Using an iPod with an external hard drive

Is it possible to use an ipod (ie update podcast and songs) in itunes without having to transfer the entire contents onto my mac book pro, and just use an external hard drive?

I don't think there is, because when you download podcasts, music, etc. it goes into you iTunes media folder. So I think the only way to get it on your external hard drive is to transfer. I might be wrong though.

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Can you use your iPod as an external hard drive?

Sorry if this has been posted before . . .
I have a 160GB iPod and like with most people, my iPod is larger than my laptop and subsequently I am running out of free space on my laptop due to all the movies and music.
I’m not so worried about the music, but I would like to remove the burnt movies from my laptop, but leave them on my iPod. Is there any way of using the iPod like an external hard drive? If I delete the movies from my laptop – the iPod tries to Sync and I lose everything?
Thanks in advance,

Thanks Chris,
When I use iTunes through the normal sync window
Devices > Ipod > movies
and select ‘Sync - selected movies’ and tick the ones to sync it removes the un-ticked items from my iPod. If I tick all of them and sync (and the movie has been removed from my hard-drive) it brings up an error message saying ‘the movie or data file cannot be found’.
I would be happy to use iTunes to store the movies, but I think I am missing a step.
Appreciate the help,

HT1229 what is the best method for using a iphoto with an external hard drive for greater capacity?

what is the best method for using a iphoto with an external hard drive for greater capacity?

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

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.

Is it possible to use Time Machine with an external hard drive for two separate computers?

I'm looking to purchase an external hard drive to use as with time machine as a backup for two separate computers. I'm not sure if I should buy 2 EHDs and dedicate one to each computer, or if Time Machine has the capacity to back up both computers separately. Anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks!

You can make two partitions on a single drive and dedicate one to each computer.
The pic is of a single external usb drive with three partitions( a Time Machine and two image backups) for two computers

I want to use elements 11 with an external hard drive and need some help.

I have a macbook pro and was fine using iphoto 09 as my image manager and editor. I soon filled my hard drive and purchased a 1tb external hard drive. I moved my iphoto library to the external drive while keeping iphoto on the macbook. I recently installed elements 11 and was using it as an external editor with iphoto. I began to play around with the organizer and found that I liked it. My question is how do I move my iphoto library to elements 11 organizer while still keeping the photos on the external hard drive.

If you import from iPhoto into Elements Organizer, the files will be copied to your hard disk and all the organization done in iPhoto09 will be carried forward to Organizer catalog. This can be done if you have enough space on your hard disk. However if you want to use Organizer solely + not create duplicate copies of your images, you can import photos directly from the Hard Disk. Ensure to write all metadata to files within iPhoto so that when the same photos are imported into Organizer, the tagging done is brought along.
Thanks
Analeeb

How do you use time capsule with an external hard drive

I would like to use time machine to back up to my external hard drive.
When I tried to set it up it said it would wipe out everthing currently on it to start using it.
I do not want it to wipe our what I have currently have on the hard drive. Any suggestions?
I do have icloud. Can I back up using time machine to that?

Purchase another external drive. Time Machine will only back up to a drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(63322)

Using Time machine with an external hard drive and AEBS???have a

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I have connected to my AEBS by USB. Recently upgraded to Leopard but cannot get time machine to see my hard drive.
The base station is 802.11n.
Is this possible?
Have read a few other threads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks,
T

In addition, when you get Time Machine to be able to see your external drive connected to AEBS, in TM prefs exclude all but one small folder from your hard drive (say, /User/Library) and allow TM to do its initial backup. This will create the sparsebundle (resizable disk image) that TM uses to back up to a network drive.
Then turn off Time Machine, unmount the USB drive and reconnect it directly to your Mac, mount it, set TM prefs to use the sparsebundle that newly-mounted drive, remove previously excluded items from TM's exclusion list, and turn TM back on. TM will then back up everything much more quickly than if connected wirelessly.
After that, you can return the USB drive to the AEBS. Incremental backups take much less time, so the slower connection won't matter as much.

How to back up ITunes/Video Ipod with an external hard drive with Win XP?

How can I create a single file of my entire Itunes "library" so I can move it to an external drive for backup, using Windows XP?

restoring a formatted drive - not sure I'm following you there
but in the future the best way is to reformat the drive, hook up your external hard drive, and then drag and drop those music files back into your my music folder the exact opposite of when you drug them onto your external drive
worst case is you would have to point itunes to that music folder through options

Using iTunes Match with an external hard drive

Hello.
Over the years, my iTunes library has got rather large. Now, I'm about to buy a new MacBook Pro with a smaller SSD than my current hard drive, so in order to make best use of the space, I'm going to move my iTunes library to an external drive.
The plan is to have this drive connected to my home braodband router, and available wirelssly on ymhome network. That means whenever I'm at home, my library will be available to me, and I can sync whatever I like to my iOS devices etc.
When I'm on the move, I'd like to have access to my music, so I have subscribed to iTunes Match which is working well. My iPhone and iPad stream my music no problem.
My question is about how this will work on my new computer. The ideal situation for me would be that when I am at home with my external drive accessible via my home network, that I can play my media content locally within iTunes. When the drive is not connected (because it is off, or I am away from home) will the computer realise the music library is unavailable, and allow me to stream via iTunes Match?
Will this setup confuse the use of iTunes Match on my computer when I'm away from home?
Any advice on how to best set this up would be appreciated!

Hi,
You will need two itunes libraries, one giving you access to your external drive and the other to allow you to stream your music.
When you get your new Macbook you can create an new blank library which will let you access your music in the cloud - see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589.
You would use same procedure to reconnect to your main liabrary on the external drive.
Jim

I am using Time machine with an external hard drive...

for the first 6 months it was working great no problem...now the time machine logo in the top right of the desktop just keeps spinning constently..i stop it manually and starts again and doesnt stop until i do. Botht eh hard drive and the iMac have been restarted. any thoughts? Thanks

Why would what matter?
You can look here for possible alternatives if you prefer:
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Using Time Machine with two external hard drives

Hi. I use Time Machine to back up the hard disk on my MacBook Pro onto a Western Digital external drive. For secure storage of family photos and things we don't want to lose, I would like to do the following:
For a week or two, back up my MacBook Pro onto a Western Digital drive. Let's call this WD Drive 1. Then walk downstairs and put WD Drive 1 in a fireproof safe. For the next week or two, back up my MacBook Pro onto a different Western Digital drive. Let's call this WD Drive 2. Then put WD Drive 2 in the safe, take out WD Drive 1, and use WD Drive 1 as the back-up medium for the next week or two. Then keep alternating between WD Drive 1 and WD Drive 2 every couple weeks. This way, I will always have up an to date back-up on the WD drive that is connected to the MacBook Pro, and I also will have a two-week old back-up on the WD drive in the safe in case of a fire or something.
Can Time Machine be used in this manner, alternating between two different external back-up disks? Will Time Machine "know" when I change external drives and manage all back-up files appropriately?
Thank you!

pomme4moi wrote:
Can Time Machine be used in this manner, alternating between two different external back-up disks? Will Time Machine "know" when I change external drives and manage all back-up files appropriately?
Yes. Each drive will have an independent set of backups; and each will be a complete "snapshot" of the way your system looked at the time of the backup.
When you swap drives, the first backup will be somewhat longer, and may involve a "deep traversal," while Time Machine "catches up" with all the changes since the last backup to that drive.
And try not to go too long between swaps; it's undocumented, so we don't know the exact parameters, but after at least 10 days (apparently), Time Machine may do a new, full backup instead of an incremental one of changes only.
And you only need to worry about Time Machine deleting old backups if you've deleted the originals from your system; TM will never delete the backups of anything that's still there.
But . . .
As MusicWind says, thats' probably not the best strategy. One of the reasons you want dual backups is because no hardware is perfect -- it all fails, sooner or later, right? Similarly, no app is perfect, either. The "works" of Time Machine are more complex than most backup apps; it's pretty reliable, but if you're going to have dual backups, you're probably a bit safer with a different app for your secondary backups.
I don't know about SuperDuper, but CarbonCopyCloner does have an "archive" feature, where it will keep copies of things you've deleted. I've never used it, so don't know just how it works.
Also see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.
p.s.: Don't try copying Time Machine's dated folders; you'll get a complete copy of your entire system.

Using time machine with 2 external hard drives

I am setting up time machine for the first time on my iMac.I have two external HD's - one with all of my files saved onto (HD #1), and then one that is empty that I'm hoping to use as my backup drive (HD #2).
Is there a way to set up time machine so it backs up the content from one external HD (HD #1) to the other external HD (HD #2)? Or will time machine only back up the files on the actual computer's HD and not an external one?
Any advice is much appreciated!

Time Machine will backup all external HD's (that aren't a TM drive) connected to the computer. If you want to exclude those drives or files or folders you simply select them in the TM preferences.
For example I have an external HD connected to my iMac that has all my photos, movies and music. I have a second drive also connected that is my Time Machine Drive and I also have a third drive connected that is my Bootable Clone. I have excluded the Bootable Clone from my Time Machine backups for obvious reasons however allow the drive that has the photos, movies and music to be backed up on TM.
Kathryn I'd recommend reading Pondini's TM FAQ which is located in the Time Machine Forum. The URL for the FAQ is:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018
Roger

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

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there.

Using an iPod with an external hard drive

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