Questions on backing up to external hd

I need to make some space on my hard drive. Music and photos are filling it much too fast. I bought a Maxtor One Touch II, 200 gig to do this with. It is USB 2.
I have searched the forums, and the more I read, the more confused I get.
If I am understanding things right, for both music and photos, I need to go to my home folder and copy the music folder and the pictures folder to the external hard drive. Is this correct? Do I just do drag and drop. (By the way I have the latest version of iTunes, but only iPhoto 4. )
Then, if I add some more music or more photos, how do I move them without copying everything twice? I know there are syncing programs out there, but the problem is that once I put some of the music/photos on the external hard drive, I would like to wipe them off my iMac drive. For instance, Christmas music. I would like to have the playlist preserved, but most of the year there is no point in having Christmas music taking up space on my iMac hard drive, so I would like to eliminate it. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but it seems that with most syncing programs, if I delete it from my iMac library (after copying to ext hd) and then try to sync it later, I will lose the Christmas music on my ext. hard drive, as the sync program tries to make the external look like the iMac library. (I hope I am explaining this well.)
It is the same question with photos. I want to save a lot of albums to my ext. hd, and then remove them from my iMac library. But then, when I make new photos, I want to back up just the new ones to the ext. hd.
I assume I do the same with documents. My question with documents is when I do a new document, can I just drag the document to the appropriate folder on the external hard drive? For example, if when I copy my documents folder from my home folder, one of the folders in it is “Recipes” and later I write down a new recipe for say chocolate cake, can I just drag the chocolate cake document to the recipe folder on the external hard drive?
As a precaution, I am actually pretty good about backing up things to cds, so there is a copy of most everything already. Just on a zillion cds.
Apologies for this being so long and wordy, I just could not figure out an easy way to explain it all.
Thanks very much in advance.
iMac 17In 1.25Ghz, 1 gig ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I need to make some space on my hard drive. Music and
photos are filling it much too fast. I bought a
Maxtor One Touch II, 200 gig to do this with. It is
USB 2.
You would have gotten much better performance out of a Firewire drive. Too late now, I guess.
I have searched the forums, and the more I read, the
more confused I get.
If I am understanding things right, for both music
and photos, I need to go to my home folder and copy
the music folder and the pictures folder to the
external hard drive. Is this correct? Do I just do
drag and drop. (By the way I have the latest version
of iTunes, but only iPhoto 4. )
Yes, drag and drop will work fine. There are also some programs out there for managing iTunes and iPhoto libraries. You can probably find some on www.versiontracker.com
Then, if I add some more music or more photos, how do
I move them without copying everything twice? I know
there are syncing programs out there, but the problem
is that once I put some of the music/photos on the
external hard drive, I would like to wipe them off my
iMac drive. For instance, Christmas music. I would
like to have the playlist preserved, but most of the
year there is no point in having Christmas music
taking up space on my iMac hard drive, so I would
like to eliminate it. Perhaps I am misunderstanding,
but it seems that with most syncing programs, if I
delete it from my iMac library (after copying to ext
hd) and then try to sync it later, I will lose the
Christmas music on my ext. hard drive, as the sync
program tries to make the external look like the iMac
library. (I hope I am explaining this well.)
It is the same question with photos. I want to save a
lot of albums to my ext. hd, and then remove them
from my iMac library. But then, when I make new
photos, I want to back up just the new ones to the
ext. hd.
You probably will want to move your iTunes and iPhoto libraries to the external drive; then you have to tell iTunes and iPhoto where to look for the new library locations. That way you just keep all your photos and music on the external drive all the time. It's easy to change the location of your iTunes library in iTunes Preferences (last pane, I think). I don't know how to do it in iPhoto.
I assume I do the same with documents. My question
with documents is when I do a new document, can I
just drag the document to the appropriate folder on
the external hard drive? For example, if when I copy
my documents folder from my home folder, one of the
folders in it is “Recipes” and later I write down a
new recipe for say chocolate cake, can I just drag
the chocolate cake document to the recipe folder on
the external hard drive?
Documents are generally very small files. But just as with your music and photos, you could just save them to the external drive in the first place and not keep them on your internal drive at all.
As a precaution, I am actually pretty good about
backing up things to cds, so there is a copy of most
everything already. Just on a zillion cds.
Apologies for this being so long and wordy, I just
could not figure out an easy way to explain it all.
Thanks very much in advance.
Yeah, backing up to a hard drive is much faster and more convenient than backing up to CDs.
You could also just replace your internal hard drive with a bigger one...

Similar Messages

HELP: Somewhat complex question on backing up to external HD.

Hi,
I am Running a MacPro Dual core Xeon 2.66 and running Leopard and Snow Leopard on 2 different HDs.
I am using TM to back up each to 2 different External CalDigit VR Mini's using eSATA.
I also wanted to have a Bootable BU of each OS drive in case of drive failure.
I used a 1 TB CalDigit VR set to RAID 1 and partitioned it 550GB/500GB one partition for each OS drive backup.
I made what was supposed to be a bootable clone of the SL drive using CCC.
To test it I restarted while holding down the option key... Only the drives for Leopard and Snow Leopard showed as boot choices. The cloned partition on the external CalDigit that supposedly had a bootable copy of SL did not appear.
I rebooted into SL and found that while my internal drives appear on my desktop with icons that look like Hard Drives, the 2 partitions on my external CalDigit look like yellow rectangles with firewire symbols on them... I figure that this might have something to do with the MacPro mot seeing them as bootable on startup.
I partitioned the external drive in Leopard and the CalDigit shows as GUID though each individual partition does not. Can separate partitions on external drives not be set up as bootable backups or have I not set the backups up properly, ergo the Yellow drive icons on the desktop?
Any ideas?

There are very very few controllers for Mac Pro that are bootable.
Some Mac Pro can use #5 & 6 SATA ports run external; else there is USB and FireWire.
You have a good image of the system, you can even put images on sparse disk images. And you can restore those as needed.
The most important boot volume I find to have around is a small emergency partition for running maintenance programs. And only takes ~20GB.
The external enclosure may prevent booting even if it is on SATA ports using #5 & 6 ports.
Some external cases are not supported by 2-channel cards like Sonnet E2P to begin with.
CCC keeps being updated. I switched over to SuperDuper after yrs of use of CCC.
Snow Leopard made changes to partitions, and to RAID, and I strongly recommend any RAID or drive even if it is to boot Leopard or both, to be formatted with the latest version of Disk Utility.

How can I tell if Time Machine is backing up my external HD?

Mac Newbie here. I just have a quick question: I have two external HD hooked up to my 2012 iMac, one holding media files (not iTunes, just miscellaneous avi and mkv type files) and the other serving as the backup drive for use with Time Machine. When I first hooked up the media external HD, the OS asked me if I wanted to use it with Time Machine. Interpreting that as a request to use it as the backup drive, I replied "no." Then when I hooked up the second external HD, I replied "yes" when asked if I wanted to use it with Time Machine.
Since that time, Time Machine has been running smoothly, but I'm not sure if it is backing up both my internal HD and my external HD #1 used for media files. When I open Time Machine using Launchpad, it shows me a picture of Finder listing all my different hard drives, but only in the "now" timeframe. When I go back a few backups, the external HD used for media files is grayed out. Does that mean it has not been backing up my external HD files? If so, how do I tell it to include that external HD in the backup process?
Note that I am trying to backup contents of one external HD (including my internal HD) to another - the internal HD has 1 TB, the first external HD has 2 TB, and the second external HD has 3 TB (this is the one I'm using as the backup drive). So I think I should be ok from a space standpoint.

Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options and see Excluded Items. If the external drive is there, it's not being backed up

Backing up an external HD that's not always connected?

I just bought a Time Capsule to backup my MacBook and an external HD. I've set up Time Machine to backup the MacBook and external HD. But the external HD isn't always connected to my MacBook. When Time Machine runs its hourly backups, if at that moment the external HD is not connected, it backs up just the contents of my MacBook.
I've just started this process, rather than learn by trial and error I'm hoping some of you have already done something similar and can share your experience. I have a couple of concerns:
1) If Time Machine backs up my MacBook (MB) and external hard drive (EHD) and then, on a second run, with the EHD disconnected, backs up only the MB, the next time a backup runs while the EHD is connected, will it have to start all over again copying all of the contents of the EHD? Or can it recognize the EHD content which is unchanged from the last time it did a backup with the EHD connected?
2) When Time Machine runs out of space and starts deleting old backups, is there a risk that this way I could lose a backup copy of the EHD? For example suppose Time Machine backs up my MB and EHD. Then say for a couple of weeks I don't connect the EHD and meanwhile TM keeps doing backups and runs out of space. When it throws out the oldest backups, if none of the more recent ones contain data from my EHD, do I thereby lose that backup data?
Apologies in advance if this question has already been answered elsewhere. I've tried searching for answers but all my searches on "time machine external hard drive" just turn up results about using TM to back up to an external HD or else talk about what format a drive needs to be in order to get backed up via TM.
p.s. I use the EHD to store, among other things, my iTunes library. So in practice I rarely go more than a day of using the MacBook without turning on the EHD. Still, I'd like to understand how TM manages backing up of drives that aren't always available.
Thanks,
Ben Ellis

ben_ellis wrote:
I just bought a Time Capsule to backup my MacBook and an external HD. I've set up Time Machine to backup the MacBook and external HD. But the external HD isn't always connected to my MacBook. When Time Machine runs its hourly backups, if at that moment the external HD is not connected, it backs up just the contents of my MacBook.
I've just started this process, rather than learn by trial and error I'm hoping some of you have already done something similar and can share your experience. I have a couple of concerns:
1) If Time Machine backs up my MacBook (MB) and external hard drive (EHD) and then, on a second run, with the EHD disconnected, backs up only the MB, the next time a backup runs while the EHD is connected, will it have to start all over again copying all of the contents of the EHD? Or can it recognize the EHD content which is unchanged from the last time it did a backup with the EHD connected?
it's supposed to be smart and recognize the old backups and not redo the entire backup of the EHD in such situation. but sometimes TM does not do that for whatever reasons (=bugs). hopefully it won't affect you.
2) When Time Machine runs out of space and starts deleting old backups, is there a risk that this way I could lose a backup copy of the EHD? For example suppose Time Machine backs up my MB and EHD. Then say for a couple of weeks I don't connect the EHD and meanwhile TM keeps doing backups and runs out of space. When it throws out the oldest backups, if none of the more recent ones contain data from my EHD, do I thereby lose that backup data?
yes, in that scenario you will loose all backups of the EHD. that's why you need to make sure that your TM drive is big enough and has plenty of space to store incremental backups so that this is unlikely to happen. and back up the external regularly.
Apologies in advance if this question has already been answered elsewhere. I've tried searching for answers but all my searches on "time machine external hard drive" just turn up results about using TM to back up to an external HD or else talk about what format a drive needs to be in order to get backed up via TM.
p.s. I use the EHD to store, among other things, my iTunes library. So in practice I rarely go more than a day of using the MacBook without turning on the EHD.
Still, I'd like to understand how TM manages backing up of drives that aren't always available.
Thanks,
Ben Ellis

How to reflect data changes back to the external XML

Hi,
In one of my application,
I use data for (any of) my Flex component from an external XML (thru a HTTPService) request & a Java backend function provides the XML data.
I bind the HTTPService result to XMLListCollection & I supply this data for the dataprovider for my component.
So, if I make any data changes (by adding / creating new items ) in the component, it will be reflected in the XMLListCollection (resulting in adding / modifying new nodes)
My Question is how to make these data changes reflect back in the external XML?
- Sen

Well not necessarily. While binding directly to the service in view is fast is
also not very clean and reusable. Try to put your data inside model classes,
view binds to those classes instead of the service. Also use a custom class to
wrap your service and that gives you flexibility to change server properties or
make 2 different calls with the same service. You need to write code yourself
but in the end it will be easier to adjust changes. So when you load data you
actually populate the model instead of bringing data straight to the view. This
code usually gets executed inside a command class. So to be more specific:
CustomService
- var HTTPService
function getData
-- in here you have the service calling the get data method on the service
function setData
-- in here you have the service calling the save data on the server
View
var model:DataModel
- controls binds to the model and display data from model
- when click on save or whatever gesture you use for saving you dispatch an
event with the new data.
You should use some MVC framework to do this for you..
When event is dispatched the framework will create a command class instance and
run it ...
GetSaveCommand
- var service:CustomService
service.saveData(event.Data)
service.getData()
function result()
function fault() - for the success or fault of the service call ...
you can perform additional data transformation here id needed or employ the use
of other class to do that if necessary ...
Hope this makes sense. It is more work involved as you can see.
Or you can go with 2 HTTPService instance in the view ...
C

Backing up of external drives

I know this is a really basic question, but I cannot find the answer. Will Time Machine automatically back up the content of my external hard drive used for file storage as well as my iMac. Time Machine is backing up to external hard disk #2, just to clarify.
Thanks
Gerry

As Kappy says, TM will back it up unless it's excluded.
But it will be excluded automatically if it's not formatted for a Mac. Either check via the "Star Wars" display, or see if it's listed in the exclusions box in +Time Machine Preferences > Options.+

Backing up single external HD using 2 Macs

I keep all my stuff on an external HD. I usually backup the external HD using time machine on my Mac_1 to my time capsule.
I recently bought another Mac_2. If I use time machine on Mac_2 to backup the external HD, will it create a separate backup on the time capsule.
If so, is there a way I can use the same external HD backup on the time capsule and use either of the Macs to backup the HD.

Hi,
The question is not backing up 2 Macs to the same external HD.
My question is the opposite... how to back up an external HD to time capsule when I connect it to different Macs ( I have two Macs tied via wifi to a time capsule).

TM Stopped backing up another external drive

I have my photo library on a second external drive. It is operating fine...importing photos. TM is backing up my computer HD but not the external. Looking at the history it has been awhile since it backed it up properly.
It is not excluded in the setup
I just asked tm to perform a backup and put a test folder in the external drive. did not back up to the TM drive
what do I do?????

Diana Phillips wrote:
OK....I think it is working fine. I am a little confused however. If I am at my desktop and click on "enter TM" I get the TM backup for the desktop. If I click on my Photo-External drive and click on "enter TM" I get the TM backup for the photo drive.
that's how it should be.
My question is, if my photo external drive fails, how would I access the information? The icon for the drive won't be there if it fails
yes, but you still can access the backups. enter commandshiftc in finder and click on TM in the dock. scroll back in time. even if the original external is not present you will see its backups as a folder when you do this. you can restore anything you want from it. select what you want to restore, click on the "gears" action button in Finder's toolbar and select "restore to...".
Another option is to get a new drive and name it the same as the old one. then you can scroll back in it using regular TM interface and restore what you want normally.
thanks and sorry this is a bit of a dumb Q.
diana

Can I back up my external hard drives to time machine?

Hi,
I've backed up my laptop and two external hard drives to my time machine - but because the data on the hard drives were backed up through my computer over a month ago I can't now seem to access the back ups of the hard drives.
Is there a way of accessing the back up of the hard drives from the specific day I did this, or is there a more efficient way of backing them up so I can permanently access the back up files for these drives?
On other answers to similar questions:
'Any drives not specifically on the Exclude list will be backed up' - my external drives are not permanently plugged into my computer so the back up seems to be overridden on the next back up.
'Just be sure your backup drive is large enough - at least twice the capacity of the total capacity of the drives being backed up.' - time capsule is 2TB, I have external drives with 1.5TB of info at the moment, will this be sufficient?
Thanks,
P

I plugged the hard drives into my laptop and the time machine backed them up as if they were part of my computer on the routine hourly back up.
But because I only had the back up drive plugged in for the duration of the actual back up, the external drives only show up in the time machine on that particular day, and subsequent hourly / daily backups on time machine didn't show the external hard drives again.
I only seem to be able to access a month's worth of backing up so because the back up of the external drives was done over a month ago I can't seem to retrieve the back up of the external drive I did on that particular day.
Does that make sense? Is there a better way of doing this?

Few Questions About Backing Up Files

Okay, I'm pretty new to this, and have checked the support pages, but I do have some questions about backing up my files.
I'm running out of room on my computer's hard drive, and am wondering if burning the library to CDs will allow me to quickly restore my library on my computer when I sync my iPod.
I know that when an iPod syncs with a comp, it will lose any songs that aren't on the library list. (If I deleted some songs to free up room, I'd lose those songs on my iPod when I synced it up.) Is there a way to prevent that from happening? Some way to save a headache continuously restoring my iPod's library every time I want to add a new song or recharge it?
I'm on Windows XP, if that matters.

Best and easiest solution is to buy an external hard drive. Then simply drag and drop your iTunes folder from your internal onto the external and copy the entire library.
Patrick

How to back up an external hard drive using Time Machine

I have a Macbook. I have iTunes. I have my iTunes folder and contents stored on an external (Lacie) hard drive. I want to be able to back up that external (Lacie) hard drive and my mac using Time Machine to a separate external hard drive. At the moment it is only my mac that is backed up, and not the Lacie. How can I also back up the Lacie so that only the recently added iTunes content is added? Cheers.

You may consider reading the detail in what third-party clone utilities could
do in regard to a backup clone and then use their utility to update that clone.
Once the copy/clone is made (a bootable backup, btw) the same utility can
be used to update the clone. Not certain how it works, and am a bit behind
on making backup bootable clones of my several Macs as it is. I do a whole
backup clone, though a partial or update supposedly is possible.
SuperDuper or CarbonCopy, I don't remember if one of them or both, do this.
Good luck in any event!

I can not get Time Machine to back up an external WD Passport 2 TB drive! Has anyone else had this problem? The drive is new and I was running Snow Leopard and upgraded to Lion and it still won't do it. Time Machine backs up the internal drive fine.

I bought 2 2TB WD Passport Drives with the intention of housing my iTunes/iPhoto libraries off my older MacBook. I have successfully transferred the Libraries to one and am using the other one for Time Machine. In Snow Leopard I could back up my computer to Time Machine no problem but when I did not exclude the iTunes/iPhoto drive the back up fails. Both drives have been reformatted, permissions repaired and checked in Disk Utility and one was replaced. I have been to the Genius Bar now 5 times. I have tried using USB drive and FireWire. Both drives are recognized and are working properly otherwise regardless how they are connected. Finally yesterday the Apple store installed Lion to see if that fixed the issue and it did not. Time Machine successfully backed up a USB Flash drive, and today I will try an older external drive. Any ideas on what else to try??? Do I have to resort to third party software like Carbon Copy Cloned to get this done? Any ideas why this wont work? I am using a FireWire converter but as I said, both drives are working normally otherwise (libraries working, time machine working for the computer's hard drive. Any ideas would be appreciated!!?

Thanks so much but none of that helped. It was driving me crazy because it would back up another external drive. I just changed the name of the drive from iPhoto/iTunes Library to Media Libraries and IT WORKED!! I guess for some reason it didn't like the drive being called iPhoto or iTunes ???? I don't understand but I have tried so many solutions and exchanging things out but the name change did it????!!!
Thank you for your help and replying to this. Guess I made my own issue!

I have question about hooking up an external hdd to a time capsule and still have my printer hooked up as well. Anyone got any tips for me, how to do it and what brand of harddrive that will work best for me 1 or 2 TB

i have question about hooking up an external hdd to a time capsule and still have my printer hooked up as well. Anyone got any tips for me, how to do it and what brand of harddrive that will work best for me 1 or 2 TB

You just need a powered hub.. if you already use one then fine.
Plug in just about any external hard disk will work fine. Format has to be readable by the TC.. ie fat32.. or much better HFS+.. plug it into a Mac to prepare the drive.
Pick whatever size suits.. nowadays 2TB are most economical.
WD, Seagate have goobled up all the minor players.. so pick one.
Whatever suits your budget and asthetics.
NOTE.. The USB on the TC is fine for printers.. IMHO it is the wrong way to go with USB disks.. use the internal disk of the TC.. USB is less than half the native speed plugged into a Mac.. TC to USB is slow.. far slower than internal drive.. or using external drive as external.

Can time machine be used to back up one external drive to another external drive?

I use the photography program Lightroom to organize and develop digital photos. All my photos are stored on my iMac internal drive. The internal drive is almost full so I want to move my photos to a new external drive. At present, I have an external drive devoted to backing up my iMac using time machine. I have no need to change this arrangement. I would like to use a new external drive to serve as the primary location for my pictures, which I will move from the internal drive. Then I would like to backup that drive to a third external back up drive. Can time machine be used to automatically back up the second drive to the third drive as well as for continuing to provide ongoing backups to my internal drive as it is currently doing?
Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Jeffery t wrote:
Thanks for the links, but I don't see in the pondini links, the scenario I am asking about.
Time Machine can easily back up multiple internal and/or directly-connected external drives and partitions simultaneously (but Time Machine cannotback up data that's on a network).
From the first link.
Jeffery t wrote:
... Please note that my iMac internal drive is backing up to external drive number 1 using time machine. I want my pictures on external drive two and those backed up to external drive three. So are you saying that if I have 500 GB of pictures on drive number 2, I will need a third drive that is at least 1 TB?
the confusion starts in your above statement...
There should be Only One Time Machine Drive.

Backing up an external hard drive with time Machine

I backed up my internal disk with Time Machine, but I can not back up an external drive that I use for my media. I see the drive in the options part of Time Machine system preferences, but the minus sign to take it off of the "do not back up these drives" is blanked out. Any suggestions?

I successfully backed up the contents of an external hard drive, but the next time Time Machine did a backup, I didn't happen to have that drive connected, so Time Machine said it couldn't find it and deleted the existing backup. Is there any way to get it to keep the backup? The drive I want to back up is only used occasionally (naturally, anything I use more frequently is on my Mac) and I don't want to have to plug in both hard drives every time I want to run a backup, only to risk losing all of that history if I ever accidentally plug in only the backup drive. But I do want to keep Time Machine backups of that drive because it contains my iPhoto Library.

Questions on backing up to external hd

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