Starting up as external drive

For the life of me I can't remember which key I push during restart to use the computer as an external drive for another computer via firewire cable. help.

Press the T key.
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Starting up from external Drive???

Have cloned my on board Drive with CCC, on a brand new JOURNALED external drive.
All went well.
Checked copied data.. it all seems fine.
Now testing the External Drive is creating a bit of anxiety as I have never attempted that before.
I know what and how to do it but am concerned that booting my computer FROM the ext.Drive, especially if slightly corrupted may cause me an issue to re-boot internally.
Also
Does updating the CLONE require as much time on follow ups, I truly hope it does NOT start all over again, just amends newly modified data...RIGHT?
I thank you for any input.

Basically all you should have to do is;
1) with external drive connected and powered on Open System Preferences->Startup Disk & select your External Drive.
2) Restart using the Restart... button.
There are things to keep in mind. The external drive must the appropriate type of Partitioning for the Mac CPU architecture that you are trying to boot (GUID Partition Table for Intel, Apple Partition Map for PPC). Up until somewhat recently Macs would only boot off of Firewire, and even then only certain Firewire chipsets. Newer Macs (I believe this includes all Intel Macs, but not sure) can boot off of Firewire or USB 2.0. I do not know about the very latest Macs, but obviously the new MacBooks won't boot off of Firewire because they do not have that interface available.
As far as I know unless you start accessing your internal drive and doing damaging changes there is little or no risk trying to boot off of your external clone. Worst case if it doesn't boot properly, power the mac down with the power button, disconnect the drive, and start up with your internal disk. If you do need to take this action make sure to go into Startup Disk and select your internal drive, otherwise your Mac spends time looking for bootable disks every time you power it on.

IPhoto Starts up when External Drive is Hooked up

Just as it says on the subject header...........the iphoto program starts up as soon as i have my external drive hooked up. How do i get rid of it? It gets annoying....
thanks in advanced......

Yep, it still launces iPhoto......even if there's no camera connected to it. I even tried to change the "capture" setting too but it still does the same thing. Any idea or clue?
Oh yea, my external HD is formatted to be FAT32 as well. When i plug that into a PC, it doesn't start any other program.
Perhaps i should update iPhoto? Thing is, i don't even use iPhoto.

Can't start up from external drive

I have cloned my startup drive to an external firewire drive. I made the clone using Carbon Copy Cloner, with the "Make Bootable" preference checked. It's my intention to be able to use this drive as the startup drive should there be a problem with my internal drive.
I selected the external in System Preferences as the startup drive and restarted. I got a gray screen, and no further activity, so I pressed the Restart button and tried again, to no avail. Then I tried to restart holding the Option key. I got the Select Drive screen, but there were no drives on it, and after a few minutes I pressed the Restart button again.
What am I doing wrong? The external drive is an ATA drive in a firewire case, and I have booted from it in the past.
Thanks
BC

Now that I think of it, I did NOT boot from this external drive in the past. this is a new drive in a new case. The old case had the Oxford chip set, this one has the Prolific chip set. Does this make a difference?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Start up with external Drive connected and switched on

When starting up with my external USB2 drive connected, it takes ages, I usually resort to switching it off and then back on when my Mac has started. Has anyone got any tips on how to speed up the start up process?
Cheers

Sounds like it may well be the photos (or more likely any video in iphoto) rather than the drive that is causing the issues.
Have you installed all the updates for imovie including the ilife compatibility update.

Started iTunes without external drive where library is located

I accidentally started iTunes without my external hard drive turned on (where my library is).
(Now play lists, etc. are gone even if I option-start iTunes and select the external library.) Any way to go back to the way things were ten minutes ago?

The XML file is not required by iTunes but is there for other applications to examine. If this file only is corrupt you can safely delete it letting iTunes rebuild it on the next run. iTunes uses the *iTunes Library.itl* for it's database. If this file is corrupt iTunes may be able to rebuild it from a valild XML version, although some data such as ratings, playcounts etc. may be losts. In general it would be better to restore a recent backup. If you don't actively backup your library files you may still find a recent(ish) copy in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder.
If you elect to rebuild your library from scratch then you can leave the files in their current locations by making sure the option to *Copy files to the iTunes Music folder when adding to the library* is turned off.
tt2

HT1364 Auto-save i-Tunes purchases to external drive?

I have to use an external drive because my laptop (limited HD/RAM) cannot support my music library (too big). When I purchase i-Tunes, how can I make sure they save to the external drive and not to the laptop? I had it set-up when I first started using the external drive, but lately I've noticed that purchases and playlists are saving to the laptop again. How can I check this and transfer whatever saved, inadvertantly, to the laptop back to the external drive? Then, how do I make sure that my purchases/library is intact on the external drive AND that future purchases go to the external drive?

I'm not sure Windows 2000 & iOS go together.
If you launch iTunes when the external drive isn't ready then the the media folder will revert back to the default path on the internal drive.
To avoid this problem place the entire library on the external drive. See make a split library portable for more information.
tt2

After SN install can't launch Disk Utility from external drive

I recently upgraded 10.5.9 to SN on my white Macbook. First I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old drive onto the replacement drive in an external enclosure. Then I swapped drives so that the new drive is now the internal drive and the old drive is in the enclosure. I then upgraded the OS on the internal drive via SN installer on DVD.
Now when I start from the external drive in OS X 10.5.9 and try to launch Disk Utility from this drive I get a weird error message that "Disk Utility can't be launched because it's incompatible with this architecture." The only things I can think of is that Snow Leopard installs something that globally effects all perhipherals (like new disk drivers?), or that there is something in the enclosure's USB bridge which is causing this, or that installing Snow Leopard breaks the PRAM for older versions of OS X. Tech support for the enclosure vendor tells me there is nothing in the enclosure's USB that would cause this. Any insights into what's happening appreciated.

Thanks for response. Ah, that's it. I was trying to launch it from the applications folder I had dragged to the dock, which was done while running Snow Leopard. That's why (duh!) all the application icons were slashed out. : |

External Drive attached to Time Capsule failing to work consistently

This problem has been occurring since we started using an external drive attached to our Time Capsule as a backup destination for Time Machine over a year ago:
Everything will be fine for a few days or weeks, but at some point backups stop working. This sometimes gives errors (Time Machine could not complete backup, I think) or sometimes it just looks like the backup has gotten stuck (reporting 235.32 MB of 22.86 GB for days). With the latter problem it seems to cause other issues with the OS like System Preferences not responding anymore and certain Save As... dialog boxes not appearing.
Every time this happens, what I do is disconnect all users through AirPort Utility and then plug the drive into one of the computers and run Disk Utility on it.
Each time, without fail, there is the error "Incorrect number of Access Control Lists" stating it should be 0 and it really is something in the thousands usually.
The volume is always repaired successfully, but then the cycle continues.
We've tried a couple of different drives and it always ends up happening.
I've seen other posts with similar problems, but nothing laid out exactly like my problem, and no real fix for it.

Yes, indeed. Let me give some background.
I have an old Gigabit AEBS (7.4.2) as my main router with a Gigabit connection to my Time Capsule (500GB, 7.4.2) running in bridge mode. Both run as wireless access points for my network "Hogwarts." I backup several machines to the TC's internal drive with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Practically bulletproof. I backup two media heavy machines to the external drive attached to the TC. The drive is a Western Digital My Book 1.5TB that before the TC came into our lives, ran flawlessly when attached to my iMac as a backup destination. The media machines are Dumbledore, my mini running as a HTPC, and Tonks, my wife's laptop busting with pics and video of our son. Once I started backups to this drive connected to the TCs, I started to have problems with backup. That's the situation. Here's what I've tried to correct it.
I had a year's worth of backups. Went to the Genius Bar who recommended starting over after they checked out my setup over Back to My Mac. They couldn't find anything wrong and supposed my backups were hopelessly corrupted. So I followed their advice with Dumbledore and archived those for Tonks. Trying to start over with Dumbledore fails within the first 75 of 500 GB to backup every time. I've redirected syslog reporting at Debug level from the TC to my iMac and formatted the external drive several times. I have done disk repairs on the drive, Dumbledore's sparse bundle, and the TM volume contained in the sparse bundle. I've only gotten the "too many ACL's" error. The WD drive comes with SmartWare software I've used to check the S.M.A.R.T. status (100% OK), test the drive (100% OK) and deactivate the Virtual CD partition used to, among other things, encrypt the drive. My drive is unencrypted and have made it as plain vanilla as I can: GUID with one 1.5 TB Mac OS Extended Journaled partition.
What I've noticed when I check the status of the TC when the bakcups fail is that the drive becomes unmounted with no logged error. The client computer either hangs Finder or reports the backup failed. My wife has become so frustrated with hard restarts that she has turned off Time Machine until I fix this. Airport Utility simply no longer sees the drive. The client computer can reconnect over AFP but the drive will not be accessible unless I restart the TC. Then if I do some Disk Utility repairs on the external drive and on the virtual volumes it contains, I can start backups again...until the next spontaneous unmounting of the drive. Which leaves me talking to you as a completely frustrated and disappointed Apple user. This is so not Apple quality experience.
The only shot in the dark I've seen is that the TC repeatedly updates its DHCP lease every 5 minutes or so despite having a 4 hour TTL. Weird.

External Drive is read-only

When I start up my external drive, which used to be my Time Machine drive (but hasn't been for 4 months) I get a message: "The disk "" was not repairable by the computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible." Does this mean I have to get another external drive (I'm running low on cash - thanks, college!) back up all my files on this drive to the new one? I've tried DiskUtility, and this is what happens:
Invalid sibling link
The volume "" needs to be repaired.
*Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.*
Help, please!!

kibbles1053 wrote:
I've tried DiskUtility, and this is what happens:
Invalid sibling link
The volume "" needs to be repaired.
*Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.*
If you did a +*Verify DIsk,*+ do +*Repair Disk.+* There's a (small) chance it can fix it.
If that gets the same results, and you already have a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app, such as +Disk Warrior+ (4.1.1 or later), it might be able to repair it.
If not, your only choice is to reformat the disk. This will, of course, erase it, so if you want to keep whatever's on it, you'll have to copy it elsewhere (if it can be copied), reformat, then copy back.
That may or may not work; if the disk itself is failing, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Set mail folder on an external drive

Does anyone know if it's possible to keep the Mail folder on an external drive. I'm wondering 'cause I use POP mail with Eudora and I like to keep my mail on an external drive. That way when I move to different computers I just bring my external drive with me and all my e-mail comes too. I'd use IMAP but my host doesn't give me enough room to house all my e-mail. I like Eudora but am worried since they are no longer going to be supported and thought I'd give Mail a try. Has anyone heard of this working or if there are any tutorials out there on setting up Mail to read from an external drive? Thanks so much.
-NifflerX

sorry, you are quite right! It IS possible by using symbolic links! I should have thought of that right away.
here is what you do.
Quit Mail and move the folder homedirectory/Library/Mail to your external drive. After that's done move the original folder to some other location outside homedirectory/Library like the desktop or simply delete it.
open terminal and enter the following commands:
*cd ~/Library*
*ln -s /Volumes/"externaldrivename"/Mail Mail*
Substitute the name of your external in the above.
Also, the above command assumes that you moved the Mail folder to the top level of the external. if not, modify the path accordingly.
That's it! what this does is create a symbolic link to the Mail folder on your external inside the Lbrary folder. I tested it and it works quite well. just make sure that when you start Mail, the external drive is mounted.
To undo this, trash the symbolic link we created and move the mail folder back to ~/Library.

I'm using Time Machine and a LaCie external drive to backup. I also have a 8 GB LaCie flash drive I want to use for small jobs. If I plug the LaCie flash drive in, is my Mac going to think it is the LaCie external drive and start trying to backup?

I'm using Time Machine and a LaCie external drive to backup. I also have a 8 GB LaCie flash drive I want to use for small jobs. If I plug the LaCie flash drive in, is my Mac going to think it is the LaCie external drive and start trying to backup?

no.

I have multiple libraries on an external drive. Somehow all the iTunes library files i.e. iTunes Library.itl, xml, itdb, Media folder, etc disappeared! Only the music files remain. Now when I start iTunes w/option it can't find any of the old libraries!

Help! I 'm using an old G4 powerbook, Mac OSX 10.5.8, iTunes ver 10. I have multiple iTunes libraries on an external drive. Everything was fine for a while, then all of the iTunes library files, i.e. iTunes Library.itl, xml, itdb, artwork folder, Media folder, etc mysteriously disappeared! Only the music files remain (thank god) So now when I start iTunes w/option key to choose a library, I can't choose any of them because iTunes won't recognize them. Because all the library stuff is missing. So can I re-create the library files? (I don't care if I lose my ratings)
Or should I create a new empty library on the external drive, then manually move all the music files to the Media folder in the new library?
I tried some stupid ideas like creating a new library just to start iTunes, then going into prefs and advanced, then under iTunes Media folder location, selecting the location of the old library on the external, to see if iTunes would then find all the music which is still there, but no workee.
I'm out of ideas, and I searched the archives.
Help! anyone?
Scott

I don't know if this is me adding files to iTunes when the external wasn't connected
it is.
is it OK to just keep deleting that library on the Air?
i wouldn't - at least not until i
mount the external
point iTunes media folder location back to the external via preferences > advanced
consolidate my library via file > library > organize library
The ntfs hasn't seem to be causing any problems, but I've always wanted to know.
in order for your Mac to write to NTFS drives, it needs some help by installing e.g. the NTFS 3G driver. apparently that or something similar is installed on your Mac already. preferably, it would be formatted for Mac but then windows machines would need to have e.g. MacDrive installed to recognize the drive.

My Macbook won't start, and I must reinstall the disk. I haven't used time machine to back up, and I want to use an external drive to back up now. How can i do this from the utilities page?

I am currently in Zambia on missions work and my computer is constantly exposed to heat. I have just been trying to avoid using it during the hottest part of the day. Today though, I started it up and it was stuck on the grey page with the rotating circle for over an hour, then once the circle left, it remained frozen on the gray page. I used command + r at startup to go to the utilities page to analyze the disk. It found that there were problems with the disk, but then it could not fix those problems and told me to backup as much information as I could and reinstall or redo it all. I haven't ever used time machine to back up any of my information, but i have an external drive that I can use right now to backup my files. I can't get into my computer though to backup the files. How can I use this external drive to backup my files while the computer is currently messed up? Please help.

Emergency Backups (Data Recovery)
A)          Format an external disk:
          (This will erase all data on the external disk.)
          Boot in recovery mode (power then Command-R).
                    Alternative: Network recovery boot (power then Command-Option-R keys)
          To format (and erase) the destination recovery disk:
          Plug in the drive you are about to erase.
          Select the volume that is NOT your system disk.
          Click on Partition.
          Pull down under Partition Layout to 1 Partition.
          Click on Options…
          Select GUID Partition Table.
          Name: Emergency Backup (or whatever you prefer)
          Format: Select Mac OS Extended (journaled)
          Click Apply.
          Click Partition.
B)          Try to boot in Safe Mode (power then Shift key).
          (This will be a slow boot. Be patient.)
          If it won’t boot in Safe Mode, jump to C.
          If it boots in Safe Mode, try to boot in normal mode.
                    If that fixed your problem then start a Time Machine backup.
                    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
                    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055
          If not, boot in Safe Mode again.
          Go > Computer.
          Double click on the system disk.
          Drag the Users folder to the recovery disk.
C)          To clone the disk:
          Boot in recovery mode.
          Select Disk Utility.
          Try to repair the system disk twice.
          Whether or not the repair succeeds:
          Drag and drop the system disk to Source:
          Drag an drop Emergency Backup to Destination:
          (Take care not to reverse this order.)
          Click Restore (the lower Restore button).
Once your system is healthy, maintain two reasonably current backups. (Time machine restores can fail.)
Create either two Time Machine backups (good) or one or more Time Machine backup(s) and one or more bootable-clone backup(s) (better).
          Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to create bootable-clone recovery disks.
          See https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
          and https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

Everytime I start time machine, my computer backs up +/- 250MB, then freezes. Tried it with 3 different external drives, all stop at about the same point (they all work fine on other macs). Any suggestions?

The drives I have are Seagate 1TB GoFlex portable drives (one has UBS 3.0, the other USB 2.0), and a WesternDigital 1TB passport (USB 3.0). I originally tried to backup with Time Machine using the Seagate USB 3.0, and when that didnt work, Seagate suggested maybe since my operating system is a little older, that I try with a USB 2.0, so they sent me another NEW external hard drive, with the USB 2.0. Had the same issue. Frustrated and convinced that Seagate just sucked, I went and bought the 1TB WesternDigital passport (USB 3.0). Have the exact same issue again. Every drive was new, and formatted for mac. When I started time machine it started to back up my files, but froze after copying give or take 250 MB (usually 252.5MB, to be exact). I went and tried the drive on several other macs, and none of them presented any problems. I also tried dragging individual files, but it still freezes on pretty much anything bigger than +/- 100MB. Disk Utility says that all the drives are fine. Obviously this is a problem with my computer, and not the 3 brand new external drives. I thought about upgrading to OSX 10.6, but don't know if this'll help or not (plus, I'd really prefer to have all the files backed up on a drive before doing that, just in case). I dont know what else to do.. called apple, but I'm not about to pay them $50 to have them MAYBE give me a solution (done that twice now for previous unrelated issues, and each time they just told me to take it to a computer repair place.) Just seeing if anyone out there has a solution before I cave and take it back to the certified computer guys for them to figure it out.. Also, I live in Montana and theres no apple store anywhere close (not suprising), so taking it to an Apple Store is just not an option.
Side note: Seagate tech support is awesome; they tried everything to solve the problem, and they even bent their rules a little to send me a new drive, even though it wasn't a malfunction issue with their drive. Really helpful, friendly people, which is much more than I can say for Apple at this point...

this is what you need to do to exclude everything apart from desktop.
on time machine preferences, click on Options
click plus sign, on the new window, click macintosh HD
do a Control + A then deselect users then click okay
go to options again, plus sign, go to users, control +A then deselect your user account
go to options again, plus sign, go to your user account, control + A, deselect desktop
start the back up.

Starting up as external drive

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