Use an external hard disc

I have a Macbook white with 120GB internal hard disk. I also have an external hard disc (Lacie 500GB).
I don't want to use all the Macbooks internal hard disc space to store all my music and photo's on...How can I use my Lacie 500GB as an external disc to put photo's and music on?
I also want to make a backup of the Macbook every now and then (time machine). Can I use the external Hard disc for that and can I still also use it to put music and photo's on?
Message was edited by: Jaap74

With respect to keeping your music/video library on an external drive, I know that is completely possible, but as I have not done so, I'm not the person to respond to that issue... but I'm sure someone will.
With respect to using your external drive for TimeMachine and external storage, you will need to create at least two partitions using Disk Utility to do so. TimeMachine needs its own dedicated drive or its own dedicated partition on a drive. Basically, TimeMachine will consume as much space as it has available (either consuming an entire drive if it is dedicated or an entire partition on a drive). If you breakdown your external drive into at least two partitions, you can dedicate one to TimeMachine and the other to whatever you like. Remember that your TimeMachine partition should be at least as large as your internal drive... but dedicating more space will allow you to go further back "in time". If you have a 500GB external and your internal is 120GB... dedicating half your external drive should be fine for your TimeMachine backup. Note that you may become unhappy with your 120GB internal drive at some point and decide to upgrade to a larger one. You should take that possibility into consideration as changing the partition sizes later, while fairly easy... can be problematic if your second partition is close to full.

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Using an external hard drive (HD), on a network, as a scratch disc?

I am weighing my options on creating a wireless network around an external HD. My macbook pro is getting full and I am going to do a spring cleaning and get everything in order. I pretty much know how I want to do it but I am wondering if I can use an external hard drive as a scratch disc, wirelessly?
Thanks in advance,
Howi

Nevermind. This answered my question: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-610667.html
Howi

I am unable to transfer my pictures from iphoto after editing back to my external hard disc. How do I do it. Previously I used Windows and this is the first time I am using a Macbook. Need help and tutorials.. Where can I find em..

Hi there, I am new to Apple Iphoto. I am having lots of problems in transferring my edited photos back to my external Hard disc after editing. How am I able to do it. will it be able to open in Windows OS... Previously I was using Windows and now i m new in using the Apple OS.. Need guidance.. Would really appreciate if any1 of u guys could help me through. are there any other applications that I could use to edit pictures.

Best if you try and explain what you are trying to acheive.
Iphoto is a different paradigm than you're used to. I don't understand why you are trying to transfer your edited photos back to an external disk.
There are tutorials here
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/photos/
Regards
TD

Can I transfer the photos from mac to external hard disc which is used for pc too

can I transfer the photos from mac to external hard disc which is used for pc too

A FAT32 drive can't store files which are 4GB or larger. You need to reformat or repartition the drive to include an exFAT, NTFS, or Mac OS Extended volume, or use a different drive, or use a way other than an external drive to transfer it.
(105483)

I use Time Machine with an external hard disc which has worked perfectly for some years. Recently Time Machine has aborted backups if the screen saver starts when back-up is in progress. I use a Maxtor OneTouch4 back-up system. Any ideas?

I use Time Machine with an external hard disc which has worked perfectly for some years. Recently Time Machine has aborted backups if the screen saver starts when back-up is in progress. I use a Maxtor OneTouch4 back-up system. Any ideas?
Has Apple recently up-dated my OS (Lion) such that every time the screen saver starts it disables Time Machine. I have to switch-off the computer and re-start in order to undertake a back-up. I have now switched of all screen savers.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)

Using old imac hard disc drive as external drive

Can an old imac hard disc drive be installed into an external hard disc case and be connected via USB to a new imac computer.
The hard drive is from a 2nd generation G5 imac that the logic board has died.

Yes, it certainly can, but you realize that you can't boot a PPC iMac from a USB drive, only a firewire one. If your new computer is an intel, it will boot without a problem.

Restoring using an external hard drive help

Ok so.. ive recnelty received my mac back from apple, after javing the hd replaced. To prevent the loss of all of my stuff i bought an external hd and used this as my time machine backup, so now its all on my external hard drive. The problem ive got is that ive got no idea how to restore my mac using the extermal hard drive so its like it was before it was sent off. ive been told one option is to launch my mac in recovery mode and choose to restore using. my external hard drive there. however i cant access recovery mode because i have a wireless keyboard, and the only wired keyboard i have is a windows one. also, to make matters worse, i cant use any discs because my optical drive is broken, so until i receive my extermal one, discs are also out. of the option.
any other ways to do it?
thanks!

RomeoVersace wrote:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4889?viewlocale=en_US
Try this, your going to be using a program called Migration Assistant to restore data from a different computer's Time Machine. Your computer is a different computer now because of the new Hard Drive, so instead of entirely recovering the Operating System, this will save time and data by allowing you to choose individually what you want to restore and what you don't want to.
Do not use Migration Assistant, instead you will use Setup Assistant (which starts automatically when you first start your Mac) if you already started you Mac and added a user then you will have to use MA, but you will need to remove a user afterwards.

User account on external hard disc frequently gets corrupted - reasons?

Dear all,
I have recently written a question regarding a problem with my user account; in this question I have described that I have my data for my user account on an external hard disc (USB2 hard disc), and that all data in this account seemed to be deleted one day (in fact, it was simply set to a wrong path, see below); user V.K. has helped me out of the problem - the problem could be solved by renaming the external hard disc and setting the path to my user data folder in the "user account" settings to my old folder on the renamed disc; You can find our discussions here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1513799&tstart=0 By the way, I use OS X 10.5 (newest version).
Now, several months later I find myself in the situation that the problem returns frequently, although I do not yet see regularities or the reason; each time the described renaming-procedure helps, but anyway it is annoying, and some programs who have data on my user account folder (such as Linotype FontExplorer X - latest version!) even fail to notice the change and have to be very reset with lot of effort.
Now, as I can not imagine that I am the only one who uses a user account on an external drive, I start wondering what am I doing wrong. Did anybody else ever experience problems like these? Does it also occur when the user account is stored in a network (on a server) - which must be a very common workplace setup? Is there anything known about the reasons?
I do not understand what causes this problem; and also, the problem seems to be very intricate - I do not know enough about the internals of Mac OS X, but (if You look into my old post cited above), if You simply try to reset the user path in the user account settings to the folder on the NOT renamed disc, the account stops to work completely, and the user cannot log into it at all; somehow, there seem to be different "stages" of corruption of the account on the external drive - I think that this may help somebody with detailled knowledge to understand the problem, but I am out of the game here... also, all the old names of the external drive keep to be mounted in the "Volumes"-folder on Macintosh HD - although they don't exist anymore.
I have formatted the external drive to "Mac OS Extended"; is this okay - or should it better be formatted to "Journaled"? The drive is a 500 GB external drive from LaCie - I think it should be okay (I have two of them - one for TimeMachine - the drives themselves work reliably, it appears).
Is there anybody who can help - or anybody with a similar setup and who could tell me whether or not he ever experienced a similar problem, and what he did against it (if necessary)? Thanks in advance!!!
With kind regards and greetings from Berlin,
Björn

Aside from starting over, losing whatever you've done on the new machine, see Pondini's Transferring files from one User Account to another. If you haven't done much and can afford to lose that data, I suggest starting over, following the steps in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide. That should result in just one user account.

How can I boot from my recovery dvd to reach the system recovery C: on a extern hard disc

I think a have a virus in my notebook Pavilion 15 and want to restore my C partition with a system back up. I made this system back up a month ago and it is stored on a extern hard disc. I have also made a recovery dvd. How can I boot my notebook from my dvd to start the procedure? I have 2 partions on my notebook. The second partition contains My Documents.
Thanks in advance.
Tineke

It is unlikely that the back-up of the system recovery, that you have stored on an external drive, will be useful in recovering your computer. Please see HP PCs - Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 8), for instructions on using the HP Recovery Disc set your created earlier. Typically, the disc set is 4 to 6 DVDs.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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External Hard Disc won't show

My iMac hard disc is getting full so I bought an external hard disk. I changed my iTunes folder over to the external hard disc without any trouble and removed the old iTunes music folder as per directions. After that iTunes played fine, the next day when I turned on my iMac the iTunes music folder had reverted back to my iMac's hard disk, and the external hard disk no longer shows. I opened Disk Utility and the external disk shows there but when I try verify disk or repair disk i get "FIRST AID FAILED, Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
Can anyone help, i have moved other data to the external drive also and its no lonfer in my iMac hard disk meaning if I have to send the external disk away for looking at I'll likely lose everything on it.

I think what you need to do is get a second external hard disk to attempt to recover data off that drive before you do anything else by using Subrosasoft Filesalvage to do the recovery.
External drives are best used as backup. If your itnernal hard drive is becoming too full, you need to know how to better manage your data, or get a larger internal hard drive. My FAQs* here should help you:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Good luck!
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

External hard disc not recognized

I have been using a WD external hard disc with Time Machine. Today I had it plugged into a USB powered hub when the house electrical power briefly went off then on, twice. A message appeared stating that device was removed incorrectly (or words to that effect). Now the HD does not appear on the desktop. It is recognized in "about this computer" as a USB device. It is not recognized in disc utility and thus can not be mounted.
All suggestions appreciated.

Answered my own question. Working now. Connected directly to computer USB and ignored it for a couple of hours and now it is visible on the desktop and appears to be working.

Time Capsule and external Hard Disc

Hi,
I have a problem with my Time Capsule (1 TB) and External Hard Disc (1 TB). The external HD is connected via USB. The idea is to have use the device as a shared HD in my network. First it worked perfect. After upgrading to Snow Leopard i have following problem.
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
Can anybody help?
Thank you.

Emma1609 wrote:
Hi,
hi emma, and welcome to discussions
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
you could try a power cycle on your devices. turn off modem, TC, and HD for, say, 10 minutes. turn the modem back on for 2 minutes, followed by the HD, followed by the TC.
then go airport utility > manual setup > disks. see if your HD is showing beneath the TC

When using as External Hard Drive: can I install programs?

Is it possible to install a program to the iPod when it's being used an external hard drive? I just thought of this, because I was wondering if it would help me conserve disk space. So long as I kept it connected to the computer, would the program still work?

Possibly, but will reduce space usable for media playable by iPod. If it will be for use as external hard drive exclusively there shouldn't be an issue. You could get higher capacity discs in external enclosures for about the same size though.

I am not able to use my external hard drive with my Mac.

I am not able to use my external hard drive with my Mac. It was initially used with my Windows 7 laptop. Now when I insert my Hard drive in the Mac, it doesn't allow me to delete, format, make folders or copy new files on to my hard drive. I no longer have a Windows PC and am stuck. I tried going to Disc utilities,selected my HD, clicked on Erase and then changed the Format type to MS-DOS (FAT) but no luck .. Any other steps or advice?

It was likely formatted in NTFS which is readable by the Mac, but not writeable.
You should be able to reformat the disk in Disk Utility.
After having copied all the data off of it, you can try re-partitioning it.
Select the hard drive in the disk list in Disk Utility. Hard drives are the device itself, are left-aligned in the list, and are usually named with the manufacturer, size, and model number.
Click on the Partition tab.
Select 1-partition from the partition menu.
Click the Options button and set to GUID
Set the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Give the Volume a name and click Apply.

Running iTunes from an external hard disc, deleting songs on local disc

I've moved my iTunes library to an external hard disc, so I could free up room on my Macbook Air. Everything seemed fine, so as a test, I deleted 1 song from the iTunes media file on my Air, and then tried to play it from the external disc.
I get the "original file could not be found" message. The preferences in iTunes point to the external drive, and the song is there. I get find the individual file, but that's clearly not going to be a good solution for ALL my music!
What should I do? The only advice I find online is to go to preferences, advanced, find the external hard drive and click OK, but that's all be done!

You have to move the library database too, or you have to use a method for just moving media. Unless you know the details of how iTunes works I would move it all otherwise you are more likely to encounter issues such as the one you are seeing and won't know how to resolve them.
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 - Basically what ChrisCA recommends
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449 - moving just media but leaving all else on your main drive.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
Image of iTunes folder structure Dec. 2011 - https://discussions.apple.com/message/16923545
see also:
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/13025536 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17457605

Use an external hard disc

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