Multiple Internal Hard Drives

When I set up TM, my Macintosh hard drive and the external hard drive that I had designated as my TM backup drive were the only drives on my machine. Since then, I have added another external HD, and three internal HD's. TM backs up none of these additional drives; it backs up only the Macintosh HD.
TM options deal only with what to exclude, not what to include. How do enable backing up all 4 of my internal drives and the additional external drive?
Thanks,
Nick

Welcome to Discussions.
+If I have two internal HDD's, will time machine back up both of them? I wanted to use one internal as a boot up disk and the other internal as a media drive and then a large external to back up both drives.+
Time Machine can back up both your internal drives.
+Is this possible? I just went to an apple retailer (Not Apple store) and the guy there advised me that I could have 2 internals but I would have to patition the new external and back up each drive to the respective partition. Is this right?+
No one has posted that they have gotten anything like that to work. Time Machine will back up both drives to the same partition and make separate folders for each drive.
+Plus it will only be Mac formatted and I can't take the backup drive and use it on a Windows computer if i needed to.+
A drive needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for Time Machine to be able to back it up. You can install commercial software, MacDrive on your Windows computer and read and write to the disk.
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

Similar Messages

Time machine multiple internal hard drives to multiple external hard drives

I have four internal hard drives that I back up to four separate dedicated external hard drives. I have upgraded to leopard and would like to use TIME MACHINE but I don't see how I can set up this unique back up system. Up until now I have been using BOUNCEBACK software and that has handled this multiple sources/destinations no problem. Can TIME MACHINE do the same?

This is the Final Cut Pro forum. The Time Machine forum is here: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
-DH

Problem backing up multiple internal hard drives to external

SITUATION:
We have 4 internal hard drives dedicated to media + another running the programs. The FCP projects are all saved on one of the media hard drives which also has captured media on it. The other 3 media drives hold the rest of the media for these projects. I have copied them all, one hard drive at a time, onto a La Cie external hard drive.
PROBLEM:
When I go into the La Cie drive, double click on HardDrive1 and open a project, the only "on line" clips in the browser are from the HardDrive1. It can't seem to link up to the media on the other three hard drives even though all the media is there.
QUESTION:
Anyone know how to set up the La Cie disk so that the projects on HD1 can find all their media from the 3 other media hard drives?

OK, had coffee, thinking straight(er)...almost not confused.
Your recent post would indicate that you have 7 harddrives inside your Mac.?.?. I think I understand what you have going on, and may be able to help, but it'll take a bit more info...
Are each of the 'desktop icon' harddrives individual harddrives, or partitioned HDs. If any are partitioned, can you tell me which?
I understand PROMAX has a good name, so I'm inclined to believe that whatever they did, was done properly and with good reason.
Anyway, I copied all of these hard drives onto the LaCie starting with the FCP HD and set that one up as a "bootable" hard drive. The rest followed, one HD at a time (took forever!).
"I copied all of these hard drives"... How did you copy...CCCloner? MediaManager, Drag and drop. This may be part of the issue...a little beyond my scope, but let us know how you copied the drive contents from internal to Lacie.
Can you open any of the 'non-findable' clips on the Lacie in QuickTime..just to make sure they're on the drive and usable?
When you open FCP on the lacie (and it only connects to files from same 'drive')...do you get the normal 'reconnect media' prompt, or are you getting a window that says 'The movie file "------" cannot be found. Without this file, the movie cannot play properly.
If the standard 'reconnect media' prompt..., have you tried selecting 'reconnect' then when that window comes up select, 'search' and uncheck 'Matched Name Only'...keep 'Reconnect all files in relative path' checked as this will link all files from that drive at the same time.
Try this and post back.
K

Multiple internal hard drives for the MacBook Pro. Is it possible?

Hello and greetings I am planning on purchasing my first MacBook Pro for school and travel soon. The internal storage of 256 GB SSD is not enough for me and I don't want to upgrade through the Apple website when I initially purchase my MacBook Pro. I was wondering if it's possible to install a second or possibly even third internal hard drive even if it's pretty thin.
I was looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?nm_mc=AFC-TechBargains&cm_mmc=AFC-Tec hBargains-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA&Item=N82E16822152291
And
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178125
Could someone tell me if I could install these drives alongside the already installed SSD I don't want both of these hard drives installed at once. I was wondering if either one would fit inside, id rather have the Samsung one as it is has a larger capacity. So would the Samsung one fit or should I go along with the Seagate. That's even if I can install a second internal hard drive.
Will either of these drives be able to sit alongside my SSD? This laptop will be carried around with me all day for school and work and I can't afford to be using an external hard drive. I don't want to spend a lot of money on purchasing another SSD for my computer just a normal HDD is fine for me.
Thanks In advance.
Joseph, 15

Depending upon which MacBook Pro you purchase, you may be able to put a second internal drive in it. If the system comes with an internal optical drive, you can purchase a drive trave for your second HDD to replace the optical drive and ha ve a second drive internal in the MacBook Pro. Be aware that some people have had issues with doing this when they have tried to put a very fast (SATA 6.0Gbps drive) into the optical bay, but not all users have this issue.I know of no way to put any additional drives inside your MBP other than that though.
As long as you are purchasing a new MBP, the bare Seagate drive you linked above should work fine, I was not able to follow your first link to say anything about it.

"Not enough free space" with multiple internal hard drives

I have a Power Mac G4, dual 1.25 Ghz, 2mb Ram running 10.5.8. I have four 500gb internal drives. I've had a number of issues with my internal drives lately. Hopefully someone here can help.
When I "get info" none of the drives display capacity or availability.
When I attempt to copy files from one drive to another I will consistently receive this error:
"The item "filename" cannot be copied because there is not enough free space.
My startup drive should have over 400GB of freespace, so there is plenty of space. This problem also occurs when I connect my Macbook Pro in target mode and attempt to transfer over files.
I was able to boot the G4 into target mode and backup my data. I then installed a fresh copy of OS X 10.5, then did the 10.5.8 combo update (not through software update).
This seems to have fixed the problem as I was copying and organizing my files back and forth between drives quite easily. However, the problem has returned from out of nowhere.
Anybody have ideas what this could possibly be?

Hi iliveontrantor, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Have you emptied the Trash on those drives?
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.
How much free space is on the HD, where has all the space gone?
OmniDiskSweeper is likely the easiest/best, and is now free...
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/

HT203322 Still having issues with installing Yosemite after deleting "Backups.backupdb" on the internal hard drive. I have restarted multiple times and cannot find any other back up files, yet I still receive the same error message during installation.

I am using a 2011 iMac on 10.6.8. I recently downloaded the Yosemite upgrade and during the installation process ran into the "this disk is used for time machine backups". I ejected the external drive I use for time machine backups and turned off time machine in the application. I then followed the instructions of the help article (OS X: Cannot install on a volume used by Time Machine for backups - Apple Support) by moving the folder "Backups.backupdb" that I was able to find on my internal hard drive to the trash. I have restarted several times after completing this process. I am still running into the same error during the installation process. I have searched the hard drive for any other backups and I cannot find any. I searched the hard drive using the command cmd-shift-g and searched for “backups.backupdb” and was unable to find any folders or files. Any other suggestions?

I have resolved the problem - I did not actually delete the "backups.backupdb" folder, I only deleted the contents of the folder. I must have only searched on the user account for the folder after I thought I had deleted it. Thank you for the assistance everyone and I apologize for the inconvenience!

External hard drive shows up under internal hard drive volume?

History:
Purchased new Macbook Pro and Lightroom 2.
Migrated old Macbook to new Macbook Pro, including Lightroom 1.
Installed Lightroom 2 and updated to Lightroom 2.2.
Had Lightroom 1 images on multiple external hard drives. Moved all images to new 1tb and 1.5tb Lacie external drives.
Imported old catalog into Lightroom 2.2 and now one of the external (1.5tb) shows up under my internal hard drive in Lightroom.
internal hard drive>Volumes>external hard drive>empty image folders
A partial part of this external hard drive (some image folders) also shows up as it's own volume.
I started by selecting missing image folders and using the locate missing folder method. the folders then show up on: internal hard drive>Volumes>external hard drive>image folders
Any suggestions on how to remedy this problem?
thank you, Shawn

This is reparable, but an Adobe Tech did it. I had this problem some time ago and they fixed it. Dan Tull, one of the Adobe Techs, was accepting Catalogs for investigation and repair. Not sure if he still is.
I have not heard of such problems for a while.
Don

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. How do I add an external drive so that it functions just like the internal drive on the iMac?

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. I have already worked to free as much space on the HD as possible. How do I add an external HD and have the iMac read it as though it was part of the internal HD. I know about external HD for additional storage and I do have an external HD, but, it is so much easier to search the drive when it is internal than having to perform a search on the internal drive and then a search on the external drives. And, it is easier to save files to an internal drive so that I don't have to decide which external drive to use to save files. In other words, I want to add an external HD and have it function as though I had purchased a larger internal HD.

That is simply not possible. Every drive is a separate device. It cannot be used to extend an internal drive as though you had a seamlessly larger drive.
What you can do is to create a striped RAID array using the internal drive and an external drive. However, doing this will erase the internal drive and you will lose everything on the internal drive. Furthermore, installing Lion or Mountain Lion becomes a bit of a problem because you cannot create a Recovery HD on a RAID and this tends to make the installer choke. However, you can clone an existing Lion or Mountain Lion system to the RAID and designate the RAID as a startup volume.
I would not recommend the RAID solution, personally, but there are many who do. I prefer the basic solution of spending the money on a larger internal hard drive instead of an external hard drive.
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?

How Do You Securely Wipe All Info Off Internal Hard Drive?

A friend has to ship her new iMac back to Apple for a replacement -- long story.
But before she ships it off she wants to wipe the internal hard drive of all her personal info -- mail, photos, music, documents, ...
What's the best way to securely wipe that internal drive?

you can do it using the erase tab in disk utility. there is an option to erase securely. it writes zeros over everything on the drive. do just one zero erase pass. disk utility lets you choose multiple erase passes but that's a vast overkill.
to do it to an internal drive boot from the snow leopard dvd and use disk utility there to erase the drive. when done restart and hold option at the chime. this will boot you into startup disk manager. eject the isntall dvd there and shut down.

Internal hard drive issue with Mac Pro

I work for two office that share information through a VPN. Each office has one Mac Pro being used as a server for data storage. The Pros have four internal hard drives (1TB each).
Hard drives in the Pro for OFFICE 1 were configured like so:
HD1 - OS/Boot drive
HD2 - Time Machine backup of HD1/DATA1/DATA2
DATA1 - Data storage
DATA2 - Data storage
Three weeks ago: Time Machine could not find HD2 and could not backup. I rebooted the machine and HD2 reappeared. However, after the reboot, DATA1 did not mount. I was unable to find DATA1 in Disk Utility. However, the drive could be accessed by all other Macs on the network. This machine was taken to the local Apple Store and we were told that HD2 was a bad drive and need to be replaced. We opted not to replaced the drive at this time and turned Time Machine backups off. We haven't had any problems with DATA1 since. (NOTE: During the weeks prior, the client machines intermittently lost connection with DATA1 and would have to reconnect)
Last week: OFFICE 2 - Mac Pro hard drives configured the same as OFFICE 1; however, HD2 was not used for TM backups. TM was turned on and set to backup HD1/DATA1/DATA2 to HD2 (exactly like OFFICE 1). The next day, TM could not find HD2 and backups stopped running. I rebooted the machine, HD2 reappeared, but we did not restart the TM backups.
Today: OFFICE 2 client machines have experienced intermittent disconnecting of DATA1.
I wasn't extremely concerned with the situation at OFFICE 1 as these Pros are almost five years old and in constant use. We plan on purchasing an external drive for the TM backups. HOWEVER, with a similar situation now being experienced in OFFICE 2, I am perplexed.
Could both machine be experiencing hard drive failures weeks apart? They were both purchased and installed at the same time.
Is there a known issue with TM and internal drives?
One difference between the two machines: OFFICE 1 is running OS X 10.8.5; OFFICE 2 runs 10.6.8
Any suggestions/help is appreciated. Thanks!

Relying on TimeMachine has some issues, along with only having one, I use at least two swapping TimeMachine so that they rotate AND I clone every drive (volume actually) so I can swap drives if need be, especially useful for t he system but good for any drive.
Power issues in t he buildings?
There are some programs that will scan for and report and./or attempt to reassign a failing sector ("fail" is qualitative, is 10 write failures a fail? then the 9th is not but it is a "weak sector.") Some run in the background.
Mirror can be 2 or 3 ( I prefer 3, that way if one fails I STILL have a mirror array in place) where any failure is not acceptable, AND where the array data is backed up usually - less important when using a three-drive configurations.
How old, when last initialized (zero), and is it showing spare blocks being used? that last is the most indicative of failed drive.
Rare but a bad SATA cable or power (seeing how the cables are tucked away) is only way generally for multiple failures in same drive bay or computer. Note: early on in 2006-7 there were reports of some customers having motherboard and trouble with a drive bay , and t he problems showed up early.
Often though it is NVRAM or SMC related issue trigged by something else, a USB cable or device that is faulty, even a PCIe controller that is the culprit. And replacing cable, keyboard, device, and resetting SMC and NVRAM (often NVRAM needed to be done multiple times, but never keep resetting SMC) - unplugged and when you connect back up, do not install anything other than system, keyboard and mouse and see if that helps.
With a drive, likely the drive in 85% or more, is fine, but the directory is not, or it needs to be erased to rebuild all the system partitions.
1TB is small for TimeMachine. 350% of the amount of data, and always have free space for a full backup set of all the data. T.M. will try and prefers to automatically backup any and everything plugged in and connected, rather than my preference which is ASK FIRST to add a drive to TM backup set, otherwise leave it out. 600GB of data and system would mean 2.5TB drive, maybe 2TB minimum.

Moving iTunes from internal hard drive to external hard drive

I would like to know if it is possible for me to move my iTunes library and all iTunes files from my internal hard drive to the external drive that I just purchased. My Laptop is running out of memory and I assume if I move it to the external drive it will free up space. Can anyone here help me?

If you have iTunes 7, then you can just drag the entire iTunes folder to your desired location. Then hold down the Shift key while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location.
Forum Tip: Since you're new here, you've probably not discovered the Search feature available on every Discussions page, but next time, it might save you time (and everyone else from having to answer the same question multiple times) if you search a couple of ways for a topic, both in the relevant forums, in the User Tips Library and in the Apple Knowledge Base before you post a question.
Regards.

New Internal Hard Drive and Clean Install: Errors, Frustration and Hopelessness

First Off:
Macbook 13" (late 2009) ... It was running Mountain Lion 10.8.5 with 2 gigs of memory and 160gig stock hard drive.
I started this process almost a week ago and despite numerous attempts every night I have had no luck. I appologize if the details here are fuzzy, my head is spinning after reading dozens of threads and attempting multiple solutions to each error I've received and i cant remember everything I've tried so far...
I got my new memory in the mail first, upgraded to 4 gigs and everything works fine with that..
Next came my new Seagate Momentus 750 gb 7200 rpm SATA 3gb/s 16Mb Internal Hard Drive.
Using this guide: http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/17/make-bootable-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-usb-install -drive/ (and cross checking other guides) I ended up creating a bootable external drive using my 160gb External Firewire drive for my clean install to my new hard drive. So far so good.
I then shut down the computer, removed the old internal hard drive, installed the new, restarted the computer holding option key and booted up using the External Hard Drive, and the install software started fine. Note: I have attempted to re-erase the drive so many times without luck that I cant remember if I actually successfully erased the drive originally to begin with the installation, but either way I started the OSX reinstall and it got almost all the way finished before it gave me the error message:
"Install failed. Mac OS X Lion couldn’t be installed, because the disk (volume name) is damaged and can’t be repaired. Click restart to restart your computer and try installing again."
restarting of course did nothing, it repeatedly gave me error messages and made me quit installation...
Disk Utility isnt getting me anywhere, im either getting errors like:
"POSIX reports: the operation couldnt be completed. device no configured"
it wont allow me to erase the drive or partition the drive
"Disk Erase failed with the error: File System Formatter Failed"
and everytime the drive fails to erase or partition, it disappears from the list of drives on the left of the disk utility screen and i have to restart the computer for it to reappear for a second try. Typically the volume under the drive is greyed out and says that it is unmounted.
Ive zapped the PRAM.... and Ive done other things that I cant quite remember right now because my brain is boiling from reading too many **** threads on multiple devices....
halp.
halp me plase.

So funny story...
While writing this discussion I had to come to the computer and try to erase the drive so I could see the error code for reference. The erase didnt work as usual but I wrote the error code down here.
I also could not remember the error code for partitioning the drive so I attempted that as well so I could write down the code, and this time it magically partitioned successfully! The only thing I did differently was that I didn't rename the partition because i figured it wouldn't matter anyway. Since the partition was successful, I attempted the Reinstall of ML and it magically worked!!
I dont know what the **** happened but ive been attempting this install every night for like 3 hours since Monday and this is the first time it went through... for no apparent reason?
Ghosts? Magic? Full Moon?
we may never know...
Thanks anyways guys!

ITunes external/internal hard drive mixup

A somewhat unique situation has arose with my itunes library over time, and I'd like to set it straight. Right now some songs in my library are accessed from an external hard drive, while others are from my imac's internal hard drive. I'd like to have all my songs accessed from the internal hard drive so I do not have to worry about the external hard drive being on or connected. At the moment, my entire itunes library is on the internal hard drive and in the itunes music folder. Do I have to reimport everything, or is there a simpler solution? I'd also like to keep the play counts ect. Any suggestions?
Also, I plan on buying a macbook soon and transferring my itunes library through firewire. Will the same situation with the songs only playable while the external hard drive is connected still exist?

If you have iTunes 7, then you can just drag the entire iTunes folder to your desired location. Then hold down the Shift key while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location.
Forum Tip: Since you're new here, you've probably not discovered the Search feature available on every Discussions page, but next time, it might save you time (and everyone else from having to answer the same question multiple times) if you search a couple of ways for a topic, both in the relevant forums, in the User Tips Library and in the Apple Knowledge Base before you post a question.
Regards.

Any internal hard drive upgrades available for iMac?

I have a 19 Gigabyte hard drive in my Imac running OS 10.4.11 and would like more storage. Is there a larger internal hard drive available from Apple or anyone else and at what approximate cost?

Your iMac uses the same 3.5" IDE/EIDE, Parallel ATA (PATA) - not Serial ATA (SATA), hard drives that are used in PCs. The onboard IDE controller will not recognize a capacity larger than 128 GBs, so any standard drive that's larger than that (160 GBs ->) will have unused capacity. A 120 GB drive was the optimal drive to install, but many manufacturers have discontinued that size. You should be able to find a 160 GB drive at any electronics, office supply, or computer store in your area, or you can check online retailers (like newegg.com) for a comparable drive. As an example, Micro Center is selling the Western Digital 160 GB (PATA) drive for $55. Seagate's drives are also a good choice, because of their 5-year warranty. After installing the drive, you should boot the iMac from the Tiger installer disk and use Disk Utility to format the new drive as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. You can also partition the drive into multiple volumes, if desired. This Macworld article will provide useful directions for opening up the iMac's lower housing and replacing the hard drive. As an alternative to replacing the internal hard drive, you could connect a FireWire external hard drive. The FireWire-connected drive wouldn't be subject to the 128 GB limitation, so you'd be able to use a mega-sized drive.

How to move an iTunes library from the internal hard drive to another bootable disk.

         I got two Mac OS X installations on my i Mac system. One on the internal hard drive (320 Gb), that has been there since the iMac was bought 3 years ago, upgraded to Lion on 2 August. (call that INT) . I have a USB external drive, and recently bought a firewire Lacie external drive (2Tb), so to boot from there when I can, with hard drive space getting tight this year. I successfully installed another copy of Lion on LACIE.
         Then I went to work to transfer my iTunes library, which the media files were optioned to store on the USB drive. Intending to transfer both the music and video files, and the megadata ( playlists, ratings, playcounts ) I found the media files and the iTunes library file and the .xml document in my iTunes folder from INT. I made a new folder in the USB drive, and copied the contents from the old iTunes folder to that new folder. I re-started in LACIE, and found my empty iTunes folder. I copied over to the new iTunes folder, then opened iTunes. My eyes saw the music library to the same number of items, with the playlists etc showing.
        However, I tried to sync an iPod Nano, and a window came up saying 100 songs could not be copied to the iPod because they could not be found. After ejecting the iPod I tried to play a song from iTunes, and the screen filled with exclamation points. A small window came up, asking for a password to open "sparsebundle" and my name. I entered my password for the administrator's log-in and it said try again with the password. Without knowing what password to put in, I clicked Cancel, and got another small window asking to locate the file. Then clicked Cancel again, not knowing where to search. All the media folders were showing after quitting iTunes and opening Finder .
      I re-booted into INT, and opened iTunes. The library was still there. I synced my iPod again, ejected it, played 3 songs on the iPod, synced again, ejected it again, and opened the playlist "Recently Played". It showed up okay with no problems. So my iTunes library in INT is alright.
      Has anyone got any idea how to make the transfer into LACIE and get it running alright, or what went wrong with what I did ?
      In the meantime I will empty my LACIE iTunes library folder's contents to the trash, and securily empty the trash .

Solved the issue without using the trash . I tried to consolidate the library in LACIE, then clicked on any exclamation-mark song and tried to locate the file. Repeating those steps 3 or 4 times cleared it up. That was confirmed when I synced the entire library on a iPod Classic, and showed up no problems after syncing the Nano.
     What went wrong was perhaps to fail to consolidate the library at first .

Multiple Internal Hard Drives

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for