Partitioning an External Drive for a Mac

Hi there, I have a 300GB external Seagate hard drive. I'm connecting it through FireWire. I want to partition my drive in 2 partitions. Each 1/2 (150GB). 1 for Windows (Fat 32) and one for Mac (?)
I already have the Windows Partition finished, and put some files on it which I don't wish to have to copy over again. (It took a long time.)
In Disk Utility on my Macbook Pro, how can I take the empty space (150GB) on the drive, and partition it so my Mac can use it? I do not know which disk format to use. Journaled, or Extended? I just set it to Extended as a guess, and when I click partition, it says it will wipe the entire volume. What do I do?

Well, there's definitely a communications problem here. AFAIK, when you select DU's partition tab, it shows the current partitioning state. On a new HD, that's one. If you create multiple partitions, then they're created. If you didn't create the second partition, then, as Kappy stated, you need to start from scratch and create the partitons at the same time.

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I would like to know if you have to back up a macbook hard drive, can I use a external hard drive that has been previously used to back up several pc 's, or is it best to have a separate external drive for the Mac?

I would like to know if you have to back up a macbook hard drive, can I use a external hard drive that has been previously used to back up several pc 's, or is it best to have a separate external drive for the Mac?

In the Mac side of things, backups usually come in two flavors: clones or incrementals.
A bootable clone is a bit-for-bit copy of all essential files in the startup volume. If using the Lions, clones can be made using CarbonCopyCloner or just plain old Disk Utility. These backups represent the safest protection of your info, but take the longest to do. Recovery is an inverse process: you copy the clone back into the internal drive.
Incremental backups start with a complete backup of the startup volume and only copy whatever changed from the previous run. OS X includes the fully integrated Time Machine backup utility to do this. It is extremely easy to do and takes the least amount of time. Recovery is another matter altogether since you have to start with a freshly installed instance of the OS and have to apply all intervening backups to bring the result to the latest saved version.
As for where the backup takes place, the recommended media is an external dedicated drive or drives connected via the fastest interface available on your Mac: Thunderbolt, USB3, Firewire, or USB2. Network-based backups, wired or wireless, are attractive but may not offer the same performance and hence take longer. Also important to note that the entire drive need not be completely dedicated to a single backup. The Mac's EFI firmware infrastructure allows for an unlimited number of partitions on a hard drive and each can be used for either type of backups.
Holler if you need specifics on how to do each. This was just an executive summary.

Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music?

...or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
(Secondary question: would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder)

Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music? or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
I see no good reason to create a separate partition unless you're backing up with Time Machine. TM prefers to have it's own volume, so in that case partitioning would probably be a good idea.
would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder.
No, probably not. As long as you're not getting the drive too full - opinions vary but about 20GB remaining should be plenty for most uses - you probably won't see any overall change in performance just from moving the iTunes content.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

External drive for both Mac & Windows

I'd like to be able to do the smart thing and have a backup of the drives on my iMac. I've got Windows installed thru Boot Camp, which I access using VMware Fusion.
When I visited an Apple Store, one of the guys there told me that I could get an external hard drive, format it for each drive, and Time Machine would back it up. Having no idea how to do this, I thought I'd check here.
First of all, I'm not sure whether to get a 500GB or 1TB external HD--I have a 500GB HD on my iMac, but I'm only using roughly 100GB of it, and I have no plans to use much more than 150GB. Do I need a huge drive?
Once I have the HD, how do I format it for Mac & Windows XP separately? I know I have to partition it, but after that....what?
Next, is it possible to use Time Machine for both drives? Or will I only be able to use it for the Mac drive and manually backup XP?
After reading some other posts, I'm wondering if it's wise to update to 10.5.5. Any advice on this?
Any help/suggestions would be great--thanks!

TM will not backup a Windows partition. If you create a disk image drive with VM Fusion TM will back it up, but only the entire image file.
If you partition an external drive using GUID, then you can format one of the partitions FAT32 to use with Windows, but TM will not backup that partition nor backup anything on your main drive to that partition.
A TM backup drive or partition should be at least twice the capacity of the capacity of the drive you are backing up. If your iMac drive is 500 GBs then your backup drive's capacity should be roughly twice that size (less the space you have allocated as the Boot Camp partition.)
There's no reason not to update to 10.5.5, but if you prefer not to that's your choice. It isn't necessary although if you are going to use TM it would be wise to update because several TM bugs have been fixed by the 10.5.5 update.

How to best partition an external drive for my purposes?

Hello, please help,
I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire) portable external harddrive for backing up my data prior to iMac repair.
I also plan to totally wipe my PPC iMac and reinstall it with Leopard.
I erased the external HD, zeroing out the data from it's previous owner, and reformatted it as Mac OS Extended (not journaled).
Now I realise that it might be even more useful than I'd imagined.
I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
I've heard I should format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HFS+, what ever that is
I'm currently running OS 10.4.11 but plan to buy Leopard and install that after the wipe.

17" 1.9Ghz iMac G5 (iSight)
I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire)
I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
For what you want to do, there is a mismatch between your PPC computer and the external drive that you bought.
With a few exceptions, a PPC Mac requires a firewire external drive for booting and will not boot from a USB drive, regardless of which OS is installed and regardless of the partition scheme and volume format on the drive. I also have an iMac G5, and mine will not boot from USB.
If you do exchange your drive for a firewire drive, do not get another Western Digital model to use with your G5 - many external WD firewire drives will not boot a PPC mac. See [this page|http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787]
If you want to keep your present USB drive, you can still partition it with one partition for a backup clone and another for "other stuff". With respect to immediate use for recovering your stuff after a clean Leopard install on the HD, I think that Migration Assistant will still work, though I haven't tried this. As for the future, the problems with a clone not being bootable are 1) You can't test it to see if it works OK, and 2) If you do need to restore from it you'd need to boot from "somewhere else" - I think you could boot from an install disk and use Disk Utility's Restore feature to clone it back.
With regard to PC access, a PPC mac normally requires an Apple Partition Map partition scheme on the drive for booting, and such a scheme does not allow for the FAT32 volume format that is readable by PCs. However in this case since your PPC mac can't boot from it anyway, you could partition the drive as GUID. This would allow the main volume to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the nonbootable clone, and would allow the extra volume to be formatted as FAT32. If you eventually got an Intel Mac, a clone from it to the main volume would also then be bootable.
But what I would do, if feasible, is exchange the USB drive and get a non-WD firewire drive instead.
Message was edited by: jsd2

Partition an External Drive for Time Machine?

I am new to the Mac world. I have a new iMac with a 1TB hard drive. I have a 2TB external USB hard drive I've plugged in and started using with Time Machine to backup up my Mac. But I'm thinking I'm wasting a lot of hard drive space which I could use for something else. Can I partition the external hard drive say into two 1TB partitions and use one for Time Machine and one for something else? If so, can I do it now that Time Machine thinks it has all 2TB? Or do I have to start from scratch? Thanks!

+Can I partition the external hard drive say into two 1TB partitions and use one for Time Machine and one for something else?+
You can, but it's not advisable. How are you going to back up the data on the other partition? If your internal drive is 1 TB, then 2 TB is about the right size for a TM backup volume.
If you place any value on your data, hard drives are cheap. Just get another one.

Use a partition on external drive for windows support software

Hello
I am trying to install Windows 7 on my MacBook AIR 13" 8GB. I have an external drive that i created a partition for the Windows Support software but when I choose to proceed in Boot Camp Assistant to download the windows support software it says the entire drive has to be one partition formatted to MS DOS.
Any way around this..I have the Windows disc and would like to avoid having to buy another 8 GB or greater size external disc drive
Thanks

I do not want to install Windows on the external drive.
An external drive is needed to download the windows support software as stated in Boot Camp. It seems I cannot use a partition on the external drive to download the support software.. Wondering if there is a work around this..

USB External drive for PC & Mac Via Home Hub 2

Hi Guys,
I have a home hub 2.0, I also have a 1TB External USB drive, I have connected the drive to the USB port on my Hub and I can see the drive on my pc, wirelessly (Windows 7), I know nothing abouy MAC's, but my wife has one and it would be great if we can both use the same drive, I think I will need to reformet the drive when it is plugged into her MAC into some MAC Format (?), I am happy to do that, but will both my PC and her MAC be able to access the drive?
Thanks
Steve

Hi steve,
As nobody else has posted I've decided to step in with a bit of advice, limited though it may be on Mac's
You can map your network drive to the Mac as well as your PC; I don't think there's a specific file format you need to have your hard drive formatted to although I've read reports of Mac's having problems with NTFS - FAT32 apparently works fine. The link below should help you map the drive to your Mac - as far as I'm aware, the IP address assigned to the USB slot on the Homehub is 192.168.1.253, so enter this when prompted for an address/location.
http://osxdaily.com/2010/09/20/map-a-network-drive-on-a-mac/
Give this a go and get back to us to let us know how you get on, it might prove useful for other users (if it actually does work!).
Dean
BTCare Community Mod
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Want to use external drive for new Mac, fresh iTunes

So I recently got a new Mac and have not transferred any music to it yet. In fact I haven't even launched iTunes. I want to store all of my music and play it from an external drive. I have found articles detailing how to transfer your library from your internal drive to an external one but I don't have an internal library of music on this machine. How do I set up iTunes to play from an external library for the first time? And how do I add my backed up music from my previous iTunes to that external drive's new music library? Do I just drag the files into the folder and hope iTunes will recognize them?
Thanks!

okay, i had to collect my thoughts for a moment
... but I don't have an internal library of music on this machine.
is *this machine* the new Mac ?
How do I set up iTunes to play from an external library for the first time?
the files will have to be added to iTunes. however, with the correct settings, they can be put straight on the external.
in order to set up iTunes on the new Mac, you will have to launch it. with the external drive mounted on your new Mac's desktop, go iTunes > preferences > advanced and point +iTunes media folder location+ to the external. this will cause iTunes to put all newly added content in that location.
also on the advanced tab, check +keep iTunes media folder organized+ and +copy files to ... when adding to library+.
And how do I add my backed up music from my previous iTunes to that external drive's new music library?
did you back up the music to disk ? if so, you should probably authorize iTunes with your iTMS account details, then just pop in the disk(s) and add the content to your library.
if you have backed up to an external HD, use the +add to library+ command from the file menu and navigate to the folder containing your media files.
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

Need very large and quiet external drive for my mac mini

Hi, I already own a LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme 1TB triple interface drive.
the problem though is that it is extremely loud.
can anyone recommend an external hard drive as large or at least a 500 GB drive that's reliable and more importantly quiet.
thanks in advance

can anyone recommend an external hard drive as large
or at least a 500 GB drive that's reliable and more
importantly quiet.
Not quite what you asked for but this really is better...
Buy a PC box. Find one that is dead quiet and has a large number of disk drive bays. I have an Antec "Sonata" with a
2.4Ghz Pentium on an Asus M/B inside. The sonata is a
full sized tower and makes about is much noise at a Mac
Mini. Load the box up with up to 6 disk drives.
Next install Linux and use NFS to export the file system
to the Mac(s) (OK if you don't like Linux use Apple's
"darwin" as the two are nearly the same thing) What you've
got now is a "file server" which has much more functionalliy than a firewire disk drive. For example it can serve
the same files to 100 Macs and it can have it's own RAM cache and do RAID. You want "quiet" put the file server on the end of a 100 foot long Ethernet cable and put in in a closet. Darwin/Linux/BSD is happy to be "headless"
(that means run with no monitor/keyboard/mouse.)
Once you start takling "terabyters" you really should start
thinking about file servers and RAID and backup
It can be fast too. The server can make use of as much
RAM as you want to use as a cache, the RAID caclulations
and RAID multiple writes are done on the server
Apple has it's own storage system but it's middle four
digit price tag you can build the same thing with the
Antec Sonota box and common parts
My setup works well. The Seagate SATA dives are faster
than the Mini's internal drive but the Mini only has
100BaseT Eithernet. So that becomes the bottleneck.
I have yet to try to setup a firewire network between
the server and the Mini. It could be done but I'm not
motivated. 100BaseT works well enough

Setup drop-box folder on external drive for multiple Macs

Greetings,
I have a classroom full of photography students who need to turn in 4GB folders with pictures in them so that the teacher can grade them. We've discussed various options for facilitating this, with the only feasible solution we can come up with being setting up an external 2TB MyBook and having the kids go up, plug in the firewire and xfer their folder to the drive (see requirements below for why this is the feasible solution). One snag with this is that I want to set it up so that when the drive mounts, it's mounted as a drop-box share to prevent plagiarism as well as kids deleting/messing with other kids' projects. The problem is that each computer has different profiles so when the drop-box is setup correctly on one computer, another computer is plugged in and the folders are wide open again. Since I obviously can't setup the permissions for each profile on each computer, what options do I have to set this up? I'm open to different ideas/different ways to accomplish this, but here are the requirements:
- Drop-box-like functionality. Students can basically "submit" work, but only the teacher can view the files.
- Preferably the device needs to be hardwired to the MBP using Firewire. USB is too slow and these are wireless laptops without benefit of having any ethernet jacks accessible to them. They are all connecting through an Airport Extreme and xferring 4GB files wirelessly is not an option due to class time restraints.
- This has to work across 30 laptops with multiple user profiles.
- If software is a suggestion, free and/or OSS is preferable since this problem will be mitigated next school year with implementation of iMacs and Xserves in this program.

I would love how to do this as well. I actually tried moving a .mbox file out of ~/Library/Mailboxes/Mail and onto an external hard drive. Then I created an alias of the .mbox file and put it back into ~/Library/Mailboxes/Mail. No luck.

Basic Question: How to partition an external drive and then set up TM?

Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
Thanks! Happy New Year!

coffeecoffee wrote:
Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
select the whole drive (the model, not the name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions. set the partition scheme to GUID in options. set the format to mac os extended journaled. hit apply.
2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
in system preferences->Time machine.
also see TM 101 for basic usage instructions.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
it depends on your computing habits but it's generally recommended to have TM drive to be at least 2-3 times bigger than the total amount of data you are backing up.
Thanks! Happy New Year!

Windows and OS-X partitions on external drive

Has anyone had any experience/problems with partitioning an external drive for OS-X and Windows?
How about 3 partitons: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS. Or is that pushing my luck too far?
I just received a new LaCie, primarily for backing up Vista Ult 64-bit, but if I can also use it for XP and OS-X that would be great.
Any information will be most appreciated.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Moonlight Mac wrote:
I've used an external USB2 drive to boot XP, but it is a very dicy process, and not really worth it in the end. You can slipstream USB boot support into the XP installer, but when you are done, you won't have virtual memory support (no pagefile). It also requires that the internal drive be removed during installation (if XP sees an internal drive, it will insist on attempting to use it for a pagefile.)
I've done the same with a 4GB flash memory card... but booting was hit or miss.
I've partitioned my internal into 2 HFS and 1 NTFS partition, and that works very well when combined with MacDrive on the PC side. I'd stick with using the external as just a backup device or for OSX (works best with firewire.)
I am not looking to boot XP although that would be nice, but simply to create a backup on the drive. I use Norton Ghost, which does allow a boot, or sorts, into the backup in order to restore a system.
But more, I was interested in an NTSF partition for Vista on this MBP. I have not used Vista's built-in backup program so I don't know how it works, but my thoughts were to partition the 500GB into multiple partitions and use them for XP, Leopard and Vista and a CCC clone of my two Leopard OSs.
Say, 3 HFS partitions for clones and storage, 1 FAT32 for XP and 1 NTFS for Vista, making 5 in all.
The 2 HFS partitions are probably easy. It was the other two, FAT32 and NTFS that I was concerned with.
I guess I will plug it in and use DU and see what happens. I have never used DU for NTFS or FAT32 on an external drive.
As long as the drive is empty, I have nothing to lose and lots of experience to gain, right?

I want to partition an external device for OSX and Windows. Opened Disk utility but Partition is not an option

I want to partition an external drive for OSX and PC. Went to Disk Utility but Partition is not an available option.

Why not? does the partition tab not exist?

How Do I use my External Drive for my iTunes Library without adding anything to my Mac's HD?

I have a new MBP and have transferred all of my music off my old pc (250+ gigs) to a Lacie 1TB thunderbolt external drive. How do I use the external as my primary itunes library with out using any of my Mac's HD? I'm new to mac so I have a few more questions...
1. The initial question above
2. will this work or will there be extra steps every time I disconnect and connect the external (other than ejecting)?
3. Will I be able to access it remotely / home sharing?
4. Would this work with itunes match?
Thanks All !!!

DevonC wrote:
I haven't set up Time Machine yet because it wants me to completely format my external hard drive, and it seems to want to use it for TM backups exclusively?
However, I would also like to use it to store stuff that I don't want to keep on my computer, eg tons of photos, videos, stuff from my sister's computer, etc.
Is there a way to do Time Machine but also use the external hard drive for storage? I don't mind temporarily copying the photos etc that are on there to my computer while I format, so that's not the issue. I just don't want my EHD rendered completely useless to everything else.
Thanks!!!
There are several ways to do exactly this.
If you partition the external drive, you can use one partition for TM and the other for anything else.
Even if you do not partition the drive, you can safely store other data in folders on the drive. Just to not use the folder that TM creates for anything. And it's best not to put files directly on the drive, in my opinion, but use folders for storage.
Just remember that whatever you put on the drive takes up room from TM and when the drive gets nearly full, TM will start automatically deleting older files from it's own folder.
I have my Tiger clone on my external TM drive in a separate partition and everything works fine.

Partitioning an External Drive for a Mac

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