my Time Machine external backup drive (a Maxtor OneTouch) makes horrible fluttering and crunching noises and cannot be found via disk utility, certainly doesn't mount to the desktop. I figure it just coincidentally failed and attached a new drive (a different OneTouch) for backup.
While Time Machine is performing an initial backup to this new drive (will take 10 hrs), I try to move a few media files to another external media drive (LaCie 1TB). I receive a couple of error -36s on a few particular files, so I figure I should wait for the Time Machine to backup and then diagnose the media drive.
The next morning (after 10 hr backup is finished), I have a stop-sign error that a disk was unmounted improperly (the LaCie media drive). The drive cannot be seen in disk utility or on a completely different MBP running Snow Leopard. It's spinning up, but it can't be read.
Only thing I can think to do is reinstall 10.8.2 over top the cloned system, make sure that the recovery partition was recreated and working.
This can't be a coinicidence, right? At this point, I'm afraid to keep my external storage drives and clone attached to the iMac, but I'm afraid to not have TM drive attached. Anyone know where to start diagnosing the problem?
1. Could a new internal drive be the problem, hardware wise?
2. Could the lack of an initial recovery partition or the setting up of a bootcamp partition have these sorts of consequences?
3. Could the problem be from restoring a clone?

Well, it is a LaCie-packaged adapter, some version of that model. The hub is on the mac mini inspired line of LaCie HDs (http://www.lacie.com/company/news/news.htm?id=10269). I've had it for 6 yrs, and the hub is still going. Other drives have been running from the hub without issue for all that time (and still are). There is no hissing, and the display light indicates the hub is getting power.
You think it's time for a new hub?
The internal switchout is just a coincidence?
(Basically, I'm not a hardware expert. Does anyone know if an internal drive or internal sensor/connection problem can cause externals to fail or blowout a controller? I'm waiting on a drive dock to arrive—I'll know more whether these are HD failures or chip failures after that. Both drives showed normal-seeming power use via their display lights.)

I just used "Erase" via "Find my phone" to erase and rest my MBP. It's caused my MBP to be locked. I entered correct 4 digit PIN and it seemed to accept it, but it won't allow use of the internal drive. Yosemite loaded. Anyone else had same problem?

I just used "Erase" via "Find my phone" to erase and reset my MBP. It's caused my MBP to be locked. I entered correct 4 digit PIN and it seemed to accept it, but it won't allow use of the internal drive. Yosemite loaded. Anyone else had same problem?

Greetings Fraser Alexander,
Erasing your Mac shouldn't harm your internal hard drive but erasing does clear Yosemite and everything else off of it. Are you not able to restore it with your Time Machine backup?
iCloud: Erase your device
If you erase then find your Mac, you can restore the information on the Mac using a Time Machine backup. For more information, see the Apple Support article Recover your entire system. If you set an EFI firmware password on your Mac before it was lost, then erase it and later find it, you may need to take your Mac to an authorized repair center to unlock it before you can use it again.
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Take care,
Nubz

Need more storage - larger internal drive, or external drive?

Good day...here's a little background before I head into my question.
I have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro with a 320 GB hard drive. I have an 2 GB WD External Hard drive...I've partitioned 500 GB that I use for my Time Machine backups and use the remaining 1.5 TB to store additional files, mainly music and video files. I rarely keep it plugged in to my MBP....I'll plug it in to do the odd Time Machine backup every couple of weeks, but that's about it. I like taking the MBP to the living room to use and the idea of having to plug and unplug an external hard drive several times a day is something I've decided not to do. Additionally, I access most of my photos/music/video through my Apple TV to play them on my TV/receiver. I also have no need to use the cloud as I don't require access to my media files when I'm out of the house.
My internal hard drive has been filling up over the last year and as it has, I've been dumping video files to my external hard drive. If I need them again, I'll simply transfer the odd one back to my MBP and add it back to the Itunes library. However, even with the odd purging, my internal drive is now filling up, mainly due to photos and videos of the little kids. The time has come, I need to do something.
I know that I have the option to store my Itunes library on an external drive (and this would quickly fix my storage issue as about half the 320 GB of space is my Itunes library), but I've been hesitate to do so. I do have an Airport Extreme Base Station downstairs and a PC Desktop as well. In reviewing these forums, I understand that I can transfer my Itunes library to my external hard drive, connect it right to the AEBS and access my Itunes files on my MBP from there. However, as I buy new music/videos from Itunes or add other media files to my Itunes on my MBP, would they automatically transfer to the Itunes library on my External, or would I have to add them each time? Is it still pretty seamless to transition to having my itunes library on an external hard drive without a lengthy list of things that you have to "put up with"?
In an effort to resist too much change, I've been thinking about simply replacing my 320 GB internal drive with a 1 TB internal drive so that I can keep things pretty much as they are...keep the Itunes library on my MBP and continue using the 2 TB external for backups and some additional storage space.
So, with that, I'm curious to hear any feedback on how to approach this...am I complicating things, are there any suggestions on how I could be organizing things way better? And finally, is your advice to increase the internal hard drive, or should I quit overthinking this and just move the ituens library to an external hard drive?
Thanks!
Lee

large external HD
A computer should never be considered a data storage device, only a data creation/ sending/ manipulation device.
All mega-storage should be a "grab and dash" item to store in a fire vault etc. Easily unhooked from a main computer capable of lightning strike, failure, easy erasure, etc.
And never ever rely on one backup ever. Recipe for disaster.
There are currently only 3 HD manufacturers, WD, Seagate, and Hitachi/Toshiba (recently acquired by WD).
No such thing as a "windows" Hard Drive either, .....only a Win formatted HD. A HD is a HD ... whatever it says or is formatted in when you buy it,... you can format it for Mac OSX extended journaled.
All personal conjecture aside, Hitachi/Toshiba are the best 2.5" HD, same used by Apple inside the Macbook Pro
..... also those running literally 1000s of HD in server farms agree on this.
That being said, WD are not recommended as an internal HD for a Mac.
Most reliable 3.5" class HD are Seagate
The LaCie drives carried in the Apple stores contain 3.5" Seagate HD
Most reliable 2.5" class HD are HItachi/Toshiba (same as used by Apple in the macbook Pro).
MUCH empirical data (and my own as well) says that Western Digital are the worst
WD has some compatibility issues with Mac.
Best bang for the buck in external 2.5" HD, is the Toshiba Canvio Basics HDTB120XK3CA 2 Terabytes 2.5" External Hard Drive
I have 4 of these tiny 2TB drives, ....theyre highly rated, and phenomenal
Currently theyre $120
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Basics-Portable-HDTB120XK3CA/dp/B00ARJD56K
People running server farms and see 1000s of HD, and failures will all tell you the same, in 3.5" class, get a Seagate, and DONT get a WD.
7 out of 10 HD failures have NOTHING to do with the HD.......if a HD fails (and they all fail) , its usually first 3 months or less
7 out of those 10 failures AFTER 3 months is NOT a bad HD, but a cheap/junk SATA connector and circuitry which connects the external HD to your computer.
Seagate large BACKUP HD 3.5" had gotten, for a while a bad reputation, but it had nothing to do with the HD, rather the cheap SATA connector interface that it was plugged into in the external casing.

Failure of internal drives? Reliability concern....

I've just moved to a new Mac Pro after a catastrophic drive failure of my old one. The old one had the Apple OEM 250G internal drive and a WD 750G additional internal drive. The WD drive had 2 partitions, both of them Carbon Copy Cloner clones of the main drive. (One clone was an exact mirror, one clone was an incremental backup clone.) Both partitions were bootable clones, and I had booted from both in the past without any problems.
Both internal drives died at the same time. Disk Utility couldn't repair them. DriveWarrior couldn't repair them. I couldn't access either drive via Target Disk Mode or in safe mode or in single user mode -- I couldn't even open a directory window on either drive without getting a permanent spinning beach ball that required a hard power-off. I removed the drive with the clones, and took the machine in to the Apple Store with just the original drive in place. They told me it was a bad drive. The other drive was displaying the same symptoms, and I'm assuming that it's bad too.
So.... BOTH drives failed, pretty much at the same time. I find it hard to believe that two drives failed simultaneously on their own. I tend to think it must have been some "original cause" that killed both, although I have no idea what that cause might be.
I'm now in search of a reliable "bootable clone" backup system. I'm not worried about my user data. Retrospect runs every night and backs up my entire user directory to DVDs, and that saved my bacon so that I didn't lose everything. Retrospect restored all my data files from my user directory within a few hours. I also have cron scripts that run that backup my MySQL databases every night.
But..... losing my main drive and my clones was almost as bad as losing my data. I had a custom apache file with tons of virtual hosts, the Entropy php packages, PEAR and PEAR packages, ImageMagick, mysql, various unix utilities and CPAN modules.... In short, a highly customized system that is not easily re-creatable when you're starting from a fresh system install. Several days after bringing the new Mac Pro home, I'm almost back to where I was.
I had always thought that having not one but two bootable clones would protect me against this situation. It turned out I was wrong.
I've already decided that my two clones will never again be separate partitions on the same drive, since a drive failure means both clones are gone. And I'll have at least 3 clones, on 3 separate drives -- two mirrors along with the incremental backup.
Is there any risk in having my bootable clones as internal drives? Could something in the old computer have caused the drive failures? The ease of installing additional internal drives seduced me into using an internal drive, and now I wonder if that was a mistake. Would I be better off cloning to external FW drives? In the past, I had always cloned to external drives, and I've never had one fail. I'm wondering if I should invest in multiple external FW drives, rather than internal SATA drives.
Can anyone provide any insight as to why two internal drives would fail at the same time? This is the part that has me most concerned, and it's why I bought a new machine, rather than simply replacing the drive in the old one. I don't think I could ever fully trust the old machine again, because it seems like there had to be something going on to cause simultaneous drive failure.
Is SuperDuper more reliable than Carbon Copy Cloner for making bootable clones? I've never had problems with CCC in the past..... but while I'm re-evaluating my backup strategy it seems worth looking into.
Is it worth it to boot from another volume in order to have CCC or SD do a block-level clone, rather than a file-level clone? I haven't usually done that in the past, but if will save me from another week in ****, I'll spend that extra few minutes on a regular basis.
Is there any other cloning system that's more reliable than CCC or SD?
What can I do to protect against multiple simultaneous drive failure?
Bottom line: What's most important to me is a bootable clone of my entire system. I can spend the money for the most appropriate internal or external drives.

TDM is firmware, so it's tied to the motherboard. But if the old machine tested out OK but the drives still are dead, then I guess it was simultaneous failure even though that would be rare, statistically.
I do not use my mirrored RAID except as the backup for my system drive. A mirrored RAID is made up of two identical drives (not necessary but less likely to have problems if the drives are identical) in which one drive acts as a mirror of the other. The RAID configuration automatically writes to the second drive in the RAID anything that's written to the first drive in the RAID. See the following for more info on RAIDs:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

I had tried installing windows 8.1 pro with many different solutions like using Bootcamp or using gdisk part and upgrading the disk part from hybrid to EFI also tried Using Lenevo external Optical drive which doesnt worked my internal drive is damage

I Am fed up after getting error after errors on the installation of windows 8.1 in my late 2011 MBP 15" 750 GB HDD and OSX Yosemite 10.10.2 and i am trying to install windows 8 or 7 and the error doent go away also i tried various other methods like gdisk part to make next button appear and Afte next button appear i am getting the error after the check list is done
please someone help me out i am getting paranoid in this and i am going to be a threat to society because its making me insane.

1. You cannot use the Lenovo external drive, because you already have a built-in SuperDrive. Get your internal drive fixed.
2. Your Mac does not support EFI Boot, because it is a PreUEFI model based on How to identify MacBook Pro models - Apple Support and the following list. If you force it with EFI boot, some of your hardware GPU/Audio will not work properly.

How do I import my library from an external disk to my new MBP hard drive?

My old MBP was running out of space so I exported my Aperture library (250GB) to an external drive. I just replaced my old computer with a new MBP with a 1TB flash drive. Now that I have the space, I want to put my library back on my computer but I can't figure out how bring it in from my external hard drive. Any ideas? Many thanks.

Why do you say " I exported my Aperture library"? Did you actually use "File > Export > Items as new Library" in Aperture to create a new library on your external drive? A simple drag and drop of the library should have sufficed. What is your Aperture version?
My old MBP was running out of space so I exported my Aperture library (250GB) to an external drive. I just replaced my old computer with a new MBP with a 1TB flash drive. Now that I have the space, I want to put my library back on my computer but I can't figure out how bring it in from my external hard drive. Any ideas? Many thanks.
Connect your external drive and use the Finder to drag the Aperture library from the external drive back to the Pictures folder.
Then double-click the library to point Aperture to the new location and open the copied library in Aperture.
If your Aperture library uses referenced originals, select the referenced images and use the command File > Consolidate originals" to move the originals back to your internal disk.
If you should encounter any error messages (like error -36) while moving the library to the internal drive, post back.

Macbook 2012 not booting from internal drive but booting from external usb drive

hi everyone!!
here is what happened:
i have worked all day on my macbook pro, normally. when i got home and turned it on (i always power it off for rolling with it) it just didn't load the OS.
i run mavericks on a i7 mid 2012 macbook pro 13". it had an accident on last december and fell on the ground, but i've changed the hdd and it worked normally until last week when this happened.
i have a copy of my system on a usb drive and tried to start up from it and it worked.
i took my hdd from inside the lap top and started from it (yes, the same hard disk that was inside the machine) and it worked.
i took the macbook to an apple store and the "apple genius" that was there started up my machine from inside with another hdd running yosemite that they have in the store for testing.
today i bought a new hdd and put it in. but i can't format it or install the system. i had these 2 errors on disk utility
"partition failed with the error: wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed"
and
"restore failure an error (32) occurred while copying. (broken pipe)
so:
it loads from my internal drive, but only when its connected via usb
it loaded the apple store drive internally
it does not format my new drive nor install the system on it
ANY suggestions, please??? it's really difficult to me to solve this problem...
thanks a lot!!!

Must be a bad SATA cable undetected by Apple Techs. A result of the drop but they are also quite fragile.
Disturbing the cable can cause it to work for a while. Cheap repair at iFixIt.

How do I boot from an external hard drive if my MacBook Pro only recognizes the internal drive?

Hi there, I recently got the white screen of death (w/ circle slash) on my 13" 2009 MacBook Pro. Most people are saying that it is hard drive failure, so I am trying to boot it from an external hard drive to save some of my data before having it repaired. Unfortunately, every time I press "option" while it boots, it only shows the internal drive on the grey screen. I have my external drive connected, but it won't recognize it. What should I do?
Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
You can only start from an external drive if OS X is installed there. If not, it won't appear as a bootable volume because there isn't any operating system inside it.
As you have a Mid 2009 MacBook Pro, it's better to start from the Mac OS X disc that came with your Mac. Insert it and hold the C key while your Mac is starting. After starting, go to Utilities menu > Disk Utility, select "Macintosh HD" in the sidebar and repair it. If you can't get it repaired, take the computer to an Apple Store.
If the hard drive can't be repaired, the only option to recover your files is to use an application as DiskWarrior, but it's expensive and it's not sure that it will work, because it may fail

Saved presentation is smaller on my internal drive than on my external disk

This is not a big deal and it does not affect the use or effectiveness of Keynote, but I am curious. If I save a presentation on my internal drive it has a smaller file size than if I move it to my external disk. Can someone tell me why?
Thank you
Mireille

Different disks and disk formats have different allocation block sizes; except for zero-byte files, each file needs to occupy at least one block. For this reason, some space is wasted on a disk, and the larger the disk is, the more space will be lost. Using the Mac OS Standard format for a disk causes much more space to be lost compared to Mac OS Extended.
When a package is placed on a drive, each item in the package counts as a separate file. Creating a disk image with the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and storing files on it will reduce the amount of lost space.
(25621)

Got all my photos and LR library onto external HD. How to clean my internal drive?

OK guys here where I sit and need some insight on how to clean up my internal drive.
I have a new MBP and originally imported all my photos from my PC into iPhoto. Then I installed LR3 and it created the library on the internal SSD drive. But I did not move any photos from iPhoto into there yet.
Then I installed an external raid drive just for my photos.
So in watching some of the LightroomLab tutorials, they said to create 2 folders on the fresh external drive. One for Photos and one for the LR library. So I did that and have lightroom now pointing to that index on the external drive.
Coming from a PC I was having a hard time grasping all this import/export stuff so I just found where all my iPhoto pictures were stored on my internal drive and manually copied them over the the external drive Photo directory.......Bad move I found out. No order what so ever. But still did not move them into LR yet.
So today I found another lightroomLab video showing me how to export out of iPhoto to a desktop folder and they exported very nicely organized in dated folders. So I finally imported into LR and moved all the photos from that desktop folder onto my external drive during the import. I am very happy with the organization now in the LR GUI.
So now I ask of you whats the best way to clean everything from my internal drive. Can I just delete the iPhoto library and will that delete all my photos from my internal drive? And what about the initial LR install? Can I just delete the whole LR folder that contains the initial library stuff?
Sorry for all the questions but I am almost there and where I want to be and just want to do the cleanup right so I don't lose anything I am supposed to have.
I really want to be a MAC person and little by little I am understanding more and more.

I dont know anything about iPhoto, but in terms of LR, just delete the photos from your Mac Finder. Then they will show as "missing" in LR. You can then update the location (right click the folder) to one of the versions of the folder that you have on your external.
Maybe you should practice this on a dummy folder or two so that you are comfortable with the process. FYI, LR can only update the location of one folder at a time. Having a parent folder on your internal that is indentical to the parent on the external would be ideal.
If you already have a separate catalog on your external that has all of your photos and edits on it., then just delete the internal files with the finder. Deleting the catalog will only delete the metadata and changes that you made to the images. the photos will remain on your internal drive.
There are a lot of different methods of doing this (like "export folder as catalog"), and different people will have their own favorites.
I'm not sure exactly would your folder heiarchies and catalogs look like, so make sure that it makes sense to you before deleting away.

Currently my internal drive is full due to Aperture. I want to work with Aperture from a external drive verses my internal drive. In addition, I want to back-up my work to another external drive. Is this easily done? Does this make sense? Pros / Cons...

Currently my internal drive is out of space due to my Aperture files. I want to place Aperture on a external drive to work from verses in intnal drive. In addition, I want to back-up all my work to another external for safe keeping. Once I move aperture to the external, I want to delete it off my internal drive. Does this make sense to do? Pros / Cons....

It is common for people to move their Aperture, iPhoto, iTunes etc. files to an external drive when those files become too large to conveniently keep on the internal drive.
The best approach is probably to keep the applications (iPhoto, Aperture etc.) where they are now, but move the files (photos, music, videos etc.) to the external drive.
You should set up a process to regularly backup all the files from both the internal drive as well as the external drive you'll be using. Here are two approaches:
(1) Use Time Machine. You can configure Time Machine so that it backs up both the internal drive as well as the external drive, all to a third separate backup drive. This is done via the Options button in the Time Machine preference pane.
(2) You can use a "cloning" program, such as SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, to make complete copies of files on your internal drive and that external drive. One way to do this is to use a very large disk for the backups, and to partition it into two backup drives, making one dedicated to the internal, the other dedicated to the external.
Two separate types of backups are recommended. I use both (1) and (2) above, and I disconnect and shut down the clone type backups when not being used. That way a power failure or surge that might destroy the original disk(s) plus the Time Machine backup(s) would still not damage the backups made under (2).
Don't delete your original Aperture files until you have verified that they are working properly from the external drive AND you have made a backup of them.

Storage location external & internal drive

Hello,
I need to place my iTunes Lib on a external drive as size is too big for flash of new MBP.
Is it possible that some selected Musik (e.g. playlist) that is also stored automaticly on internal drive of MBP?
So on tour, least this is still available from iTunes... Sure I can manually export seem files, but I wanted to keep the luxury of using iTunes...
Same topic for iPhoto is there also an option.
Or how do you handle it?

Hello Jim,
also thanks for quick reply.
So only approach today is two have two libs, and moving files between libs, I thing there are some 3rd party tools available to simplify.
Best would be if e.g. a selected playlist is automaticly stored on main drive as duplicate (all rest on itunes folder e.g. ext. drive), but seems more as a feature request to R&D Apple
Aperture or Lightroom has that in similar way...

MBP internal drive failure causes external drive probs. Weird...

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