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.

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When using my external hard drive, the files I put on it still show up on my computer as backups and continue to take up space on my macbook pro. How do i fix this?

I transfer files from my macbook pro to the WD my book for mac and then delete the file off of my computer, but then it just shows up on my macbook pros hard drive in the "backups" category and continues to take up space on my computers hard drive.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
OS X Lion and Mountain Lion create local snapshots if you have Time Machine enabled > http://pondini.org/TM/30.html
As local snapshots are backups in the internal drive, it's normal that the files you transferred are part of them. You can delete the local snapshots by turning off Time Machine in System Preferences > Time Machine, but you don't need to do that. Time Machine will delete them automatically when your hard drive is full

Speeding up Time Capsule when used as external hard drive

I use a Time Capsule as an external "server" that two macs use, both connected via ethernet. We have a second Time Capsule (connected wirelessly) that is used for Time Machine back-ups.
Recently (since upgrading to Mavericks — coincidence?) accessing the files has been getting slow — click on a folder and I have to wait up to a minute (I timed it) to see its contents. This is on iMac (27-inch Mid 2010) running OS X Mavericks (10.9.2). Our newer Mac does display the contents of folders a little quicker, so perhaps it is the Mac, not Time Capsule.
The Time Capsule has 180gb free — could it be too full?
Is there any way of speeding the access to the files up on this Mac, or should I "downgrade" the Mac to Mountain Lion / Lion.
(on a side note OS Mail is desperatly sluggish since upgrading to Mavericks, so perhaps I will have to downgrade...)

You are showing the TC as Gen1 in your profile. Are both TC gen1?
The disk performance of Gen1 is not particularly good. Especially copying a lot of small files.
And the TC was never designed to do what you are using it for.. the spin down for instance is very rapid. On a normal NAS you can control spin down to a more satisfactory balance between speed and power saving.
Sometimes the OS is just slow.
Manually mount the TC drive in the OS.
So in Finder go, connect to server.
Type in the address,
AFP://TCname.local
or if the TC maintains a constant IP.
AFP://TCIPaddress
(Where TCname is the network name of the TC.. or TCIPaddress is its standard IP address. )
Make sure ipv6 is set to link-local in the wireless and ethernet setup of the Mac. But make sure wireless is turned off if you use ethernet. Just having wireless turned on has caused slow transfer in my testing.
I suggest you then do a test copying a single large file (1GB aprox) to the TC.. discount the spin up time.. as drives get old and sticky they take longer and longer to spin up. And see what kind of real transfer speeds you get.. use activity monitor. I would hope you get at least 30-40MByte/s. Less than that something is behaving poorly.. try copying the same file to your other computer. Make sure the ethernet connection is showing gigabit to both.
Mavericks seems to have made a few backward steps and sticking to Lion/Mountain Lion a bit longer may be worthwhile.

I have just started using WD external hard drives, I use it to save my movies and music on. On more than one occasion, when I connect to my MacBook it erases everything on had on there. Can someone please help with this problem?

I have just started using WD external hard drives, I use it to save my movies and music on. On more than one occasion, when I connect it to my MacBook it erases everything I had save on the hard drive. Can someone please help me with this problem? I am super tired of having to put all of my movies and music on the hard drive just to have it erased again. The products I am using are WD 4TB My Book and 2 TB My Passport external hard drives. When it happens, there is always an icon that reads, EFI, along with the My Book icon. Thank you for your assisstance.

dwgar1322 wrote:
I have just started using WD external hard drives, I use it to save my movies and music on. On more than one occasion, when I connect it to my MacBook it erases everything I had save on the hard drive. Can someone please help me with this problem? I am super tired of having to put all of my movies and music on the hard drive just to have it erased again. The products I am using are WD 4TB My Book and 2 TB My Passport external hard drives. When it happens, there is always an icon that reads, EFI, along with the My Book icon. Thank you for your assisstance.
Yes, you have WD software installed REMOVE IT !!
WD has warned its customers about their huge mistake that their software doesnt work on Mavericks and causes data loss.
(also dont use WD drives anymore)
Read all about it here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=255&tstart=0
See their website on removing the destructive WD software here:
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/External-Drives-for-Mac-Exper iencing-Data-Loss-with-Maverick-OS/td-p/613775
Western Digital External Hard Drives Experiencing Data Loss On OS X Mavericks
http://www.cultofmac.com/252826/western-digital-external-hard-drives-experiencin g-data-loss-on-os-x-mavericks/

Want to use an external hard drive for my photos, iMovie, music and documents for use on my MacBookPro and iMac, can I do it and how?

I want to use an external hard drive to store my photos, imovie, music and documents, how can i do....Thanks

There are very good external drives available...I bought one when I got this MBP in September from OWC, http://www.macsales.com they are Mac specialists. Bought their 2 TB Mercury Elite Pro since it was eSATA, Firewire 800/400, and USB interface...use the Firewire 800 now. Partitioned into a 1.5 TB partition for Time Machine backups and 500 GB for extra storage. Both show up on the desktop, you just set the destination for you application to be the external drive volume you want to use.
If you want to discuss further, just ask what you want to know.

When I installed iTunes 11 on a windows 8 system I get the music, but the screen dosn't have te library on the left. The left side of iTunes is the name. I got the songs by using a external hard drive. What have I done wrong?

When I installed iTunes 11 on a Windows 8 system the installation did not seem to work correctly. There is no sidebar and no ribbon w/ File, Edit, etc. I tried to use an external hard drive to move from an older computer using XP to the new one w/ Wdw 8. I thought if I deleted iTunes from the Wdw 8, I could reload it. Apparently I did not delete the music files because they appeared in the format I complained about, no side bar or ribbon. Can anyone walk me through the process of deleting everything and reinstalling? I am not very computer savy so a step by step would really be appreciated.
Thank you,

ctrl B - Show menus
ctrl S - Show sidebar

HT1766 Can you use an external hard drive to back up my movies in iTunes but still be able to access them or is there a device so I don't have to use a pc ??

Can you use an external hard drive to back up my movies in iTunes but still be able to access them or is there a device so I don't have to use a pc ??

You can store them on a separate hard drive, you don't need to keep them on your laptop's hard drive. On your computer's iTunes on the Advanced tab in Edit > Preferences there is a 'copy files to iTunes media file when adding to library' tickbox - if you untick that, you should be able to copy the films to a separate drive and add them back to your iTunes library (File > Add To Library) and it should then point to them on that separate drive and not copy them to your hard drive. When you are happy that it is what is happening and that they are safely on your external drive you can delete the films from your laptop's hard drive.
If you plug the external drive into a different USB port next time (assuming that your laptop has more than one) then it might get a different drive letter, so you might need to always use it with the same port.

Can I use an external hard drive to download and store my iTunes library?

Can I use an external hard drive to download and store my iTunes library?

Yes - in most cases you can just copy your entire library (by default C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes) to your external drive, with the result being a iTunes folder in the root of that drive with a structure like this:
Then hold down SHIFT when you start iTunes, and when you see this prompt:
click on Choose Library..., navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive, and click Open. See turingtest2's user tip on Make a split library portable for more information, including steps you may need to take to align your library structure before moving it to an external drive - this applies if you currently have some/all of the media in your library stored outside the standard iTunes Media folders.

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all. Can someone help?

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all, including the one in question. Can someone help?

Okay, I've sussed it. I saw a link to another discussion that hadn't turned up in any of my searches before I posted the question above.
My Tosh HDD was formatted to FAT 32 and therefore would not be backed up by Time Machine. I removed all data from it - nightmare as I hadn't enough space to put it on the macbook HDD, but, after trawling through numerous photos and deleting rubbish for hours, I finally made enough space and copied all data across. Then, after clearing the data from the Tosh HDD, I used disk utilitity to reformat it to Mackintosh OS Extended. Chose the option without kournalling because I'm not baking up onto this disk and so don't need it - according to some other discussions I found.
When it was done I check on time machine in system prefs and once I selected options, I was able to remove it from the excluded from backups list. Hey presto. Now I'm moving my photo library and my music library onto the Tosh HDD and my macbook should start to breath again. Hurray.

I would like to know if you have to back up a macbook hard drive, can I use a external hard drive that has been previously used to back up several pc 's, or is it best to have a separate external drive for the Mac?

I would like to know if you have to back up a macbook hard drive, can I use a external hard drive that has been previously used to back up several pc 's, or is it best to have a separate external drive for the Mac?

In the Mac side of things, backups usually come in two flavors: clones or incrementals.
A bootable clone is a bit-for-bit copy of all essential files in the startup volume. If using the Lions, clones can be made using CarbonCopyCloner or just plain old Disk Utility. These backups represent the safest protection of your info, but take the longest to do. Recovery is an inverse process: you copy the clone back into the internal drive.
Incremental backups start with a complete backup of the startup volume and only copy whatever changed from the previous run. OS X includes the fully integrated Time Machine backup utility to do this. It is extremely easy to do and takes the least amount of time. Recovery is another matter altogether since you have to start with a freshly installed instance of the OS and have to apply all intervening backups to bring the result to the latest saved version.
As for where the backup takes place, the recommended media is an external dedicated drive or drives connected via the fastest interface available on your Mac: Thunderbolt, USB3, Firewire, or USB2. Network-based backups, wired or wireless, are attractive but may not offer the same performance and hence take longer. Also important to note that the entire drive need not be completely dedicated to a single backup. The Mac's EFI firmware infrastructure allows for an unlimited number of partitions on a hard drive and each can be used for either type of backups.
Holler if you need specifics on how to do each. This was just an executive summary.

Can some please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my Mac

Can someone please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my new Mac. I ended up getting a bunch of duplicates. My old Mac has an older version of iPhoto while the new Mac has iPhoto '11. Is that the cause of the problem? Please advise. Thanks.

Simply copy the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder on the old Machine to the Pictures Folder on the new Machine.
Then launch iPhoto. That's it.
This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.
Regards
TD

Can i use an external hard drive in windows to add additional storage after my initial partition is set up. i want to add a 500 GB hard drive to use with my windows. I set windows up in boot camp with a 50 GB partition?

can i use an external hard drive in windows to add additional storage after my initial partition is set up. i want to add a 500 GB external hard drive to use with my windows. I set windows up in boot camp with a 50 GB partition? I now want to add another 500 GB?

Yes. Windows supports external USB drives.

Can I use one external hard drive for 3 of my Macs?

I have a 2007 white MacBook, a 2011 MacBook Pro, and a 2013 MacBook Air.
I want to be able to transfer all of my precious family photos off of my MacBook and Macbook Pro onto an external hard drive and then wipe those computers clean, and then I want to be able to backup and wipe clean my Macbook Air so that I can update it to Mavericks.
Can I use one external hard drive to do this for three of my Macs? Will it be compatible with all of them? And will I still be able to use the hard drive with my Air once it is updated to Mavericks?
Which hard drive do you recommend?

1. Yes. Note that anything you want to keep should be on at least two drives in case one of them fails.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
(110959)

How can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory?

i don't know if this question has been asked before: how can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory? just like itunes all my song are save on my external hard drive. make sense?

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

I use an external hard drive for my Lightroom library and I notice that all the images shown on there are DNG. On my MAC hard drive I have images shown as NEF. I desperately need to free up space on my hard drive, can I safely delete these NEFs?

I use an external hard drive for my Lightroom library and I notice that all the images shown on there are DNG. On my MAC hard drive I have images shown as NEF. I desperately need to free up space on my hard drive, can I safely delete these NEFs?

dj_paige wrote:
however, I do point out that obtaining an additional hard drive and not throwing anything away seems a preferable solution to me.
heidie22, dj_paige has a very good point there. I would not through away the NEF files; I would archive them to a external drive.
By the way, I am assuming that converting RAW files to DNG is a decision you have made and not an accident.

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

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