New Hard Drive space & Back-up solution

I have run out of space on my 640GB hard drive 2009 iMac. The majority of this is because of my very large HD photos and videos. So far I have been just using Time Machine to back-up my entire hard drive on an external Sea Gate drive, but now since they are both full I need a new solution.
Based on my research I thought I was going to go with a RAID 1 solution - but I need to confirm that it will do what I expect it to do and safely. Planned to buy a 2TB external hard drive, format it to RAID 1 and then redirect all of my HD photos and video to one of the 1TB drives and then mirror all data to the second 1 TB drive, is this RAID 1 intended purpose? I am confused because I have read that you should not use RAID 1 as your primary back-up system?
I need a solution that will expand my current hard drive AND back-up the information on that expansion. Do I need to buy two entirely separate drives OR use RAID 1 or what is the best way to do this?
Thanks so much for any input.

From what you've said I would recommend a device like Drobo. http://www.drobo.com/ It gives you a "Beyond RAID" option that is safe from almost any type of failure scenario. You could upgrade the HDD in your iMac, but if you were to get a device like Drobo, then you could move all of your photos and videos to that device which would be protected from data loss and then your iMac's HDD would be free and wouldn't need an upgrade. Good luck with your decision!

Similar Messages

New hard drive and backing up

I just purchased a new hard drive. I currently use Time Machine to back everything up. Can I use this clone my new drive or should I use another program. Also my current drive has a partiton for Windows but it's not big enough. I would like to increase the size of this partition on the new drive. I'm not worried if I loose everything on the windows side of the partition. Just one program right now that I can relaod but need to keep everything on the Mac side of the drive.
Also I have yet to upgrade to the new OSX Loin. How should I do this. Upgrade before cloning the new drive, Put the OS on the new drive them move everything over or just clone the drive and upgrade after I instale the new drive and it's up and running.
Thanks

I would recommend cloning your current drive to an external hard drive other than the one you use for your TM backups. Alternatively, wipe the TM backup drive and clone to it. You can restore it as your TM backup drive later.
First, Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions:
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Second, Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility:
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Third, Install The New Drive.
Fourth, Prep The New Drive:
Boot from your clone. Prep the new drive as follows:
Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Fifth, Restore The Clone:
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the newly installed internal drive. Source means the external backup clone drive.

Cannot get hard drive space back!

Hello.
My mac os 10.3.9 has 76.2 GB capacity and 1G RAM. It shows it has used 71.4GB and has only 4.8GB left.
I tried two ways to free more space. One was running the maintenance task by using "The Terminal Way", the other was using WhatSize to identify big files. I deleted at least more than 1G old useless files by WhatSize.
However, after restart the computer, I found the available capacity is still the same 4.8GB.
Could anyone tell me what's the problem? And how to free more hard drive space?
Many thanks in advance.
Sheng

Sheng,
Mac OS X 10.4: About installation options although it says 10.4, explains the function of the Previous System Folder. You may have multiple Previous System folder and in that case they will be named something like Previous System, Previous System1, Previous System2, etc..
They will be located on your Macintosh HD, and can/should be deleted when you determine that your system is functioning normally. Retaining these Previous System Folders will take up space and may adversely affect your system.
Just drag any/all of these Previous System Folders to the trash and empty the trash.
The Admin Account is the one that you are currently using. You can verify this by going to System Preferences...>Accounts> You should see "My Account" with your name, and "Admin" next to your name.
;~)

HT3275 where did my time machine back up go to on new hard drive?

Hi, I recently had hard drive fail on my late 2006 iMac. Had a new hard drive installed. Restored my computer from the most recent time machine back up from my external drive, but can't find restored data on iMac. Any ideas?
Went to the latest backup and hit 'restore' took about 2.5 hours for the data to transfer to new hard drive. I can tell it's chewing up the new hard drive space but the data/profile from my old mac is nowhere to be found on the new hard drive.

It might have created a new user and loaded under that.. new user being the old user. But if you have issues do it again, only this time pick where the backup will go.
http://pondini.org/TM/16.html
The other questions might also be relevant as a new hard disk will make the Mac appear to the TM backup as a new computer.
See 14-18 for restore info.

Missing Hard Drive Space + Other Issues

My Macbook's been acting funny lately - it wouldn't always come out of sleep, and every now and then an application would crash but its icon would stay in the Dock and there would be no way to get rid of it. When I tried typing in my password on the login screen (when it was coming out of sleep) the field would keep losing focus and delete everything in it. I have the 120GB hard drive (It says 111, but I assume that's the 1024 vs 1000 thing), and about a year and a half ago it failed, but I brought it to the Apple Store and they gave me a new one, which has been working fine.
The macbook had been doing some weird stuff, so I've been using the computer I'm typing on for the last few weeks, but two days ago I decided to reset the PRAM and SMC and try using the macbook again. It was working fine, but then I locked the screen and did something else for a while. I went to go shut it down that night, and it wouldn't show me the login screen for unlocking the screen, and it showed me the spinning cursor instead. I just shut the top, and the next morning it was just giving me a black screen when I opened the top.
I held down the power button to shut it off, and later in the day turned it back on again, and it seemed to be working. I was running a few applications (Firefox, Bitpim, and Transmission) when it started crashing again. The menu bar didn't work, the dock wouldn't show, keyboard shortcuts didn't work, etc. I shut the top and went somewhere for a few hours.
I came back, and was going to shut down the computer by holding the power button, so while it was still in sleep I unplugged both of my external hard drives. When I unplugged the USB one it turned on the computer, so I opened it, typed in my password, and plugged the drives back in. The computer seemed to be working again, but about a minute later a window popped up saying my startup disk's space was low. When I'd shut the top that morning there had been around 40 - 50GB left, but now there was about 500MB left on the disk. The size of my User folder was still the same - around 20GB, and I'm trying to see the size of the System folder now, but the hard drive is being extremely slow. I'm also trying to use Disk Inventory X, but it's taking an extremely long time (like 10 minutes for a file that's only a few KB).
The dock also seems to be "frozen" - no new applications I open show in the dock, even if I'm using them, and when I clicked to open them in finder they showed up in my recently opened folder in the Dock, but didn't actually open. I clicked on them again through that folder and they actually open, but it still doesn't show them in finder. Applications that I've quit (and their process is gone in Activity Monitor) are still in the Dock with the little dot under them that they're open.
The Macbook is still under warranty, but I live far away from the closest Apple Store, and it would be difficult for me to get anyone to drive me there, so I'd prefer some sort of a solution where I wouldn't need to bring it in (But I know I'll probably need to, and I will be able to, just not for a week or two).
Are any of the problems related? Is there anything I can do on my own to fix it? Should I try rebooting it, even if the hard drive is almost empty (Doesn't that cause problems booting it?), or should I wait until Disk Inventory X finishes first?
Edit: There was a folder in /Volumes that had the name of my external hard drive, and had some files in it (The ones that were being used in Transmission), so I deleted those and got the hard drive space back. All of the other problems are still happening though - my dock is still all screwed up, etc.
Message was edited by: cfogel

Also, some more details:
I while ago I tried rebooting and it just gave me a gray screen and played the startup chime over and over, but I held down the power button and tried again and it worked. However, when I boot it stays on the gray screen for a while before it shows me the apple logo, then it stays on that for a while before it shows me the spinning thing that it's loading. Also, once it boots it hangs on a blue screen for a while before letting me log in.
When I look in Console there's always a million "Feb 5 18:19:58 localhost kernel[0]: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: family specific matching fails" for every piece of hardware from every boot.
For a while when I tried verifying my hard drive using Disk Utility it crashed the computer. I've tried repairing permissions, checked my SMART status, and used various maintenance tools.

HT201250 I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them?

I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them? No, they were not part of previous Time Machine backups, and I have checked both the hard drive the documents were lost on and the new one that I now use for backups. Any suggestions would be helpful, as the lost files are old pictures that are gone forever. :[ Thanks!

1. Yes, if both drives are formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
2. Reformat the drives if needed, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, and remove the drive with the pictures from the list of items set to be excluded.
(110331)

Missing hard drive space and files after Genius Bar installed new Hardware

I took my computer to genius bar. They installed a new CD/DVD drive. My computer wouldn't load when I got it home, so I reinstalled OSX and now I am missing tons of hard drive space and all my old files (which have been backed up). How do I fix this?

"DURING WARRANTY SERVICE IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE CONTENTS OF THE APPLE
PRODUCT’S STORAGE MEDIA WILL BE LOST, REPLACED OR REFORMATTED. IN
SUCH AN EVENT APPLE AND ITS AGENTS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS
OF SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, DATA OR OTHER INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE
STORAGE MEDIA OR ANY OTHER PART OF THE APPLE PRODUCT SERVICED.
Following warranty service your Apple Product or a replacement product will be returned to you
as your Apple Product was configured when originally purchased, subject to applicable updates.
You will be responsible for reinstalling all other software programs, data and information.
Recovery and reinstallation of other software programs, data and information are not covered
under this warranty."
http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/cpuwarranty.pdf

So I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal), I then could save on the hard drive. Not two days later Im back at square one, the program wont recognize the hard drive again.

So, hard to beleive, but I am having some trouble with Final Cut Pro X.
This last week I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal),
so that I could save on that hard drive.
Well it went great.
I saved my project on there and copied a few others over as to free up space on my Laptop.
Then, not two days later Im back at square one,
the program wont recognize the hard drive.
It wont even open the events up off my hard drive,
as to jog the program into reqcognizing the scratch disk (which worked twice before).
What happened?
How do I get the program to re-recongize my newly formatted hard drive?
Please help!

The name of the drive, or the name of some folders inside the drive, may fool FCP X into believing it is a camera.
Also, you should not use the drive for time machine backups.

New User Account has No Hard Drive Space

I also have a different problem and started a thread here. It was that thread that lead me to start this new one.
One of the people helping me there suggested I make a new user account and see if that solved my problem. I made two new user accounts, one a 'standard' and the other an 'administrator.' In both cases the new user accounts have no hard drive space, and no download or document folder in the dock.
Logging out of either of those accounts and back as myself (administrator) I have 410 gb of free hard drive space.
Any thoughts on what could be happening or how to resolve? My hard drive recently disappeared so I took it in to a Mac Genius and under AppleCare the hard drive was replaced. I did a full restore from Time Machine and have repaired permissions countless times since then and also run DiskWarrior. Repair Permissions returns a message that Apple has posted can be ignored; no other issues. DiskWarrior found two errors related to directory structure and repaired/replaced them. Other than my original problem and this new one regarding the new user accounts having no hard drive space my system runs fine.
I am running Mac OS X 10.5.5.

Sorry I wasn't clear in the first post. On my way into work today I started thinking it may be time to start over as well. You mentioned archive and install - would a clean install be better (I know it will be longer)?
Also, just for clarification - when I did a Full Restore from Time Machine was that the same as say restoring from a program like SuperDuper (that clones the hard drive)?
My thinking on this is if I do clean install, I should not restore from Time Machine if the structure carries over. That could be what is causing these problems. Instead I should back up my iPhoto and iTunes libraries via the built in back-up (to an external hard drive or DVDs), back up any documents, etc. and then really start over. Do a clean install, then reload 3rd party software from the original disks and restore the iPhoto and iTunes libraries, etc.

New hard drive - can't back up to time capsule

I recently replaced the hard drive in my imac. I successfully migrated all my data etc to the new hard drive. However, i can't back up to the original "backup" on time capsule. Time machined trys to set up a completely new backup for which there is insufficient space. Thus, I need to know how to back up to the existing backup, or. preferably, format the timecapsule disk to creat space and do a completely new backup. Please assist.

plectical, welcome to the discussions!
Time Machine / Time Capsule "sees" the new drive on your iMac as a new computer, so that is why it is attempting to back up the entire contents of the drive.
I don't believe there is a way to tell Time Machine to continue with your current backups, but you might want to check with Apple to confirm.
If there is not, the best option you have is to erase the current contents of the Time Capsule and start over with a new, complete backup of your iMac.
To do this, you would go Hard Drive > Applications > Utilities > AirPort Utility > Manual Setup > Disks Icon (top of pane) > Disks Tab (just below icons)> Erase Disk.
Once complete, you would need to set up Time Machine again by opening System Preferences > Time Machine and selecting your Time Capsule as the destination for backups and start the process again.
Allow plenty of time (overnight, maybe longer depending on much data you have to backup) for the first backup and use an ethernet cable from one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule directly to your computer if at all possible. Ethernet will be much faster than wireless and there will be less chance of errors on the large initial backup.
Once the initial backup is completed, you can use wireless for subsequent backups since they will be much quicker.

Restoring a home folder backed up using the Backup application (with the umbrella) to a new hard drive running Snow Leopard

I was running OS X 10.4 Tiger on a 2006 iMac. My home folder is backed up on a My Passport 500GB USB external drive using Backup (the original application that came pre-installed with the orange umbrella symbol).
I was intending to upgrade tp Snow Leopard so that I could sync a new iPad with iTunes and iPhoto so had ordered the disc from Apple and was waiting for it to arrive.
2 weeks ago my hard drive stopped - and I took the iMac to a support store (I am currently in Belgium and there is no Apple store here). They confirmed the hard drive was dead and as I had my receipt for Snow Leopard installed this for me.
Now I am trying to restore my home folder but the new OS does not recognise the data. I can see there is nearly 200GB of data on the external drive - but the folders contain small files call backup.log, backup.log.gz, InfoPlist.stringscat, stat0..... all under 5MB.
Applecare told me they did not know about the Backup application and it was not theirs..... then suggested I tried migration assistant.
With migration assistant, I just get a spinning wheel at the initial 'select your disk' page - spinning now for more than 8 hours. I checked on line and the only advice I saw was to use firewire - but my external drive works with the new high speed USB...
Can anyone help?

Thank you for your help - I now have a solution ...in case it helps someone else.....
...I also think I may have been a bit silly...
The solution - thanks to a great guy in Apple Support USA - thank you Matt!!
first I partitioned my hard drive using disk utility - and set 235GB for a separate install - I called it Tiger install disk
this allows your hard drive to act as 2 totally separate systems (by holding down the option key when you start the computer you can choose which you want)
then I reinstalled Tiger from my original discs onto the new part of my hard drive
then I read my backed up home folder and copied it to the Tiger system on the new hard drive section
then I rebooted and started up Snow leopard on the original part of the hard drive
then I used migration assistant to transfer from the 'Tiger install disc' drive - it was recognised by migration assistant
Where I think I may have been a bit silly
I am now not sure if the orginal backup was always visible in Snow Leopard
in Tiger I found backup.sparseimage - which when double clicked opened up my home folder
now that I have istalled Tiger as well - I can also find this in now Leopard... ...so maybe I just hadn't opened all the original folders on my backup disk...
...but for sure migration assistant could not read the backup copy

Expanding Hard Drive Space and Create new RAID arrays

I currently have a 120GB HD that came with computer. I recently installed a new 250GB hard drive to expand my hard drive space. The questions is, can I mirror my current (120GB) hard drive onto the new 250GB drive, install a second 250GB drive, and then create a software RAID with the new drive set, thus creating a 500GB software raid with my the data contained on my old (120GB) hard drive?

Hi subterranean;
Welcome to the Apple Discussion Forums.
If you mirror a 120 GB drive and a 250 GB drive, the result will be equal to the smaller hence you would end up with a 120 GB mirror RAID array.
That doesn't sound to practical to me. Exactly what do you hope to gain here. It might help you to talk about end results rather then solutions. That way we can come up with solutions that will give you the results you are after.
Allan

I have a new Windows tablet computer with limited hard drive space, and cannot transfer my itunes library to the hard drive. Can I run t media from an external hard drive? If so, how do I transfer my files?

I have a new Windows tablet computer with limited hard drive space (32 GB), and cannot transfer my itunes library to the hard drive. Can I run itunes from an external hard drive? I have tried to follow some of the directions on this site, but am having no success. Thanks.

iTunes will run fine with the media on an external drive.
However, I suggest that a tablet computer with a tiny hard drive is not ideal as the primary computer for managing an iTunes library, even a small one. If you have another machine, perhaps a big, boxy, inexpensive old desktop with a decent amount of storage, that might be a better choice.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364

I need to replace my laptop Hard drive. How do I get my iTunes off the old hard drive to an external so I can put it back on the new hard drive?

I need to replace my laptop Hard drive. How do I get my iTunes off the old hard drive to an external so I can put it back on the new hard drive?

Type move itunes library into the google serach bar.
It has always been very basic to always maintain abackup copy of your computer. Do you not have a backup copy?

I had to install a new hard drive on my computer, when I downloaded itunes back onto my computer, none of my songs were there. how do i get them back??

I had to install a new hard drive on my computer, when I downloaded Itunes, all my music was gone. How do i get my music back? I do not have an Icloud.

Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities
You can redownload iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

New Hard Drive space & Back-up solution

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