Western Digital USB3 external hard drive (attached to new MBP Retina) seems to randomly "eject" itself when I'm trying to back it up via time machine. When this happens, I can't even shut my machine down properly. Ideas?

The backup process will run for sometimes 30 minutes or more. But, it's as if, at some point, the drive just can't be found. I get the message "this drive was ejected improperly". When this happens: my machine won't shut down, disk utility won't run. I have to press and hold the power button to force a shut down. Any ideas what's going on here? A MBP Retina issue? A USB3 issue? A western digital issue (although this drive has been functioning fine on old MBP)?
Thanks!

When you say that you've applied the latest 'patch,' I'm assuming that you mean the latest (July 18) software update for mid-2012 models? It was supposed to address some of the problems with the USB 3.0 ports. I don't think that, in most cases, it's a problem with the drives themselves (USB 2 or 3), rather it seems to be a port problem.
If it wasn't fixed for you using the July 18 Software Update the only thing I can recommend at this point is to see if Mountain Lion - soon to be released - will be able to fix the problems. If not, I would take your unit back to the Apple Store and let them know that you are continuing to have problems with the USB 3.0 ports. They may offer to switch out your logic board, etc.
Good luck,
Clinton

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Cannot Erase/Format External Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive

I have a brand new Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive that I would like to use for SuperDuper clone backup. I am attempting to format the disk for Mac-OS Extended first.
When I connect the HD to my MBP via USB, an error message pops up saying "Disk Insertion - The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I then enter Disk Utility. The Western Digital HD is shown in the left pane as a 596.2 GB External Media. The Volume Format is shown as MS-DOS (FAT).
I attempted to erase/format for Mac-OS Extended (Journaled). Selecting the volume in the left pane and then clicking erase returns the error message "Disk Erase Failed with the error: File System Formatter Failed." Just for kicks I tried to erase/format for regular Mac-OS Extended, same result. It will let me erase/format for MS-DOS (FAT), but that's how it's already formatted and doesn't help me.
I tried to erase/format on my wife's MBP, exact same results. Am I doing something wrong or do I have a problem with the external hard drive?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Barry

Thanks for the feedback. Good computing and welcome to the Mac world. Since you're new, see these:
Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac,
Mac 101: Mac Essentials,
Anatomy of a Mac,
MacFixIt Tutorials,
MacTips, and
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition.
Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:
Quick Assist.
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides,
Take Control E-books, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

IPhoto on External Hard Drive Attached to Time Capsule

Hi,
I can't seem to find the answer to this question on any of the forums.
I currently have a Mac Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. I have two iPhoto libraries, one on my MacBook Pro and one on my Mac Mini. I use the Pro as my primary library for editing the photo's and then using a USB stick transfer the photo's to my Mac Mini which is attached to my television as I use it as a media centre.
What I want to do is have just the one library which can be displayed on my Mac Mini and editied using my two laptops.
I am thinking of using an External Hard Drive attached to my Time Capsule and then use this to store one iPhoto library that I can access on the network on all three of my computers.
Is this possible to do?

I read your question a while ago and since nobody has jumped in .. let me have a go..
Yes, I should say it is possible to have your iphoto library on the TC.
It is older post but still should work.
http://gigaom.com/apple/using-time-capsule-as-a-media-drive/
Second point... don't do it.
Here is why..
1. Extremely slow. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/7
Much worse than the internal drive.
2. More importantly .. there is zero backup. If you do want to backup, you have to drag the files off the USB disk, across the network and back onto a drive connected to your computer.. Net gain.. zero.. you still have to have a disk connected to a computer.
Use the Mac Mini, a drive connected by firewire is hugely faster. Even usb drive direct from the computer over the network is faster.
And you can set it to backup via Time Machine. Remember all files on single hard disk will one day be lost.. get ready for that day.

I have a tesco router and an external hard drive attached to it as a network drive (shared) for my macbook and MB-Air. Have no problems with my MB accessing it, but with MB-AIR it says - 'the version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supp

I have a tesco router and an external hard drive attached to it as a network drive (shared) for my macbook and MB-Air. Have no problems with my MB accessing it, but with MB-AIR it says - 'the version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supported. pls contact your system administrator to resolve the problem'. MB-Air uses maverick downloaded yesterday - upgrade from mountain lion. MB uses snow leopard still, as i am quite used to it and am thinking of upgrade if mavericks work fine on air. Also have parallel on snow leopard but it is no longer supported according to mac website - if i upgrade am i going to lose my parallel and will have to buy a new one!!!

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?

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

In addition to Kappy's comments, the external drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in order for Time Machine to be able to back it up.

How do I access an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme using the Finder's "Go to the folder" feature?

How do I access an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme using the Finder's "Go to the folder" feature?
I have an external hard drive attached to my Airport Extreme and I can access it just fine through Finder. I would like to be able to keyboard navigate to it in an efficient manner. I tried to use the "Go to the folder" feature but was unable to.
I had tried dragging the drive to the Network folder but the shortcut it created does not lead to the drive's contents...it seems to lead right back to the parent directory:
I hope I explained the question well. Thank you for all of your help and time in tending to my inquiry.

Cant you set up "back to my mac" then go to finder preferences and put a check mark under everything under the shared location. Also set up back to my mac on your airport extreme.

FCE rendering with Western Edition MyBook External Hard Drive

So i am having some difficulty with this project i am working on (i am learning as i go) and was wondering if anyone can shed some light...
Ok, so i am using final cut express to edit video footage. I uploaded about 2 1/2 hours worth of HD footage into my hard drive and realized that it took up pretty much all of my memory...
So i bought a Western Edition MyBook external hard drive and i imported all of my files into it and that cleared up my memory on my labtop.....
But now, when i try rendering the movie in order to turn it into a DVD, instead of the render file going to the hard drive, it seems that its still going to my computer's hard drive. I mean, the quicktime movie logo shows up on the external hard drive, but each time i check my computer's hard drive, the GB keeps lowering instead of the external hard drive. I dont know if this is normal or not. Does this make sense????
If you think i am doing this right or wrong please let me know....I appreciate any help!!!Thanks.....

Hi
And Your external hard disk are.
• a FireWire one - USB/USB2 performs badly
• Mac OS Extended formatted - Mac OS Exchange/UNIX/DOS/Fat32 Doesn't work OK
Yours Bengt W

Format for external hard drive attached to Time Capsule

What format should I used for an external hard drive attached to my Time Capsule that will allow both my Mac and PCs to read and write to it?

It should be HFS+.. it may work with fat32 but that is a lousy format.
The actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. the TC offers SMB connection.. so it is a true file sharing device.. the format used to store the files cannot be directly read by windows but is "interpreted, translated" via the firmware of the TC.
BTW this is true of all network storage.. A NAS can store files in whatever format its OS requires.. freebsd like freenas might use XFS.. or linux use EXT2 or REISFS.. it makes no difference as long as it offers that store to the windows (and apple) network as SMB.. then windows can handle it.

After formatting Western Digital 4 TB hard drive to Mac OS extended (Journaled) 1.11 TB of space has been used. Number of folders 11 number of files 59. I am running lion Is this a normal use of space?

After formatting Western Digital 4 TB hard drive to Mac OS extended (Journaled), 1.11 TB of space has been used.
Number of folders 11. Number of files 59.
I am running lion10.7
Is this a normal use of space?

Wait.... can the BIOS on your machine support greater than 3TB?
Most cannot.
4TB drives, from what I've read, require an all new drive controller. As older drive controllers would max out at 3TB's.

Have old MacBook Pro running tiger 10.4 want to save date to external hard drive and buy newer MacBook and still use same drive. Any suggestions, most WD drives say nothing about os tiger 10.4.

Have old MacBook Pro running tiger 10.4 want to save date to external hard drive and buy newer MacBook and still use same drive. Any suggestions, most WD drives say nothing about os tiger 10.4. The OS compatibility is much newer on the data. Totally confused. Not a computer person.

I haven't checked reviews recently but there's a difference between bare drives and drives with enclosures. Western Digital made some of the most reliable drives last time I checked, though the enclosures weren't all that great. It is convenient to get both in one package but I usually buy a highly rated enclosure and then put a highly rated drive in it myself. OWC sells some good enclosures but if they put a so-so drive inside of it then the package is only as good as its weakest component. If you get a package from them, ask them what drive is inside (some vendors have no idea what's inside - went to an Apple Store recently and they couldn't tell me what was inside some of their Apple brand enclosures). My first thought if buying a new drive would be to buy a OWC enclosure with a WD drive, but chek around because I may be out of date.
10 years ago Seagate was one of the best drives. Now they rate poorly in reviews.

How can I transfer Itunes from external hard drive to a new computer?

Hello,
I had a Dell laptop with Windows XP on it recently crash, but I have everything saved to a Seamagine external 1 terabyte hard drive. I have about 250 gigabytes of media on it, mostly CD's and audiobooks. The setup I had on the XP computer was my Itunes folder saved on the C drive, but I kept all the actual music and audiobooks on the external hard drive, which was labeled the F drive.
After the crash, a relative sold me their three year old Compaq laptop, with Windows 7 instead of XP as the OS. My relative already had Itunes downloaded on it, but when I opened the Itunes on the new (new to me) laptop, Itunes only recognized their (my relative's) account. So, I uninstalled their Itunes and then I re-downloaded Itunes for 64-bit Windows 7. I then opened the Windows Explorer folder so to drag and drop my backed up Itunes folder and library information from the old C drive to the new Itunes folder in the new C drive. But, it wouldn't do anything. It still wanted the password info from my relative's account. It wouldn't recognize my account, even though I had uninstalled and then reinstalled a newer version of Itunes. Dragging and dropping my backed-up Itunes folder from my external hard drive to the new C drive didn't work because it said it didn't have certain permissions or something like that. I think I might have downloaded a newer version of Itunes, different from what I had saved a couple of days ago, which might be one of the problems here, not to mention that I switched OS's from XP to Windows 7.
When I plugged the external hard drive USB into the new laptop no Seamagine manager came up for user-friendly accessibility. I didn't know what to do, so I installed Seagate Dashboard onto the new computer. It didn't do anything for me either. No problem, I thought, I'll just use Windows Explorer to move the Itunes library, and then once I transfer (i.e., drag and drop) the old Itunes folder to the one, all will be as it was. I could then direct my Itunes account to use my external hard drive as the media source folder. I was wrong. It won't let me do that either. It says I don't have permission to do it.
How c an I get my old Itunes library info onto the C drive of this new computer, but keep the 250GB of media files on the external hard drive, just like the setup I had on the old laptop before it crashed? If you can help me, then you will be my hero. I'm scared to death that I've lost my library info and afraid to mess with it too much more for fear of erasing it or, worse, losing the 250 GB of media that is on the external hard drive, which has taken me a tremendous amount of time and money to compile. It is, in effect, irreplaceable. I'm very worried and frustrated. I've been working on this for days, to no avail. You're my last hope. Thank you.

Hmm, I think we should start over...
Here are the typical layouts for the iTunes folders:
In the image above the red outline denotes the "media folder", that is the folder listed under Edit > Preferences > Advanced. In the standard layout where the "media folder" is inside the "library folder" the iTunes library has the advantage of being self-contained and portable. Since you've lost the "library folder" from your old computer you're going to have to start over so you might as well get organized properly.
If the folder curently holding your media files is called G:\iTunes then rename it as G:\Media.
The support doc How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one explains how to create a new iTunes library where you want it. In short click the icon to start iTunes and immediately press and hold down the shift key. Keep holding until asked to choose or create a library, click Create and browse to G:\, make sure the folder is going to be called iTunes and click save.
Move the folder that actually holds the media inside the folder G:\iTunes\iTunes Media. We're going to let iTunes reorganize everything (unless you have a collection of .wav files in which case stop and tell me because they require a different approach).
Use File > Add folder to library and select the folder G:\iTunes\iTunes Media. iTunes will search through the whole series of subfolders adding all media files into the library and reorganizing them into the correct artist & album folders.
Again, for data security, you really ought to obtain a second external drive at some point and backup your library to it. Only having one copy, as you have found, leaves you vulnerable to failure. External drives are no less prone to it.
A) Windows uses \ as a folder separator in path descriptions, Mac uses /.
B) Do you have a backup of the iTunes folder that was on drive C:\ or are you simply referring to the location of your media as a "backup" when it really the only copy? If you have a backup copy of your "original" iTunes library you could move/copy that to G:\iTunes shift-start-iTunes to open it, and then I can offer tools or techniques for fixing the links that will be broken becuase the drive letter has changed.
C) Use Store > Sign out and then Store > Sign in to sign into your iTunes account. You will also need to use Store > Authorize the computer to allow playback and transfer of any protected content. If your new library contains protected content from any other accounts then you will have to authorize the computer for those too.
tt2

HT201250 How can I migrate a Time Machine backup from an external hard drive to a new TimeCapsuls?

I just got a 2TB Time Capsule. I want to migrate my time machine backups on an external hard drive to the new Time Capsule. I have about 430Gb of files to back up; I don't want to wait 7-8 days for the backup, unless I have to. I am using OS 10.7.5 (forget which cat that is). I have mounted the TC drive as 10.0.1.1; I tried to drag and drop from old to "data" on TC, but I get the error "The volume is the wrong format for a backup." Any ideas how I can move my old files to the new, and bypass creating a brand new backup file?
Thanks.

Rather than do that, which means starting over from scratch, losing all your edits, organisation and so on, why not simply use iPhoto Library Manager to revert the Library to the older version? Easier, less destructive.
The instructions on that are here
If you really want to start over: you can access the Originals folder simply by going to your Pictures Folder and finding the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

Moving Content to External Hard Drive and Using New Computers

Before doing this, I want to make sure I know how to do all of it:
We are going to buy two new laptops, and retire the old one. I want to move all of my iTunes content from the old laptop to an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme. I then want to be able to share the content between the two computers. I know how to do this, and plan to move the library data base files to the external hard drive, as well.
However, I also want to be able to continue synching all of the content to the Apple TV. To what should the Apple TV be synched after the content is moved to the external hard-drive and the old computer is replaced by two new computers? How is that done under the circumstances? And, in the meantime, will the Apple TV lose all of its content and need to be re-synched entirely from scratch, or will it continue recognizing the current iTunes library as moved to the external hard drive?
Thanks!

This is an option, although as a note of caution; depending on how regularly you modify your library this could become a little bit of a chore. The option is likely a good one in many cases but not all.
In my own case I considered using an old mac as my media server in the sense mentioned by tmartine. (I do a bit of experimental stuff and need to restart my mac quite often, I also have 5 Apple tv's and a library which is too large to do anything but stream, my family don't take too kindly to my frequent restarts and I find myself waiting until the early hours).
However I also modify my itunes library on a daily basis, I buy quite a bit of stuff and also add my own movies regularly, as well as make several recordings a day through my eyetv, all this new content would need to be manually added to my (server) library (and deleted manually), I felt this would be too many extra things for me to do and so my personal preference is to have my itunes library on my main computer as the primary library.

I just bought a mac mini over the weekend. I saved items from my old G4 to an external hard drive. I go to plug in the external hard drive and the new computer is not recognizing it. Help.

I just bought a mac mini over the weekend. I saved items from my old G4 to an external hard drive. I go to plug in the external hard drive and the new computer is not recognizing it. Help.
Here is the information I have. The external hard drive is a 120GB Acomdata. It has both USB and Firewire. When I go to plug in to the mac mini through USB, it is not being recognized. When I switch to Firewire on the old computer I can see it, however when I go to USB it is not being recognized (even on the old computer).
I'm at a loss as to what to do. Any advice would be helpful.

Shalese wrote:
Have you ever tried the FW 400 to 800 adapter?
I have used them on multiple occasions and they work just fine.
Try this (maybe you already have):
-Boot Mini with drive disconnected.
-Do not connect drive but turn it on
-wait a few seconds for drive to spin up
-plug cable into the Mini then into drive.
This is an old drive and may have some timing
issues.
I had an Acomdata drive a long time ago. It
worked fine with FW but USB was flakey.

How do I replace my old external hard drive with a new larger external hard drive and move my music so itunes can find it?

How do I move music from an old external hard drive to a new external hard drive and have itunes find it?

If you have a time machine back up of your current drive you can do this
Shut down your computer, install the new drive. While the computer is off plug in the external hard drive that you have your time machine back up on. Hold Option key while the computer turnes on, let go of the option key once you get a grey screen. Shortly after you'll see a list of bootable drives, select the one that has your time machine back up on it and boot into that drive.
From there go into disk utility, format your new drive too, osx extended journaled ( I think, double check that, its been awhile since ive had to do this), hit format
Exit disk utility and then you can use time machine to copy all your exisit data to the new hhd and then your pretty much done.
There is also a program called Carbon Cloner that will do esentially the same thing however I've never uesed it.

Western Digital USB3 external hard drive (attached to new MBP Retina) seems to randomly "eject" itself when I'm trying to back it up via time machine. When this happens, I can't even shut my machine down properly. Ideas?

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