Question about Formatting Buffalo USB 1TB external drive for use with Mac Book Pro Mountain Lion HD

Hi there, Have Mountain Lion HD operating system (not sure if it is 10.8 or 10.8.1. or 10.8.2) and have a Buffalo USB 3.0 1TB hard drive. When go to utilities to try and format with Mac OS extended, following 3 files show. DriveNavi. exe, Slm.exe and Mac. The option to left click and erase menu is not there. Or at least not as shown in all the help videos.
It is USB connection so will take ages but want to use drive to store video footage and also partition to back up Time Machine. ( travelling in South America and no other Ext Drive option available too buy) how much space should i assign to Time Machine when partitioning? Is there anything else i need to think about? as new to formatting. Any thing else i can do to make process of transfering footage to Buffalo quicker?
Final question is if it is finally reformatted am i going to have to spend so long accessing footage from hard drive when back home and editing that it really is not worth if, and i should just write this off as an inappropriate purchase, and try and buy more memory cards and not bother with transfering/storing? Thanks in advance for time spent trying to assist.

Use Apple's Disk Utility in the Applications/Utilities folder to format the drive.
The programs on the drive given to you by the manufacturer is likely backup software (or malware) and essentially worthless, it will be wiped when you format the drive.
I do NOT advise you partition that drive for TimeMachine, rather I advise you not to use TimeMachine at all for your purposes because TM is just a backup, not a bootable drive.
Rather do this.
Get another hard drive that is equal to or slightly larger than your boot drive.
Format the drive in Disk Utiltiy > 1 Partition, option: GUID, Format: OS X Extended journaled, click Erase and move the slider one spot to the right and click Erase. This will take some time as it's going to map off any failing sectors it can BEFORE you lay data on the drive corrupting it.
Next, pay for and download Carbon Copy Cloner, use the default settings and simply clone internal drive to the external drive. this will also take some time the first time.
Next use Disk Utility to Repair Permisisons on both drive. Now reboot the machine and hold the option key down, you can select the external drive clone to boot from!!
You can update the clone the same way by using CCC, but it doesn't take as long, only copying changes.
This is better than TimeMachine as a bootable clone is bootable in case your internal drive fails to boot the machine.
Use the first drive for storage and be very gentle with it while it running, like you should do for all hard drives as they are subjective to shock damage.
The objective with the clone drive is you keep it safe, and not carting it around where it can be more subjective to damage like the other drive will be.
Remmeber you need 2 forms of hardware backup at all times.
Most commonly used backup methods

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Hello ! i have a question about my Hard's Disc storage space. I have Mac book Pro 11" Retina with hard disk 120 GB . I want to make this update but its impossible because of no free space. And now i want to ask. Its 120 GB full space but i dont know how. It tells me lets say i have 30 GB movies but i dont have anything ! Can you help me with any way ? If i can do something to see what movies let's say means !
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Hope this helps.
1. Empty Trash.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
2. Start up in Safe Mode
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
3. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the dropdown.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Empty Trash. Restart.
4. Repair Disk
    Steps 1 through 7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
5. Disk space / Time Machine ?/ Local Snapshots
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878
6. Re-index Macintosh HD
   System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409
If this does not help, you have to buy an external HD and move your movies photos.etc to
the external HD.

I recently purchase macbook air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my Seagate external backup plus hard drive for time machine back up. How to partition my 1TB Seagate back up plus hard drive for use with mac and windows pc?

Hi All,
I recently purchased 13" Macbook Air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my 1TB Seagate backup plus external hard drive as time machine and my windows 7 pc. Please suggest a method. Thanks in advance for your reply.

I strongly recommend having an external drive dedicated solely for TimeMachine. You could partition the drive but if something goes wrong you risk losing the data on both partitions. Should you decide to go ahead with splitting the drive for two different uses you’ll need to partition the drive either using the Mac’s built in Disk Utility program or Windows utility. I believe the built in Windows disk utility program will destroy the current partition and erase the data that’s on it - I use a third party Windows disk utility program for partitioning and it allows for non-destructive partitioning but warns to back up data first just in case. Apple’s Disk Utility can do non-destructive partitions but I don’t recall every trying to do a non-destructive partition on a disk originally formatted for Windows using it. Again - back up that data just in case.
Finally, your TimeMachine drive should be at least 1.5 times (I prefer 2 times) the size of the data you expect to be backing up a year or two from now. In other words, if you currently are using 50GB of your computer’s drive but expect to begin purchasing Mac software to replace software on your Windows computer and if you expect to be putting photos, music, and other data on it you might expect that two years from now you’ll have 100GB of stuff on the drive. So a 200GB partition is the smallest size you’d want. TM’s backup scheme keeps multiple copies of data as it changes so the extra room is important for this scheme.

Format external drive for use with both Leopard & XP, & maybe Win7

I want to repurpose one of my old small Firewire drives to use with both Leopard and XP via Boot Camp on my MacBook. It is is 60GB and is currently formatted with MacOS Extended Journaled, and Apple Partition Map. I don't think I will have any need at the present time to store files of more than 4GB on it (most of the ones I want to store are no more than a few hundred MB each).
Is using FAT32 with Master Boot Record adequate? Up until now I have just used flash drives for external Windows storage, but I would like to consolidate lots of topographic maps files onto this one Firewire drive instead of using multiple flash drives, and use these files with both Leopard and XP. If I want to try Windows 7 in the future via either Boot Camp or virtualization, will there be a problem with FAT32/MBR?

Hi,
using FAT32 as file system and MBR as partition table should work just fine with OSX and all Windows versions up to 7.
And since your files don't come close to 4GB single-file-size, that FAT32 limitation is no hinderance.
Use Disk Utility to do this, since Windows won't format partitions/drives with more than 32GB to FAT32 (built-in limitation).
Nonetheless it can use such partitions (I have a 200GB on my external HD).
Regards
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

Can I create a windows 7 partition on a 1TB thunderbolt drive to use with my Macbook Pro?

I have a new Retina Display Macbook Pro with a 250gb SSD Drive that is quickly running out of space. My work recently gave me a new project to do some programming that can only be done in a Windows environment. With the price of Thunderbolt drives coming down I was wondering if I could build and boot to a Windows 7 partition on the Thunderbolt Drive and use that when I need to run Windows applications. Also what would the speeds be like? Would I be able to run apps like Photoshop and Illustrator? Also if that works would I be capable of creating a partition for my kids to install their games on?

Redgoat,
(1) USB 3.0/2.0 Drive will boot a windows 7 installation, (hold down option when you boot)
* I am not yet awake if thunderbolt drives will be detected by the macbook pro for booting purposes. I cannot see why not
(2) if you are concerned about speeds you can purchase a SSD USB 3.0 drive but a standard hard drive is quite reasonable with a USB 3.0 connection
and lastly MacBook Pro Retina are mean gaming notebooks and bootcamp is the best way to do windows gaming on it.

"Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." Trying to format my iomega external HD for use with Mac

Hi. Trying to connect iomega ext. HD. i have to reformat for Mac. When i plug in & go to Disk Utility,the external shows up and i'm supposed to click "partition". When i do, a box comes up saying ""Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." I quit and relaunched, same results. After googling my question, i came up with this:
"Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility."
(Quitting and reopening Disk Utility does not help.)
The following also appears in Console log:
*** malloc[419]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x290a410; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug : for architecture i386 object: ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes malformed object (unknown flavor for flavor number 0 in LC_UNIXTHREAD command 27 can't byte swap it)
Workaround
Quit Disk Utility.
From the Finder's Go menu, choose Go to Folder....
Type the following, then click OK: /Library/Receipts
Temporarily remove these iTunes receipts from /Library/Receipts (sort the folder alphabetically as a list):
iTunes.pkg
iTunes4.pkg
You can put them on the desktop, for example. Do not remove iTunesX.pkg or iTunes Phone Driver.pkg.
Open Disk Utility and repair disk permissions again.
Quit Disk Utility.
Put the removed iTunes receipts back in /Library/Receipts.
Note: This issue does not affect Disk Utility's verify or repair disk features.
All seemed good, for a moment, until, upon going back to Disk Utility after removing itunes4.pkg and putting on desktop (i did not have itunes.pkg to remove) the same thing was happening. When i highlite my iomega ext. on left of page, disk perrmissions is grayed and does not allow me to click on it. Same problem from the start. Can somebody please help me out here? That would soooo awesome. Thanx!

i'm just scared i will do something wrong on my own and lose my data.
You shouldn't be scared of that, because you should already have backups. If you don't have backups, then backing up is the first priority.
Insert the Snow Leopard DVD and restart. When you hear the chime, hold down the C key and keep holding it until the Apple logo appears on the display. You should now see the language selection screen. Select your language, then choose Utilities > Disk Utility from the menu bar. In the Disk Utility window, select the external drive (not the internal). The drive may already have a data partition, in which case there will be another icon below the drive icon. Choose the drive icon, then select the Partition tab. Create a single partition with the default options (GUID partition table, Mac OS X Extended Journaled).
When the partitioning is done, select the startup volume on your internal drive in the DU window. Select the Restore tab. Drag the icon of the startup volume to the "Source" field. Then drag the icon of the newly-created volume on the external drive to the "Destination" field. Make sure you have this right. Then click the Restore button, and the data on your startup volume will be copied to the external drive.

Reformating external hard drive for use with new MacBook Pro

I'm trying to figure out how to use an existing external hard drive (formatted for a Powermac G4) with my new MacBook Pro. I understand that the file formats are different and that I need to erase the hard drive and reformat it with a GUID partition, but how does one do that?
I've already erased the drive with disk utility (using the old Powermac) and connected it to my MacBook with the hope that it would be recognized. No dice, alas. It doesn't mount at all.
Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

My external harddrives all work just fine with the MacBook Pro. You shouldn't have to reformat anything. I think if you did then it would not be backwards compatable with the older systems. Stick it back in your old computer and try to mount it again, repair permissions shutdown your macbook pro and connect the external drive then reboot

Copying Time Machine files to external drive for use with PC

Hello! Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
My MacBook Pro recently died. I have it backed up by Time Machine on an external drive. Now I'd like to copy my files from the backup to another external drive so that I can access them later from a PC computer running Windows (7 or 8). Is that possible? The Time Machine drive, I believe, is formatted specifically for Mac, but the external drive I'm trying to copy to is FAT32. Can I connect both to a friend's Mac, look for the files I need, and then copy them from the backup drive to the other external drive? Will a PC computer be able to read them?
Thanks!

Usually that error indicates a drive malfunction; specifically, the drive is spinning down and not responding to bus signals. Some "Eco" or "green" drives are known for this behavior. The following steps may help:
Select  ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.
If the drive is connected to a hub, connect it to a built-in port on the computer.
If a firmware update is available for the drive, apply it.
Contact the drive manufacturer to see whether there's a firmware setting you can change.
If you installed vendor software for the drive, uninstall it.
If none of the above steps resolves the issue, try another drive.

2TB Time Capsule or External Hard Drive for use with Mac MINI and AppleTV

Hi,
My current setup is I have a 1TB Hard Drive linked to my intel Mac Mini via FireWire 400, the Mini shares my music and films through iTunes so that my AppleTV can pick them up.
All devices are connected to an AEBS 802.11n (early model) via Cat6 Gigabit cables.
As I have run out of space and am looking for a bigger drive, I wanted to know if I would be able to use the 2TB Time Capsule to hold my films and be able to stream them to the Mac Mini so that it may stream them through iTunes to the AppleTV.
The theory of if should work, as the devices are all Gigabit capable and connected by high quality Cat6 leads their shouldn't be network bandwith issues, I am just unsure of how quickly the TimeCapsule can read stored data from a hard drive and transmit, some of my films are HD and run 4GB plus.
The obvious answers is just to buy a bigger hard drive with FW400, however I would like to reduce the number of boxes I have under the TV, I plan to upgrade my AEBS to the latest one anyway so just thought it made sense to explore this option.
looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Hello,
It should work in theory, but the disk access time of the TC is much slower. I was setup like you are with an external drive connected to a Mini via FW and I had true Gigabit transfer between computers.
When my hard drive failed I sold my Linksys gigabit router and bought a TC to reduce the number of boxes, but I soon learned that the read/write speed on a TC is a little bit faster than on a thumb drive! Not that great. All my machines are also connected with Cat6.
It's still OK to watch a movie though, but transferring 10+ Gb is a pain.

What format for my external drive allows use with Mac and Windows?

I got an external hard disk (1 tr) and i want to used it for my windows and mac, i read i can have two partitions one for mac and one for windows, but i dont really want to have two parts, and I read i can format it by fat32 and i can write and read on both os, is that true?
I want to use it for movies, os backups, and files..
Is it true that i can only save files up to 4 GB when the format is fat32?
please advise..

It this case you would need to to go to "Disk Utility" on mac and select 3 partions which will be under the Parition Layout in my screen shot below. "Current" is grayed out that will drop down select 3 partitions and make one NTFS, second Mac OS Extended, third FAT32. Using the FAT32 for both Mac and Windows but the files have to be under 4GB each.

Format external HD for use with Mac Network and PC

System config: Home network: Mac Pro & MacBook Pro connected via AirPort Extreme. Both run OS X 10.5.6. The Mac Pro also runs Windows XP Pro. Work computer: Dell, Latitude D830 running Windows XP Pro.
Situation: I have a Western Digital WDMT5000TN 500GB Portable HD, (FireWire 800 & USB). The WDMT5000TN came formatted Mac OS Extended, which, as I suspected, could neither be read nor written to in XP. I reformatted the drive NTFS in XP Pro. This worked well with XP but was read only in OS X.
Ideally, I would like to format the drive so that it is both read/write capable with both OS X & XP Pro and handle file transfers in excess of 100 MB. If this is not possible my second choice would be to have the drive read/write OS X & read only XP, given that I upload mostly in the Apple domain & would be able to perform backups of it’s contents using Time Machine with OS X.
If anyone has a formatting recommendation or related information that may help I would appreciate your insight. Thank you.

Two basic options:
1. Format the drive FAT32 (MS-DOS) which is read/write on both Windows and OS X.
2. Leave the drive formatted NTFS and install software on OS X to enable read/write access. The options are: a.) Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X - 6.5.1; b.) MacFuse and NTFS-3G 2009.2.1u1; and, c.) NTFS for Mac 1.0.

What's the best external drive to use with Final Cut Pro?

I'm looking for a drive to mainly back up my final cut pro work, possibly do a little editing on, what's best? I have a G5 desktop.

Congratulations on your graduation.
On the hope that during your college career you learned how to do original research, you could show some clear initiative and read through those threads my link will reveal. From the drives discussed you might find common elements (praise or conndemnation) that show up after reading dozens of threads. Of the ones that get consistently good reviews by serious users, you can then go the website of the manufacturer and figure out if they fit your budget.
All this can be done in the time of you waiting around for a few people to chip into this thread.
Good luck.
x

Partitioning Hard Drive for Use with Mac (Time Machine) and Windows

I have a brand new Imac on which I am also running WIndows Vista through Boot Camp (sweet, by the way). I have a large external hard drive on which I set up Time Machine easily enough. I would like to partition the drive somehow so that I could use half the drive to separately back up files on the WIndows side, but I can't seem to do this. Any suggestions? Is this even possible with Time Machine?

You can use Disk Utility create two partitions. Choose FAT for the Windows partition and Mac Extended (Journaled) for the Mac. One limitation of FAT32 is that you can't write files bigger than 4GB. You can reformat this partition as NTFS within Vista which will allow bigger file sizes but you won't be able to write to this partition from within OS X without other utilities. Also you can't write to the OS X partition from Vista without other software.
Time Machine will not be able to back up the windows formatted drive partition.

Partitioning an External 320gb drive for use with Time Machine and...

I want to be able to use my Western Digital 320GB external drive for use with Time Machine and to use as extra storage space on both my Mac and when I boot into Windows Vista.
Is this possible?
I was playing around in Disk Utility and would I partition the part I want to use for Time Machine with the Mac OS Journaled, and whatever I want as space for windows, use a MS - DOS format?
Has anyone done this before?
Cheers-

Unless you are using 64 bit version of MSWindows (64 bit XP/Vista), it won't be able to handle a disk with GUID partition table (GPT). Disks with Apple Partition Map (APM) or GUID partition table are the only ones that Time Machine will work with (not MBR disks). Note also that the MBR/APM/GPT are at the DISK level and not the partition level, so don't mix the format with partitioning scheme. Time Machine disks are meant to live in the Mac universe (for now, anyway) and sharing with the MSWindows 32-bit universe is not possible.
See http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=macpcdiskdd06sv8.png for some additional background.

Which USB 64GB flash drives are compatible with Mac Mini?

I need to use a USB 64GB flash drive, formatted for both PC and Apple, with my Mac Mini. The largest USB flash that Apple sells is 32GB. Which USB 64GB flash drives are compatible with Mac Mini. If most are, are there any that I should avoid? Thanks.

I'm assuming that when I connect the USB to the Mac it gets formatted for Mac. Then I follow your directions and it gets formatted for Windows, in addition to Mac. I'd choose ExFAT since it is a 64GB USB.
No no. A brand new drive will be formatted as "something", most likely something for Windows, and that could be FAT (which a Mac can also read and write to) or NTFS (which a Mac can read but not write to).
So, you'll need to make sure it's formatted as ExFAT, instead of what it is. A medium can be in always only one format.
About the expense: Fry's is advertising a 64GB Patriot USB Flash Drive for $22.99. Is that considered expensive for a USB flash drive?
That'd be dirt-cheap, I'd say. Expect it to be very slow.
I've read answers that are somewhat related to my question, and some warn that USB's are slow. Maybe I should consider another option?
USB is not that slow (though there are faster buses). And USB flash drives come in different speeds, where especially the "write" speed can vary hugely.
The advantage of USB is that it's widely spread, and lots of media is on the market, making it very affordable. The only other affordable alternative is an external HDD, I'd say, where you get much bigger drives for less money than a small 64GB USB flash drive...
My main objective is that, in switching from Windows to Mac, I want to be able to access Windows files that I've backed up to a Seagate Free Agent. I bought a LaCie with the Mac Mini, but will still want to use the Free Agent. I need to reformat the Free Agent for the Mac (hopefully for Mac and Windows; while learning to use the Mac and Numbers and Pages I may have emergency jobs that I'll need to do with Excel and Word on the PC), so my plan is to move the files on the Free Agent to the 64GB flash drive, reformat the Free Agent so that, hopefully, the Mac will read the files on it after I move them back to the Free Agent from the USB.
Why don't you copy the content of the Free Agent meanwhile to the Mac's HDD? Then copy it back after re-formatting the Free Agent? Why would you need an extra USB drive?
Any ideas you have about how to achieve this objective will be appreciated. Maybe I should buy a third, small, external hard drive? Maybe there is a way to move the Windows files from the Seagate to the LaCie?
Exactly... you seem to have already extra space on the LaCie drive...
My understanding is that the Apple Store does not want to move files from an external hard drive to the Mac.
I don't know where this could origin, but that's as wrong as it is funny. What has the App Store to do with you moving some files from one drive to another?
I should add that I don't have enough remaining free space on the PC hard drive to hold the files on the Free Agent, so that is not an option.
No, but you have a Mac with a built-in HDD, and you got the LaCie drive. Again, the Mac should have neither a problem to read from the Free Agent, nor to write to the LaCie.
From what you're telling here, you have lots of space already with what you have, I can't see the need for the USB flash drive, at least not for the purpose you mention here.
It seems that your understanding is that (a) a drive comes in a particular format for, or not for Mac, and you can't change it, and (b) that for some reason (App Store?!) Macs aren't allowed to copy files from external files. Well, both is wrong...

Question about Formatting Buffalo USB 1TB external drive for use with Mac Book Pro Mountain Lion HD

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