New larger, copied hard drive won't start up Mac Pro

I have a 250 GB hard drive that is almost full. I copied this drive onto a 1TB drive using disk utility.
(I have a 1TB drive in bay 2 and 1TB in bay 3 set up as a RAID 0). I tried to select this new larger drive as my start-up disk and I get a grey screen with "cannot find the driver for this platform" amongst other comments. I switched the new drive over to bay 1 with the same results. I tried selecting this from system preferences>startup (.....it shows up as a choice to pick) and with holding down option while starting up (shows up there too).

With internal drives, you don't need to worry or manually change format option.
If you click on the raw unformatted drives (WDxxxx etc) it will do everything for you.
Clicking on the drive (not the volume) will show in the status field at the bottom.
Click on WDxxxx and going to the PARTITIONS tab and a second window to change it from the DEFAULT GUID to another format (Master Boot Record for Windows, or older PPC format Apple Partition) use to be but isn't required or necessary.
I wish they would change ERASE for just VOLUMES and use INITIALIZE or FORMAT for when using ERASE to prepare a drive the first time. But no one listens.

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HT1751 i bought a new, larger external hard drive. copied my itunes library from the old drive to the new one, changed the libarary location in Edit/Preferences/Advanced to the new drive. iTunes will not start or run unless old hard drive plugged in.??

I bought a new, larger external hard drive. I have my iTunes library on the external drive instead of C: drive, Using Windows 7.
I copied my itunes library from the old drive to the new one, changed the libarary location in Edit/Preferences/Advanced to the new drive.
iTunes will not start or run unless the old hard drive is plugged in.
If I disconnect the old drive iTunes shuts down.
Any ideas. ??

Hello kskip,
Thank you for providing so much information about what is going on. It sounds like you have setup iTunes to save new content to your new external hard drive in iTunes>Preferences, but it sounds like iTunes is not opening iTunes Library.itl file on the new external drive. You have one last step to take to have iTunes point to your new external hard drive rather than your old one:
Steps to create or choose a different iTunes Library file
If iTunes is running, quit iTunes.
If you are using Windows, hold down the Shift key and from the Start menu and choose All Programs > iTunes > iTunes.
You should see the following screen:
Additional information
If you do not see the screen above, then you did not hold the correct key at the correct time. You may want to try again. Note that if you pinned iTunes to the Start menu programs, and open it that way, it may not work.
Once you select "Choose Library," you will need to navigate to the iTunes Library.itl file on your new external drive.
You can find the full article here:
iTunes: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1589
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup. However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails. And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external. Sort of a catch 22. Any ideas?

Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup. However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails. And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external. Sort of a catch 22. Any ideas?

Is it a USB hard drive? USB hard drives have the problem of not giving full speed if they are hooked up on the same bus as keyboards and mice. Double check your profiler to make sure that is not a problem. If it is Firewire, make sure there aren't other firewire devices in use at the same time. I recommend not only keeping a Time Machine backup, but also a clone, and if you do use Time Machine, to make sure the Time Machine drive or partition is at least twice the size of the original drive.

Recently moved itunes/iphoto libraies to new, larger external hard drive...

Had large itunes/iphoto libraries that had resided on an external hard drive connected to my imac. These were backing up to a time capsule. Recently moved both libraries to a new, larger external hard drive. When Time Machine goes to back up, it is now trying to back up everything again, not just anything that is new. This is about 300 GB of music/movies/photos that were already backed up, and it is now trying to completely backup all this again. 2 300 GB backups will take up a lot of my TC. Should I just let it go? Do I have a possible issue with space? Just want to be sure I do the right thing....

lisacooney wrote:
I have recently moved all of my files to a larger external hard drive
How did you move these files?

How do I properly zero out or erase the hard drives in my early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 tower?

How do I properly zero out or erase the hard drives in my early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 tower?
I assume there are already instructions on Apple.com someplace but haven't seen them yet… I have to one terabyte drives one the operating system the other is blank I want to start fresh I want to zero out both drives but I didn't want to make any mistakes
I know I can use disk utility to 0 Out Dr., #2 that means I will have to take out the operating system hard drive out of my 2008 Mac Pro and put it into my 2009 Mac Pro to use the disk utility to zero out drive one the OS drive in my 2009 Mac Pro am my correct
I just need a little bit a help I want to go slow so I don't make any mistakes with the sleds or with the erasing process which journaled to choose encrypted or not etc. etc.
Furthermore is there instructions on the site on how to change the hard drive into a different sled because the sleds and my 2009 are different than my 2008 any advice
Thank you

I'm doing this because my friend told me that zeroing out the drive can nap bad sectors and also later for some kind of diagnostics usage of the drive or something like that he wasn't really clear
My friend was really specific he said choose the option that writes zero's once over the drive that is plenty good enough I was inclined to use the maximum seven write ...I just want to make sure the drive has no bad sectors and that's it's it's zeroed out for possible future diagnostics usage or something that he said was usable later
he also advised me to run a test on it but I don't have the software you mentioned or the software that he has… So I may have to take the drives over to his house unless you have some kind of free software that's easy to use that you could suggest that will not only zero out the drive but test the drive completely
I am completely new to Mac I'm no dummy but at the same time I'm not super technically capable I mean I can surprise myself I'm pretty good but I need a good teacher… How expensive is this lifeguard software?
Thank you

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and the system doesn't recognize the drive. What now?

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and it is not recognized/not visible. What now?

If the drive is correctly installed on to the sled, and the mounting screws are snug, not tight, and the sled is inserted properly so that all the roof-tangs catch as the sled is inserted, failure to show up in Disk Utility means the drive is not useable.
A Bug in 10.8.4 and later precludes Disk Utility ERASE-ing large drives in Internal bays. Use PARTITION only, and create one new partition, GUID partition Map, Mac OS Extended (journaled) Volume.

Need advice on hard drive set up for a Mac Pro

Just changed over to a Mac and would like some advice on hard drive setup. Have a Mac Pro 2.8 with the 320 gig hard drive.
I plan to run Windows with MS Flight Simulator and Office 2007 through VMware Fusion/Boot Camp.
Will be transferring camcorder video to edit and make DVDs. Lots of music, podcasts, photos, and short videos will be stored.
I'm planning to buy additional hard drives.
Any suggestions on how many/what size hard drives to get.
What should the stock 320 hard drive be used for?
Where would I put the Windows stuff? What format/partion size?
Where should the backup go?
I've seen many positive comments on Western Digital Caviar Black drives, would that be a good choice?

Welcome to Discussions!
Here's my (current) setup.
4 x WD640AAKS. As Hatter says, brilliant drives. Whisper quiet and very fast. Plus extremesly good-priced.
Drives 1 and 2:
Raid0 boot volume. Also set as Photoshop scratch. I ran lots of tests on different setups and this is faster than having a separate scratch drive, almost the same as having a separate internal raid0 for scratch. But I felt I couldn't motivate that use of harddrive bays for the little extra it offered in speed.
Drive 3: User account on first partition and a second, 23GB partition for Windows XP.
Drive 4: Time Machine, which only backs up the User account partition.
I clone the startup drive to an external regularly. In fact I have three bootable clones, one OS X with latest updates, one with OS X with latest updates and my applications, and one of the boot volume before any major updates - overkill perhaps... I use the 320GB OEM drive in an FW800 enclosure for this.
/p

New hard drive won't start.

My I mac started to act weird.So I went to the Apple store and they said I have to replace the hard drive. Because it was so expensive at Apple I went to Bast Buy and bought a new 1.5TB hard drive and payed to Geek Squad to replace the hard drive.I picked uo the computer today and when I turned it on it has a file with a question mark blinking on the screen.I tried to turn on with the C button hold down a few times and nothing.I am so disappointed and don;t know what to do.Any one has any idea?

Hey Janos,
How early was your first contact with Apple.
I taught it is pretty easy to install the OS but i guess I was wrong
It is. Just put a new 500GB hard drive in a 15" MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz, installed Snow Leopard and transferred all the client's applications, documents and settings from the old 160 GB hard drive tonight in a few hours.
the Apple guys told me that that was fixed by Apple with no charge to me.
When was this done? Wasn't there a guarantee? Should have been at least 6 months if not a year.
Of course taking it to the Geeks would confuse this situation.
Richard

How do I set Catalogue to new larger internal hard drive and then delete the files from the smaller

I have just had a new 1TB internal hard drive installed in my PC and then the original smaller internal 500GB hard drive cloned onto it. The new 1TB is now Local Dick C and the smaller 500GB has been changed from C and is now Local Disk F. PSE11 is running from the new C and all my pictures are on both C and F but the catalogue is pointing to F. I want to delete all of the old files on F to free up space since they are all cloned to the new 1TB C, so I want the PSE11 catalogue to point only to the pictures on C. I have tried creating a new Catalogue and importing my pictures from C. The images come in and look connected to C but, when I close PSE11 and then reopen that new catalogue, the image path reads F, as does the original catalogue. So, now I have two catalogues apparently point to F but I want to: 1) have only one catalogue pointing to C; 2) the delete catalogues pointing to F; 3) then reformat F: so I have a clean 500GB old hard drive for future expansion. Can some please help?

Grant, all I can say is that another user was having almost identical issues a month or so ago. Unfortunately I cannot find the discussion thread now but my feeling is that it never resolved satisfactorily while both drives were connected.
To save you a lot of work formatting, copying, erasing and so forth why not just unplug the SATA cable from the old drive and see if the Organizer then starts behaving nicely with the new drive. If it does then you can go the destructive route on the old drive.
Hopefully the poster who had the similar problem might read this and update us on his/her situation - if it got resolved and how.
Cheers,
Neale
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children
If this post or another user's post resolves the original issue, please mark the posts as correct and/or helpful accordingly. This helps other users with similar trouble get answers to their questions quicker. Thanks.

My tx2 hard drive won't start!!! HELP!!!!

My laptop is a a Tx2z-1000 is 2 1/2 years old. For the last 9 months or so its had this problem when booting up. My laptop will turn on but the hard drive won't turn on with it. O can hear the fans running and the rest of the computer trying to start up but the hard drive light stays dark. My monitor stays dark or sometimes will light up and stay black. My laptop will eventually shut itself down. I would like to know how to fix this problem because I'm pretty sure it's not good for my laptop. Also, I want to note that my laptop also has an overheating problem which could be contributing to this problem, I'm not sure. Any help would be lovely. Thanks!

Bummer! But when I looked this drive up, it seems like it's a current model, so I'm assuming it's fairly new?
Unfortunately, I'm not really an expert on external drives, but I'm thinking that if the drive is relatively new, and still spins up, then it should eventually be possible to access it again. Maybe if you could clarify the circumstances of the crash a bit, it will be possible to get this sorted out. I'm not entirely clear on just what happened.
First, could you describe the crash--what exactly did the drive do? Was a cable bumped or anything like that? Or did something happen just out of the blue? And does the drive still spin up?
I am assuming that you checked the obvious things like making sure the USB port was working and the cable itself was OK. I gather that Disk Utility can see the drive, but all the options are grayed out so it can't do anything? Is your PC a different computer, not just Windows on your MBP? I gather that the PC can also see the WD drive, but can't mount it? I know nothing of PC's so I don't know any PC troubleshooting.
One thing that might be worth trying is calling Western Digital and talking to their tech support people. I believe that WD has a 3 year warranty on their drives, and I expect they would be most familiar with the drive and what the problem with it might be. For example, it might be that some component in the enclosure went south and is keeping the drive from mounting. It could be that the failure of some component in the enclosure is what caused the original crash. It might even be worth trying the drive in a different enclosure.
Good luck!

How do I replace my old external hard drive with a new larger external hard drive and move my music so itunes can find it?

How do I move music from an old external hard drive to a new external hard drive and have itunes find it?

If you have a time machine back up of your current drive you can do this
Shut down your computer, install the new drive. While the computer is off plug in the external hard drive that you have your time machine back up on. Hold Option key while the computer turnes on, let go of the option key once you get a grey screen. Shortly after you'll see a list of bootable drives, select the one that has your time machine back up on it and boot into that drive.
From there go into disk utility, format your new drive too, osx extended journaled ( I think, double check that, its been awhile since ive had to do this), hit format
Exit disk utility and then you can use time machine to copy all your exisit data to the new hhd and then your pretty much done.
There is also a program called Carbon Cloner that will do esentially the same thing however I've never uesed it.

New FireWire external hard drive won't mount: conflict with iSight?

My parents just upgraded their eMac (1 GHz, 1GB RAM) to Leopard and bought an external FireWire hard drive to use Time Machine. We got the drive back to their place, powered it up, and plugged it in via the FireWire cable. Nothing. Wouldn't mount, didn't show up in System Profiler or Disk Utility. We tried a few more times but eventually gave up and figured the drive was DOA.
After I got home, I realized I should have had them unplug their iSight and try again. Is the FireWire bus on the eMac balky enough that this one additional device could have caused a conflict? They're not using any FireWire hubs: these were the only two devices on the bus.
If it does work without the cam attached, is there then any way to get the two devices to play nicely together afterward? They use the cam all the time for videochats with family, so I'm not about to tell them they have to give that up just to get more frequent backups.
Thanks!

Thanks for your speedy reply. How appalling that a computer with two FireWire ports can't use two FireWire devices! And it's Apple's own device that causes the conflict. I can't even think of an easy workaround, since the whole point of Time Machine is that the drive remains connected all the time.
I guess I could have them eject the drive, unplug it, and connect the iSight whenever they want to start a videochat. If the eMac only had USB 2.0, this would be moot! D'oh.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though -- I still have to go to their place and try the external drive without the iSight attached. Thanks again for confirming my suspicions.

New RAM and hard drive won't connect to computer. It's still making the beeping noise. Any ideas?

My computer stopped working and I thought it was my RAM and hard drive so I bought a new one of each of these. However, when I tried turning my computer back on after replacing them, it still made the beeping noise. I am clueless. Does anyone know what could be the cause and how to fix it. Thanks!!

What type of beeping noise?
What machine specs? What type of RAM and HDD?
Power On Self-Test Beep Definition - Part 2 - Support - Apple

Backup when hard drive won't start up

Last night my computer froze when I unattached the external monitor, and has not been able to reboot successfully since then. WHen it froze, I held the power button to turn the computer off, and then turned it on again. The computer acted as if it were starting up, chimed, and the grey apple came up with the wheel underneath, but never left that screen. Today I tried restarting with the Disk Utility, but there weren't any disks that showed up to repair in the disk utility. Now, I have a blinking question mark when I try to start up the computer.
My biggest concern right now is that I have files I need to get off of the computer. I am a wedding phototgrapher, and have about 1,000 pictures I took this weekend that I need. My question is, is there any way to back up the hard drive onto my external hard drive, even though I cannot boot up the computer properly? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!
Thank you.

This doesn't sound good, especially if Disk Utility on the boot DVD can't see it.
Many people recommend the program Disk Warrior (about $100USD, I think) to try to recover the drive.
2 long-shots might be to try Target Disk Mode if you have access to another Mac. This starts your computer as if it were an external Firewire drive, and the other Mac may be able to access the data this way. It may be possible to remove the drive, put it into an external drive case, and access the data from another Mac. It depends on why the drive isn't currently being "seen" by your computer.
Lastly, there are drive recovery services; I understand they are not cheap. I hope you are doing data backups and just got caught between backups on this job.

External Hard Drive won't start or load

I have a Western Digital 750G external hard drive that I have been using on my MacBook Pro for about 6 months. Last night it shut down and now I can't get it to even turn on or load onto the computer. Has this happened to anyone before and does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

obvious trouble shooting steps such as maybe trying it on another machine, pc or mac
does it mount or does it not mount, can you see the drive just not write to it??

New larger, copied hard drive won't start up Mac Pro

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