Sync a folder on my Mac with an external hard drive

Is it possible to use the time machine to sync a folder on my Mac with an external hard drive?

Not using time Machine.
I use ChronoSync. Works great for me.
http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html

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Upgrading from 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard 10.6.3 - I've backed up my mac with timemachine / external hard drive. Am I all set to go? Bit nervous!

Hello kind support people - I'm not hugely technical so would appreciate any advice, I'm very worried about my i-photos and loosing them. All my important documents are already on google drive so that's ok if anything has gone wrong. Does all the information stay on my mac (such as photos and mail etc) when I upgrade? Am I likely to experience any difficulties or should I be doing anything else? Yesterday I used time machine for the first time, I have an external hard drive with back-ups taking place all the time (completed yesterday over a couple of hours). Can I just eject the hardrive now and put my upgrade disc in?
Thanks in advance

1. Yes, unless a problem occurs.
2. No, you’re not.
3. Yes.
(111564)

Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please...

Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please... Some programmes are still running like drop of and Skype... Is it all over?!?

Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think?

I have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

i have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

Troubleshooting Home Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972

Something has gone wrong with my external hard drive after my macbook battery went off.. now i cannot paste or create new folder. Does anyone know how to fix this?

something has gone wrong with my external hard drive after my macbook battery went off.. now i cannot paste or create new folder. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Bus powered external drive?
Backups?
Does Disk Utility can see and repair the drive or not?
Also try here in future: MacBook Pro

Intermittently using Time Machine with an External Hard Drive

Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up. However, in the online article I read dated 2009, the author suggested that he didn't know how well Time Machine would work making up for the two weeks, or however long, no files had been backed up.
Specific questions: I have 10.6.3 SL (I have not yet been brave enough to download 10.6.4) and a 4 month old iMac. 1) Have any of you had experience with only periodically using Time Machine for back up and 2) with my current system would you think I might run into some trouble if I only intermittently backed-up using Time Machine?
Thanks for reading this and thanks if you feel my questions warrant answering.
Note: I do have another external hard drive where I occasionally manually back-up photos, gifs, music, etc.

JohnHusk wrote:
Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up.
If you go several days between backups, Time Machine may have to do a "deep traversal," comparing every folder on your system to the backups, to determine what's changed and needs to be backed-up. This depends on the volume of changes, so can happen after an OSX update, but in other circumstances might be after several days. This isn't a big problem, but it does take longer, and the more data you have, the longer it takes.
Worse, after an extended period, Time Machine may do a new, full backup of your entire system, rapidly filling-up your TM drive.
If that's the way you want to back up, Time Machine is not the backup app for you. One of it's main features is the way it can do quick hourly backups of what's changed, so you have an excellent chance of recovering a previous version (or versions) when you change or delete something in error, or a file comes up corrupted, or your Mac fails.
Why don't you want to just leave the drive connected and Time Machine running, to protect you best, as it was designed to do?
For alternatives designed to do less frequent backups, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup.

HT201250 I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was?

I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was? I want to make sure I will still have various important files on my new computer, like my songs in iTunes, my photos in iPhoto, etc, etc. Thanks so much in advance!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
When you turn on the new iMac for the first time, Setup Assistant will ask you to restore a backup, so connect the external disk and follow steps to restore all your files to your new iMac. Your new Mac will have the same settings and programs as your old computer.
In other cases, I would recommend to restore the whole backup without using Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant, but a Late 2012 iMac uses a special OS X build, so the OS X version that you're using on your old Mac won't work on the new one. For more information, see > http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Connecting 2 Macs to an external hard drive

Hi,
I have an iMac G4 and a Mac Mini (with Panther on them). The hard drives for these two macs are running out of space due to a large library of music, video, and photo. I am thinking of getting an external hard drive and move all these to there.
My question is, am I able to hook these two macs to the external hard drive and access the file? Do I have to partition the hard drive into two so that each Mac will have its own partition on the hard drive?
Thanks, guys.
iMac G4, Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.3.9) Mac Mini

An external hard drive can be shared by two computers, but both computers can't be plugged into the hard drive at the exact same moment. However, if you have iTunes or iPhoto running on the one computer with the hard drive, you can share your music and pictures to the other one. You could also turn on File Sharing on the computer with the hard drive and then you could connect to the hard drive across your network to access or share other types of files.
-Doug

Problem with Time Capsule used with an External Hard Drive (with it's own power supply)

I have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro with Mavericks installed. I have the latest Time Capsule (802.11 ac) with an external hard drive hooked up via the USB port. The external hard drive was taken from an older Mac desktop machine and is formatted correctly (Mac OS Extended Journaled). The external hard drive has it's own power supply and shows up fine when connected directly to my laptop.
For whatever reason I CAN see the hard (LAN Storage) when in AirPort utility but I CANNOT find or access the drive from anywhere within the Finder.
My finder settings are set this way:
My FInder appears this way, with the Time Capsule selected:
As you can see, the "Data" drive isn't displayed (it's not on the TIme Machine mounted drive either). The external drive "LAN Storage" isn't availailable anywhere either.
I've tried unplugging and restarting my Time Capsule and the External Drive with no luck.
Any advice?
Thanks.

Welcome to Mavericks.. and its new concept of network drives not just being hard to find like in Mountain Lion but totally invisible.
Apple changed over Mavericks to using SMB2 by default.. broken and flawed SMB2.
Change over to AFP by manually mounting the TC drives.
I strongly recommend the first thing you do is change the TC names to SMB standard.. that just helps.
Short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.
So rather than the very Generic THE Airport Time Capsule.. you make it even more Generic with TC1 (each subsequent TC increment the number. )
LAN Storage is not a good name either for USB drive.. especially now that it is WAN Storage.. WStore for example.. but whatever makes sense to you.
The name itself doesn't matter. .following the rules, short no spaces and pure alphanumeric does. Everything, conforms.
Now in Finder.. Go, Connect to Server.
AFP://TC1 or AFP://10.0.1.1 (you can use either the name (now that it is proper network name) or the IP address .. replace with your actual name or IP).
The computer will find the resources and then ask you for a password.. this is required, even if default,, which is public.. so type in your password or public if you did not change it.
Store the password in your keychain.
The TC should now mount and all the resources on it be made available or visible.

I am using a T61 ThinkPad with an external hard drive and my itunes library keeps disapearing but remains on the external drive. Any idea how to fix this so my music doesn't disapear all the time? It's a real drag pulling music back into iTunes each week.

I am using a T61 ThinkPad with an external hard drive and my itunes library keeps disapearing but remains on the external drive. Any idea how to fix this so my music doesn't disapear all the time? It's a real drag pulling music back into iTunes each week

In iTunes 11 uncheck the preferences setting in in the iTunes Preferences panel "Advanced > Copy Files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library"

Using Itunes with an external hard drive

I have an old powerbook which has become full with all my music. I have bought an external ION hardrive. All i want to do is transfer my entire music collection to the ION drive, whilst keeping all the titles and artist info within itunes, so that it acts as a frontline database that points to the external harddrive. I do not feel the need to have any music on my internal harddrive and am happy to only ever be able to access my music with the external hard drive attached.
I have played around with it, but have now managed to have a few bits on the ION, and a few bits in the powerbook and nothing seems to be able to find the other. This creates problems when i then connect my ishuffle, which seems to find nothing.
I hope i've done nothing terminal. Any help?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Thanks for the help. I should point out that there is only one powerbook involved, not 2. Anyway, I have done that and indeed my ION external hardrive shows all the music files, but they are no longer featured in itunes at all. i thought i would see th titles of my library there, but the actual files would be on my external hard drive.
It a mystery! how do i get the titles and artists info back into itunes whilst the actual music stays on the external hard drive?

After clean install of Snow Leopard, Time Machine did not restore all files. When I try to restore these files I get "Not enough disk space" error. What do I need to do to get these important files back onto my Mac from my external hard drive??

After clean install of Snow Leopard, Time Machine did not restore all files. When I try to restore these files I get "Not enough disk space" error. What do I need to do to get these important files back onto my Mac from my external hard drive??

Janet.b wrote:
About 3 years old...pretty dated now I guess. Am thinking I may just need to have it upgraded by a Mac tech.
For what the Apple Store's charge you can buy almost buy a new computer.
Just for giggles I brought my old laptop in for a drive upgrade and asked, they wanted $600 for a drive that only cost $120 at the time and it was a slow 5,400 RPM drive. The new Mac's of a similar make were going for $1000.
I did the drive replacement myself, got a faster drive of better quality for $300 instead.
Then another time I asked for a RAM upgrade from 4GB to 8GB, they wanted to charge $400 + $35 for the labor.
The same RAM is on Crucial.com for $90 and all I need is a 00 micro phillips screwdriver.
So you see what's going on here.
I think what you should do, if your out of warranty/AppleCare, is to call up the local PC tech guy who also does Mac's and have them fix you right up.
They can offer more personalized care which you need. Clone your old drive to the new and everything.
With Apple they are overworked at the Genius Bar and just place roadblocks so you buy a new machine instead.
For instance, all new iMac's now have proprietary drive software installed on the hard drives for heat monitoring. So now the only choice a user has is to bring their iMac into a Apple Store for a very expensive drive upgrade, which a person then decides the money is better spent buying a new machine.

Can you help me with my External Hard Drive?

Hey everyone,
I'm having a big problem with my external hard drives. Firstly, I'll give you all the information I think you might need-
* I'm running on Mac OSX 10.4.11.
* I have the most recent release 13" Macbook and it has plenty of memory left.
* Both my EHD's are made by LACIE. One is 250GB (18 months old) and the other 500GB (2 weeks old).
* Both work perfectly on every other computer I've tried - (2 Macs and 2 Windows).
* Both are formatted as FAT32 because I need to use them on Mac at home and Windows at work.
Now, the problem is every time I mount one of the EHDs on my laptop, they show up on the desktop but when double clicked (or Apple + O 'ed) they cause Finder to have a spaz, with the top white bar disappearing along with everything on my desktop (for about 2s).
What I have *tried so far*-
* Mounting and unmounting the EHDs.
* Turning on and off both EHDs.
* Plugging them in one at a time.
* Restarting the Macbook and plugging them in after it has fully loaded.
* Restarting the Macbook and plugging them in as it loads.
* Creating a new user account to open them in.
* Verifying both EHDs using Disk Utility - both claim to be working properly.
* That trick where you take out the battery and power source, hold down the On button for 5s, then hold Apple + P + R + Option while the Macbook turns back on.
None of these have worked so far. Please help!
Thank you so much in advance,
Joe

Have you tried opening them in a Finder window? Also, you might boot to your Install DVD and launch Disc Utility to verify and repair both permissions and your drive.
Sounds strange. I also have the Lacie 500G - partitioned, but with one being FAT 32 ...works fine for me.

Fubar with my external hard drive and not all Match items will play in iTunes on my Air but will on Apple TV. Any thoughts?

My entire library is on iTunes Match however after a recent fubar with my external hard drive, whilst I can play all my music through Apple TV I can't access it all on my Air. This was the original device used to download. Any thoughts?
There doesn't seem to be a specific period in my purchasing/downloading that this applies to. For instance, Adele 21 album downloaded at the time isn't playing but Skyfall the single is. Emeli Sande new album downloaded when it came out delivers this message: The song “Heaven” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it? Same with Bellowhead which was a physical CD uploaded.
I'm not very technically minded so if anyone can help this poor, frustrated individual I would be very grateful.

When you say "when i double click on my itunes files it just opens up this list of music." it doesn't mean anything to me. You need to explain clearly, remember I only know what you tell me.
I need to understand how you have things set up and if you had you iTunes library database on the external drive or the c: drive. That is the iTunes folder containing iTunes library.itl.
What do you see when you open iTunes on the new PC, are your music files there. If not, every time you play a track it gets added to itUnes so you should at least have some files in your library.
What problem are you trying to solve? Is just getting the tracks into your iTunes library, or are you also concerned about ratings, count and playlists from the old PC. If so do you still have access to the old PC?

How do i transfer all my information from old computer to this one with a external hard drive

how do i tranfer old info from my other computer to the new one with a external hard drive?

Copy what you want from the old computer's Home folder to the external drive. Connect the drive to the new computer and restore that data to the proper locations in the new computer's Home folder.

Sync a folder on my Mac with an external hard drive

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