Needed disk space, bought an external harddrive and

Just dragged the icon for my hard drive to the icon for the back up.
It is a packard bell and I used the disk utility to erase and set it up for mac.
It shows both the Macintosh HD and an alias for the hard drive. Is it that easy?
Can I start clearing stuff off the lap top? If I erase stuff off the lap top I guess I have made a copy of it on the external, have I not?
Dumb question I hope, just do not want to completely lose files.
A lot of old photos not being used by iWeb at this point, but will be needed soon.

So your laptop hard drive is called "Macintosh HD"
right? Approx how big is it? And what is the name
given to the new external harddrive? Approx how big
is it?
Mac HD is original capacity 37.14 used 32.01 free 5.12
Back up is new external capacity capacity 232.76 used 7.65 free 225.11
Hummmm, something is missing I have download carbon copy and will try using that.
Usually dragging your Macintosh HD icon to the
external drive should copy most everything you would
want to keep. But it doesn't copy some of the hidden
files for the system, etc. Probably okay. Just
compare the size of the "Macintosh HD" folder on the
external hard drive with your harddrive on the
laptop...do a Get Info on both.
The best way I know of to make an exact copy of your
hard drive is to use a program called Carbon Copy
Cloner, available here...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
What it will do is to make an exact image file of
your harddrive and then you will be able to mount it
and copy things from it when you need to.

Similar Messages

I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.

I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive on my macbook pro since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.
I cant find the options to erase selected items it only shows that i can erase everything.
I mean technically i suppose i could erase everything an have a fresh start since its backed up to my external. But what exactly are the specific items being erased?
I have bought the newest OS X 10.8.2 an worried that it will get erased also an end up having to repurchase it.
Can anyone help me?
<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Black_Chevy07 wrote:
I just got a WD My Passport 1TB External Harddrive and i have already backed everything up to it but im still a little nervous about erasing things off the physical drive on my macbook pro since it says my disk utility is out of space an implying i need to erase items.
I cant find the options to erase selected items it only shows that i can erase everything.
I mean technically i suppose i could erase everything an have a fresh start since its backed up to my external. But what exactly are the specific items being erased?
I have bought the newest OS X 10.8.2 an worried that it will get erased also an end up having to repurchase it.
Can anyone help me?
If you are trying to delete some files get out of Disk Utility, it is not for that!
How did you backup and what are you trying to achieve?
Please post the exact error messages(s) you have received.

How do I clean my mid 2007 iMac? The disk space is running VERY low and I would love an idea. I make videos and upload them to youtube and I need space to do that. Thanks for your time!

How do I clean my mid 2007 iMac?
The disk space is running VERY low and I would love an idea. I make videos and upload them to youtube and I need space to do that. Thanks for your time!
If you have an idea please respond!

You should never, EVER let a conputer hard drive get completely full, EVER!
With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
Have you emptied your iMac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto, iPhoto has its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.
If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Look though other Apple Mail folders like the junk mail and delete the mail that is in there. Look through your sent items folders and see there is any mail in there that can be deieted.
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.
Other things you can do to gain space.
Once you have around 15 GBs regained, do a search, download and install OmniDisk Sweeper.
This app will help you locate files that you can move/archive and/or delete from your system.
STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.
Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.
move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Good Luck!

Can I store my photos, music and films on external harddrive and backup everything to time capsule?

Hi
I have just bought my very first mac this week. I have the iphone 4 already but have been used to using windows my whole life.
I have purchased:
21.5inch iMac 2011
2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
4GB RAM
500GB Harddrive
Latest version of Lion OS
Its only been a couple of days and already I dont know how I ever lived without it.
The predicament Im in is this: I want to use apple Tv to stream my music, photos and films to my TV in the living room. But I would also like to store all of this on an external harddrive, rather than filling up my internals with it then not having enough room for anything else.
Can I store my films, music, photo's etc on an external harddrive and still stream to apple tv? Does it need to be a specific external harddrive? And whats the best way to back everything up? Would a 2TB Time Capsule backup my mac and everything on my external harddrive?
Sorry for all the questions, Im very new to this and dont know much about harddrives.
Thanks in advance..
Gem

Yes. However, it gets more complicated. Time Machine is better for archival backup, and typically requires twice the space for the data as the original. Streaming from external drives while possible can get laggy on video unless you use Firewire or Thunderbolt. If you have any old 802.11b or 802.11g devices, you'll want to keep them on a separate network. A better investment is a couple external hard drives for backup and one for any excess stuff that won't fit on your main 500 GB drive, and to use cloning software instead. When you need archival backup, burn to CD or DVD that is prepackaged in jewelcases. See my FAQ* on good media and backup http://www.macmaps.com/cdrfailure.html
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
When backing up make sure nothing else is happening on the machine from your end.

There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.   Time: 30/05/2014 1:16:20 AM

Recently, our mail server crashed at about 7pm one night, with the error 'There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.'
When we click Retry, the server starts up OK.
There are no snapshots listed in Snapshot manager for any of the virtual machines on the host.
There is also free disk space available on the host and for the VM with the disk errors.
This happened at least three more times, often at bad times. Each time, we were able to click 'Retry' and the disk/system would allow the VM to start-up successfully.
I checked the Forums, the VMware support articles and the internet as I had not seen this problem before. I have completed the VSphere 5.1 - Fast Track course and this issue was NOT covered in the training.
Most of the advice on-line and even that on the VMware web-site was pointing to snapshots being the cause of this issue. There are no snapshots enabled and I cannot see evidence of snapshots ever being used.
- We are running VMware vsphere (5.1.0) and there are (were) 4 virtual machines running on the ESX host. We are using the free version of VMware/ESXi.
- The Hard disk types we are using for this Virtual Machine are 'Thin Provisioned'.
- There are 4 [Thin Provisioned] Hard Disks for this virtual machine.
- There are 6 CPUs
- There is 20GB of RAM (memory)
- The VM is running Windows Server 2008 R2 as the guest/VM operating system. It is an Exchange 2010 SP1 mail server. There is plenty of available disk space on all the drives. The [Exchange] log files are cleaned out regularly (automated).
I decided to move one of our non-critical servers off this host and on to another host to see if this helped the problem. This took quite some time, as we are not using HA or vmotion, nor do we have VCenter Server...nonetheless, I finally managed to get the non-critical server on to another host (n.b. This was a much smaller machine with less virtual resources assigned to it).
After moving the non-critical server off this host, we decided to monitor the Host and see if the issue resolved itself.
I checked the host about 6-10 times a day, from first thing in the morning till last thing at night - monitoring the performance of not only the Virtual Machine, but the ESXi host also.
There were no adverse performance issues. The only thing I did note, was in the Summary page on the ESX Host, under Storage, was If I right-clicked on the datastore and clicked refresh, then the free disk space would drop (ie from 140GB to 125GB).
After monitoring the host and VM for about 2 weeks, we did NOT have another instance of the above error.
Sorry for the long winded post, but I wanted to give as much detail given this error has been raised before and snapshots are usually blamed as the cause.
My question is this:
If the ESX host had plenty of available disk capacity and there were no snapshots enabled on the VM (or any other VM's on the same host), then why did our Virtual machine crash with the error that 'there is not more space for virtual disk Servername_2.vmdk'?
How do we prevent this issue from happening if we don't know the underlying cause?
I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions.
If I have not provided enough info on the specs or environment, please let me know and I will provide more information.
Thanks all,
Kurt

The type of storage is really based on your requirements, and your ability to withstand downtime.
iSCSI as you are using with a NAS such as Synology or QNAP. NAS Selector - Support - Synology - Network Attached Storage (NAS)
I wouldn't use iSCSI for Exchange or any database. It's a bit slow.
Do you have a single physical host? Then I'd probably to an external direct attached storage. This would be a card inserted in your host server that gives you multilane SAS/SATA connectivity (www.techcable.com/SAS-SATA/SAS-SATA.pps) and an external disk enclosure/array.
For multiple hosts to a single array, I recommend a fibre channel connection to a FC capable switch, and on to a FC connected array.
We used to use a HP P2000 (on old G1), but it's since been retired. Worked pretty well once firmware was upgraded. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/disk-storage/product-detail.html?oid=4118559#!tab=features. They can be connected via iSCSI, Fibre Channel or 6GB SAS so they are flexible and reasonably priced.
Recommendations:
     Use RAID 6 with your large disk arrays. With large disks there is a measurable failure rate when rebuilding a failed RAID5 array based on MTBF.
     Use smaller 15K disks in RAID 0+1 for speed on databases/Exchange.
     Use slower 7.2K disks in RAID6 for file storage.
We are a small hospital and we have 3 VMware servers with dual CNA (FC and Ethernet in a single twinax cable) connections to 2 redundant Cisco Nexus 5K switches and then 4 Fibre Channel connections to an EMC VNX 5300. It's extremely fast with about 50 virtual servers, but was quite an investment. One thing we don't have to worry about is down time. If there ever is an equipment failure, we have redundant everything, including power split between two UPSs.
Our VNX has 3 tiers of performance. 3 100GB SSD "Fast Cache" in RAID 1 with hot spare, to keep the most used data ready, but it's not really a tier, however one could be built utilizing the same disks. A second tier is performance tier with a 8 600GB RAID 0+1 and hot spare. The third is a bunch of 7.2K 3TB disks in RAID6. The VNX autotiers, placing data on disks depending on where it's needed. The volumes are sliced and diced automatically in the background to make this happen and we never have to touch it. I used a demo of Solarwinds Storage Manager to monitor performance for a while and the utilization was always low, meaning all data access was fast, througout the day.
D

External harddrive and filefault

Hello,
I just started last year with my first macbook and because I went to Africa for three months I bought an external harddrive. Timemachine was copying everything on the harddrive and then my laptop got stolen. I just bought a new one now but nobody can get anything of my harddrive. It seemed that I put filefault on my stolen macbook and I had no idea. Now people are telling me timemachine put filefault also on the harddrive so it's hard to get something off but I also read that when you have filefault, timemachine only puts stuff on the harddrive when you're logged out. Who knows a solution?

An external hard drive does not work all the time, if the computer goes to sleep, it goes to sleep to. Also, even if computer is active, it goes to sleep if no activity with it. How it works exactly depends on the manufacturer and the controller inside, called to optimize such a behavior. I have several such external discs, not all are good at optimizing their performance, but—in general—they behave OK.
If you put computer to sleep, then switch off external disk, you adopt a totally unrecommended solution, as you abruptly interrupt communication between computer and external disk. If you wish to let ED connected to mac all the time, then do nothing, system and ED controller will optimize activity.

Can i run itunes from an external harddrive and if so how?

LIke i'm not a complete pleb and i know full well that this should work in theory i am just worried about moving the "itunes" folder to my external harddrive because i feel itunes will then say 'can't find library' or something. I have a G4 emac you see with only 40GB internal harddrive, about 25GB is just my itunes songs and i can't get rid of any as i need them for djing.
can i just copy the itunes app and the itunes folder to my external harddrive and then create a itunes link in my dock? I feel that i'm missing something though.
Could someone tell me a surefire way to do it so i don't mess up. I'm not 100%
cheers
rhys

Yes you can run programs from a differnt drive. All you have to do is download that prgram to that drve same as you would to the c:drive by defualt we will have to reload everything as if you never had itunes.
1 make a folder on your drive called itunes.
2 go to the website and get the itune ( click on the download link and when it ask to run or save click save and tell it where to save.
3. After save is complete click on the install app. it will default to install to you c drive. Change this to your desired drive and folder. (this will install it on that drive and folder.) then you will have to make a shortcut to open Itunes.
4 If you more than one pc configure in the same order and # of drive you will be able to run this drve from any pc.
I do this with alot of programs at work from a 4gb penn drive to get around the firewall and admin rites. (I.T. department)

External Harddrive and MacBook Pro

Hello Everyone,
Thank you for taking the time to view my post.
I just recently purchased a new 15" MacBook Pro. I originally had a HP laptop in which I ran iTunes for Windows.
Instead of storing my music on my HP laptop's HD I bought a 320GB external harddrive and had iTunes re-route to the external (i.e. using iTunes Prefs, letting iTunes read from the external).
I opened iTunes on my new MacBook Pro and telling it to read from the external as I did with my HP laptop, but when I tried to import CDs to my library I received an error saying that the "required folder" could not be found. In turn, it won't let me import CDs to the external.
How can I fix this problem? I don't want to store my music on my MacBook Pro.
Thank you again for reading this and taking of your time to help me with my issue. God bless!
Jose Luna
MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.10) 80GB iPod

Hello Everyone,
Thank you for taking the time to view my post.
I just recently purchased a new 15" MacBook Pro. I originally had a HP laptop in which I ran iTunes for Windows.
Instead of storing my music on my HP laptop's HD I bought a 320GB external harddrive and had iTunes re-route to the external (i.e. using iTunes Prefs, letting iTunes read from the external).
I opened iTunes on my new MacBook Pro and telling it to read from the external as I did with my HP laptop, but when I tried to import CDs to my library I received an error saying that the "required folder" could not be found. In turn, it won't let me import CDs to the external.
How can I fix this problem? I don't want to store my music on my MacBook Pro.
Thank you again for reading this and taking of your time to help me with my issue. God bless!
Jose Luna
MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.10) 80GB iPod

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

Hopefully you moved the entire iTunes Media (or iTunes Music) folder to a new path on your external drive. Copy your iTunes library folder out to the root of the external drive, e.g. X:\iTunes (where X: is your external drive), then move the media folder inside it. Hold down shift as you start iTUnes and keep holding untila asked to choose or create a library. Choose the library at X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl. Should all be good.
Failing that, download and run my FindTracks script and point it at the new location of your media folder.
tt2

HT4236 I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. No dice. Help!

I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. My photos on the devices get wiped out when I sync to iPhoto since I deleted all the albums. But when I sync to my hard drive (where I maintained the album structure) the photos are copied to my iPad but lose all the hierarchy and folder structure. Now I have to scroll through thousands of photos to try to find the one I'm looking for. Before I sync any more devices I want to know the following: 1) can I restore the album structure on my iPad by using the photo cache? 2) is there a way to sync both new iPhoto albums AND pictures in the folders in my hard drive? And 3) how can I keep the photo hierarchy structure from my hard drive intact on my devices?

TigerMom28 wrote:
I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto.
Don't do that.
Copy /Photos/Photo library/ to the external.
Hold Option and launch iPhoto.
Select Choose library and select the Photo library you copied to the external.

Can I backup my entire ITunes library on an external harddrive and then transfer it to my new PC?

Can I backup entire ITunes library to external harddrive and then transfer to new PC?

Yes, check this link, https://discussions.apple.com/message/1531620#1531620

Stuck: Need Disk repair but DVD drive dead and only have USB 1

[1 Ghz flat-panel iMac with USB 1 ports (no USB 2) and also Firewire 400]
I noticed a strange discrepancy (small but concerning) between the size of a folder on hard drive (folder of all mp3's with no subfolders) and the backup of the same folder on a mounted thumb drive.
(The size difference was not due to any invisible .DS_Store files and both folders are displayed in List view format.)
Disk Utility reports three things:
1. Incorrect number of thread records
2. Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
3. Checking volume information.
Volume free block count",0) [I might have mangled this line]
(It should be 13438611 instead of 13437937)
Here is the GOOD (but these are useless as explained under the "Bad"):
- I have a Tiger 10.4 boot DVD for a repair ==>but see below
- I also have a Disk Warrior disk (never used)
Here is the BAD:
- My built-in optical drive [Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105] is -- I now discover - defunct and DEAD - it does not run the Tiger Boot DVD (in pristine shape).
- I bought an external SuperDrive (unopened) but I believe no boot from USB 1 is possible in PowerPC so a SuperDrive with USB 1 is useless.
Questions:
1.) Is there any way to boot from some external source (optical drive is DEAD) to run Disk Utility and/or Disk Warrior? -- I see none in this case! (gulp).
2.) More importantly (and this is my fundamental concern): Do the three Disk Utility hard drive issues constitute any direct threat to the integrity of my files?
I have almost everything backed up to duplicate thumb drives over these many months as standard practice.
Are these Disk Utility errors fully isolated to hard drive directory-keeping...or do these directory damage errors pose the possibility of mangling or harming my files or their metadata (filesize, etc.).
Put another way, when files are backed-up from a hard drive under the Disk Utility reports above, do they remain unharmed and undamaged by the situations reported by Disk Utility?
Thanks,
Bill

Jeff and Michael,
Thank you both for your generous and thoughtful input.
Michael: As I slept on it overnight, the exact same idea occurred to me of trying a Target Mode to the iMac from my Lion MacbookPro (I have it but stupidly have yet to use it much!).
I did buy a Firewire 800 (MBP) to Firewire 400 (iMac) adapter cable a few months ago!
CONCERN: Would there be potential compatibility issues or risks in running Lion 10.7's Disk Utility against the hard drive of the old OSX 10.4 iMac in Target Disk Mode?
==> Assuming an "it's ok" answer to the Target Disk question, would the majority of users agree that the Target Disk Mode would be more prudent than running:
fsck -fy in Single User Mode
I have never done fsck -fy before especially because I was under the impression there were issues with Journaled drived but from what I have read today...it looks ok to do)
Jeff: Can't thank you enough for the reference to the OTW DVD drive. I might first invest $10 in one of those DVD lens cleaner disks that I've read about. It's probably not the issue or else why would the drive read commercial Music cds perfectly well!
Thanks,
Bilil

Need more space! Is external hard drive an option??

New to atv. Bought 40g model. Now going on vacation and need more space for more stuff. Can external hard drive be hooked up via USB and accessed through atv??

Can external hard drive be hooked up via USB and accessed through atv?
Not without voiding the warranty. No publicly available device is officially supported by that USB port.
(39095)

Bought additional external harddrive. Best way to set up Time Machine?

Currently, I have a 250GB internal harddrive and a 500GB external harddrive for Time Machine. My internal harddrive is filling up and I am planning on starting a large photo scanning project. I bought an additional 1TB external harddrive (cheaper than the 500GB, gotta love memory prices). I would like to set Time Machine up on the 1TB harddrive and use the 500 GB harddrive for extra storage. If I do this, would there be any potential problems if I copy my old Time Machine backups to the new harddrive? Anyway to use Time Machine to backup at least a portion of the 500GB harddrive to the 1TB harddrive? Any other ideas on the best set up?
Thanks for your help!

you can clone your current TM drive to the new 1TB drive using Superduper or the restore tab in disk utility. But don't trying copying the backups using finder. that done you can reformat the 500GB drive and start storing data on it. TM can back up both your internal and the 500GB external drives. if you want you can partition any of your external drives into several partitions. In particular if you want to keep any other data on the 1TB drive besides the TM backups definitely partition it and keep one partition dedicated solely to TM.

Help needed: Disk space does not free up even after deleting files.

Background information for this problem: I have my iPhoto library on an external HD, and was importing files from that same drive into iPhoto, and began receiving messages that I was very low on disk space on my internal HD. From here, it seemed like iPhoto was using my boot drive for some kind of cache. Regardless of the actual reason, I began moving files from my internal HD to fix this problem temporarily (while I was importing).
At this point, I started fiddling with my files and found that no matter how many files I would delete from my HD, the available space in the finder would not free up. *At this point, I have less than 20GB on my HD, yet it says I have 1.23 GB available out of 108 GB.*
Here is what I have already tried to fix the problem, to no avail:
a) Original user was using Filevault. I backed up all the files, created a new user without Filevault, and restored the files.
b) Booted from CD and used Disk Utility to erase free space.
c) Verified and fixed permissions
d) Deleted all app and system caches (via CacheOut X)
e) Fixed/Repaired all user/system preferences (via Preferential Treatment)
*Does anyone have any idea what's going on?*
-

Thanks for the suggestion.
I ran WhatSize and here is the result. Oddly, it says there is 40.2 GB used (in the top-left) which conflicts with the information directly below it: "Capacity 108 GB, Used 103GB, Available 4.27 GB". Not so helpful.
Disk Inventory X solved the problem, however. Much thanks! I wasted most of my weekend troubleshooting this sad issue. Anyway, Disk Inventory X revealed a bug where my external hard drive for photos was still appearing as a mounted volume, even though the HD was no longer connected. Freaky.
After moving it to the trash and deleting it, I've recovered the space.
Again, thanks! Contact me if you're curious about the details, as this might help you diagnose similar problems in the future.
- Mike

Needed disk space, bought an external harddrive and

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for