Which external harddrive?

I'm looking at buying an external harddrive for my macbook which and wanted to ask a couple of questions. firstly if i have a bus powered external harddrive will it become a drain on my macbook if the macbook itself is plugged in and secondly can anyone recommend a good external hardrive. i use mainly audio recording and producing software so i'd prefer a fast drive of 7200rpm, usb2 connected and if someone knows of one that can be both bus powered with the option of plugging it into the mains would be great. thanks in advance for anyone who can offer some good tips.

bus powered drives will only be 2.5" hard drives, which have a max capacity of 160GB, the tradeoff is the 5,400RPM. 2.5" drives only come in 100GB max for the 7,200RPM models.
Bus powered drives do drain the power out of your macbook, but if your computer is plugged in thats not an issue. theyre easier to travel with because its just one cable. since your macbook has firewire, its probably best to just go with that anyway, since it has better data transfer.
if youre looking for higher capacity and still have the 7,200RPM youll have to go with a 3.5" SATA drive. you arent obligated to get one of the prebuilt external drives. you can get a good drive enclosure from otherworldcomputing.com and get any 3.5" hard drive you wish to install. you can do likewise for 2.5" models.
i dont recall external drives that allow you to use both bus and AC power or either one. it may exist, but i dont think it does.
LaCie makes good external portable hard drives. they have both USB and Firewire versions and have a 7,200RPM spindle speed. but again youre only going to find 100GB as your max capacity. the Firelite external drive is pretty good too, and it too has USB. i think both are available in the apple store online. but you can find tons of other things on OtherWorldComputing.com

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Which external harddrive best for huge FCP video project?

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dropped frames, fyi, are on playback only. It doesn't mean you are losing frames in your files or in your sequences. It's not necessarily the drive speed causing the dropped frames. Sometimes it's just the inability for FCP to process the frames fast enough, which is processor based, not drive based, and has a lot to do with filters, transitions, and the like. You can turn off the dropped frames warning in the User Prefs.
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Which External Harddrive should I buy for my Macbook Pro

Hi,
I am looking to buy an Extenrnal Harddrive fro my Macbook Pro, so that I can use Tiem machine and backup all my photos, files etc..
I have been looking at a 2TB and a 3TB one...
Does it make any difference abouthe USB 2.0 and 3.0? Does my Macbook Pro ( 2011) have a USB 3.0 outlet?
Excuse my ignorance..
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No worries! Your MacBook Pro does not have a USB 3.0 outlet. Only the macbook Pro with retina display has USB 3.0 outlets. It would not matter since all USB 3.0 devices work with with 2.0. I would not worry about the compatibility. If you want to use time machine only, buy a time capsule from Apple.com. If you want to use it for other storage stuff too, I would start by looking around at amazon.com. Hope this helps!

I just bought a Macbook Air. I also have an external harddrive for which to transfer and save all my existing music from my PC. Will I have any troubles with iTunes recognizing where my music is located if I keep it on the external harddrive?

I just bought a Macbook Air. I also have an external harddrive for which to transfer and save all my existing music from my PC. Will I have any troubles with iTunes recognizing where my music is located if I keep it on the external harddrive and not save it on the computer's harddrive?

Just be sure to Follow the steps here to transfer your iTunes to an External Drive...
Backup iTunes to an External Drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

I'm trying to download itunes onto an external harddrive, but it keeps defaulting to my computers drive which does not have the room. How do I sort this please?

I'm trying to download itunes onto an external harddrive (named as D) which has loads of space, but it keeps defaulting to my computers (C) drive which does not have the required space. How do I sort this please?
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I think you've misunderstood.
iTunes ONLY works on the C drive. There is no moving it. End of discussion.
The MEDIA can be house on any other drive (internal or external).
Install iTunes correctly using the default options.
Once it is installed and working correctly with everything on the C drive, close iTunes.
Follow the instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364 to move the iTunes media folder.

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I store all y music on an external harddrive and update my ipod from that normally. However at the moment I dont have it but would like to put songs that i have added to my itunes and are stored on my computer onto my ipod touch. Is there a way to just add songs to the ipod touch without losing all the rest of the songs on there?

You should be able to to it by using manual syncing method. See that method here:
iTunes 11 for Mac: Set up syncing for iPod, iPhone, or iPad

C to create an iTunes library which is on external harddrive

How do i create an itunes library from an external harddrive
i have my music under a folder named iTunes,( this folder contrains seperate folders per artist and my movies in a seperate folder under Movies on the external harddisk?

Hello ferrisbe,
The following article provides the necessary steps for adding your content to iTunes.
Adding music and other content to iTunes
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1473
Cheers,
Allen

Keyboard, trackpad & external harddrive suddenly stopped responding but external mouse will work?

I have a 2007 MacBook, but the harddrive was replace begining on 2011. Ealier today mid-email my keyboard suddenly froze and my cursor dissappeared. The power button still worked so I was able to turn off my computer. When I restarted I had about 3 hours of normal functioning before the same thing happened again. The entire keyboard becomes unresponsive (including the caps lock light that does not light up) and the mouse is no longer visible. I tried connecting an external mouse and this seems to work fine, but I still can't type anything in.
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Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
Thank you! I really appreciate your time and any advice you may have.

Make sure it's not something as simple as the battery bulging up and exerting upward pressure on the trackpad, keyboard, and USB / FW ports.
That's what happened to my Macbook and it showed similar symptoms.
I simply took out the battery and let the MacBook rest for a 48 hours. Then I ran it strictly on the power supply and it ran fine.
At that point I bought a replacement generic battery through Amazon for about $40 including shipping and taxes. I figured why waste money on the Apple original part if it was that very Apple original battery that went bad and bulged up like a toad?
MacBook has been running just fine for months now, maybe a year.

Want to upgrade from snow leopard to lion, need to purchase an external harddrive to b/u my stuff. will formating for snow leopard be ok when uploading to the new system (lion)?

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so sorry, I mean uploading information from the back up (ex HD) onto the new Snow Lion OS. (and later doing the same with the Mac Pro which is the system before snow leopard.) TY

How do I move my iPhoto files to an external harddrive?

Hi there
I only recently moved to Apple from Windows and am struggling to move my iPhoto files to an external harddrive, despite there being some quite old discussions on this on these discussion boards.
My late 2013 32GB Macbook Pro Retina is currently at full capacity because I have imported to iPhoto all of my photos from my past few months of travel. I have recently acquired a 1TB external harddrive which I have successfully partitioned, and I have backed up my Macbook Pro's harddrive using Time Machine to one partition.
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My questions are:
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2. How do I go about moving the photos so they are only on the external hard drive? Do I have to move to the hard drive first and then delete?
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Thanks
Alex

To move your iPhoto Library to an external drive is simple and straightforward:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
1. How can I locate all of my iPhotos that I can see in iPhoto but nowhere else? I thought there would be some place I could find them and drag and drop onto the external hard drive.
The point of iPhoto is that it replaces the File Manager for everything to do with your photos.
For help accessing your photos in iPhoto see this user tip:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4491

HT1751 I have done the above steps but I would like to know if everytime I sync will it create a backup on my external harddrive

I have windows 7 64 bit and followed the steps in the article. What I would like to know is if I was to sync my ipad would the backup file be created on the external harddrive automatically or do I have do these steps at least once a week.
Everytime one syncs the ipad it creates a backup in the following directory
c\users\owner\appdata\roaming\apple computer\backup
is there anyway I can change this and have it automatically backup everytime I sync the ipad.
thanks

I never lost any media mind you just the library file that tell iTunes where everything lives.
On this point, you can keep a copy of of the "Itunes Music Library.xml" file, which contains the itunes metadata for your music library (songs & playlists).
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Using time machine to backup my mac to external harddrive as well as backing up a second seperate harddrive to another external hard drive???

Hey Guys, i currently have time machine backing up everything on my 2011 imac to an external harddrive, which is working fine! No problems there.
As a photographer, i currently have two seperate harddrives. Harddrive (A) - All projects/files, & Harddrive (B) - Backup of Harddrive (A) with all projects/files.
What i'm wanting is for time machine to continue backing up my i mac as usual to the external harddrive, whilst also backing up the contents of Harddrive (A) to Harddrive (B) at the same time without backing up everything on my imac
Is this possible to do??
Hope you understood what i meant easily! haha
Cheers
Leslie

Sorry Leslie but time machine cant do what you are asking for, however there are free apps like backuplist+ that can sync Harddrive to Harddrive, the app can be found here

Unable to format external harddrive to fat32

hi,
I am using the disk utility and am trying to format my external harddrive to fat32 and during the partition, there is no option for "MS-DOS Filesystem" for fat32. which option should I use? I'm on OS 10.6.8

Hi n,
Have you tried MS-DOS (FAT)? Or does that do 16? Sorry, it's been awhile since I've used that.

Can somebody please please help me! External harddrive not readable due to dumb mistake!

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When the computer starts up I get hit with "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer"! I tried Disk Utiity & even though it recognizes the drive's existence, I cannot repair or mount...nor can I access any of the files! I also tried Diskwarrior & got "directory cannot be rebuilt, the file system is unsupported".
If theres anything you guys can do to help me, please do so. My life was on that harddrive & losing it would be the most devistating thing I could ever experience. A movie I finished not too long ago...is also on that harddrive. I'll send you a full video completely thanking you for your help!

Call a professional data recovery service such as DriveSavers. Their services are very expensive, but without backups, you have no choice but to pay whatever they ask.

Tried to transfer iTunes library to an external harddrive--messed it all up

I have a large collection of music--some of it in mp3/wav files (pre-iTunes), and the rest of it was downloaded directly from either the iTunes store or Amazon.com.
I had my iTunes library edited and perfected exactly the way I wanted it, but after downloading some television series from iTunes, I was running out of space on my harddrive. Things were moving pretty slow on old C:, and I thought I could help things out by moving my music files (including all iTunes music and television files), video files, and eBook files to an external harddrive.
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Thanks in advance,
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Yes, check this link, https://discussions.apple.com/message/1531620#1531620

Which external harddrive?

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