Which USB HDD?

I'm considering a new External HDD to connect to my AEBS.
Is there anything in particular I need to pay attention to?
At the moment I am considering 2 drives: the WD my Book Essential (the black one without LCD display), and a G-RAID (or G-Tech as they are sometimes called). Both 1TB.
My question on the G-RAID units: can the HDDs be replaced with a unit with a higher capacity? Also, can I benefit from teh RAID configuration of I get eg a 2TB RAID 1 G-RAID drive (remember it is connected via USB to the AEBS)?
Furthermore, does the G-RAID actually have any significant benefits over the WD drive? It's about twice as expensive... Making the WD studio and elite editions more attractive in comparison when considering the same price range...

Kryn Sporry wrote:
Well, one drive will be used for time machine, but I think I'll use my current iomega drive for that (already in use for that function).
i see. hope it continues to work because, as you probably know, that setup is not officially supported. see Disks that can be used with Time Machine for information.
there have been reports by users here on the forum that the setup worked +for ages+, then suddenly stopped working.
best of luck !
JGG

Similar Messages

Which external USB HDD can i use for backups

Hi,
I'm going to buy an external USB HDD for my MacBook for bootable backups (by SuperDuper). Can I purchase just any external hard drive or are there any limitations?
Thanks,
Vadim

Hi,
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
The limitations are the usual reliability and manufacturer's reputation. USB 2.0 (480Mbps) itself will cause no issues when making your choice. It's not possible to give a definitive answer on which manufacturer/make/model is best but I can give you an opinion. I like Iomega and Hitachi. For plug-and-play look at Iomega or D-I-Y using an Icy Box look at Hitachi Deskstar range.

Copied files to USB HDD - now can't find them!

I had to reinstall my wife's macbook so I backed up all her files to a USB HDD formatted as MS-DOS (FAT) [according to disk utility]
I then reinstalled and tried to find the files which do not show up on the USB HDD (shoulda checked!)
I've seen posts alluding to having the drive formatted Journalised but they all refer to having done that FIRST.
Are my files history? Is there any way to get them back? Help!

Thanks so much for helping me with this.
I must admit, I didn't pay too much attention when importing this "test"
group of photos to LR4, therein lies my problem. Now that I look at the
import settings that were used:
1. Files were not added or copied, they were "moved" to a new location and
also renamed.
2. Files were renamed starting with "264" using my regular import template.
Listed below are the first 10 photos with their original LR3 and he
changed LR4 names.
1201_001 changed to 1201_264-2
1201_002 changed to 1201_265-2
1201_003 changed to 1201_266-2
1201_004 changed to 1201_267-2
1201_005-Edit-Edit changed to 1201_268-2
1201_005-Edit changed to 1201_269-2
1201_005-Edit changed to 1201_270-2
1201_005-Edit-Edit-2 changed to 1201_271-2
I have a back up of my images on an EHD from several days ago which has the
original file names, but this backup only has 203 of the 268 images I
imported yesterday and are renamed.
Thanks again,
Matthew Kraus
2012/1/11 Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteață <[email protected]>
Re: Files Renamed when importing to LR4 and now can't find them in LR3 created by Dorin
Nicolaescu-Musteață <http://forums.adobe.com/people/dorin_nicolaescu> in *Photoshop
Lightroom* - View the full discussion<http://forums.adobe.com/message/4132062#4132062>

Finder crashes when I try to open my external USB HDD

Hello all. I have been experiencing issues with my external USB HDD (WD Passport) and my Macbook Pro (Summer 2012) for some time. It looks that the HDD shows up on the desktop when I connect it but when I try to open the My Passport icon on the desktop Finder crashes. Finder works OK generally and I can see everything (even the Passport listed) but I cannot access the Passport HDD contents.
I have tried accessing it via terminal and managed to view the Passport contents ok (ls -ltr etc)
I have tried repairing the disk but the issue remains.
I have connected Passport to a Windows 7 PC and it works OK. I have even tried repairing it on a Windows PC but it has not helped.
Ejecting, rebooting etc does not solve the issue
Every time the issue occurs I see a PM Report Crash for Finder
11/24/13 5:46:21.004 PM ReportCrash[1374]: Saved crash report for Finder[1377] version 10.8.3 (10.8.3) to /Users/Panos/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Finder_2013-11-24-174621_Panos-MacB ook-Pro.crash
Could you please suggest any solution to this problem??

Try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.
Safe Mode
Safe Mode - About

Home Hub 3/USB HDD causing internet connection to ...

Hi Guys,
I've been using a Home Hub 3 for a couple of years without any real problems. I recently decided to plug a USB HDD into the hubs usb port to act as shared storage on the network. I initially tried using an unpowered portable HDD which failed to work (I've since found out that the port does not have the power to power these devices).
I then tried a powered HDD which worked well and I was able to map to my network. However with in 24 hours I started noticing very frequent intermintant dropping of my internet connection. Through elimination I have isolated the cause to the USB drive. On removing and powering the drive the internet connection returns to being stable with no problems.
To test if it was just a fault caused by that particular USB drive I installed a USB flash drive (I have read that the port outputs enough power for a simple thumb drive) to see if the problem was recreated. Again the drive was recognised and I mappped it to the network sucessfully. However the intermitant problem has again become apparent. It has again also been corrected by removing the drive from the home hub.
The outages seem only to be with the internet connection. The wireless network with in the home remains up and running without interfernce. The outages are all for several seconds before self correcting and can happen almost continually making the web virtually unusable. For example it has taken me 5 or 6 attempts to post this message.
Any help on the cause of this problem and solutions would be greatly appreciated. I'd really like to avoid buying a NAS etc if unnecessary.
Many Thanks,
Jeff

nickbailey_co_uk wrote:
...HDD needs to be formatted in FAT32...
Hi Nick,
Thanks for that info, and the above probably explains why it didn't work with the drive I tried it on - I'm pretty sure I formatted the one I tried to NTFS - I shall have to test it with a thumb drive.
Also, if you're looking at going down the NAS route, I've also been looking into getting a NAS and have had Netgear recommended to me - I know they're a good manufacturer, and from what I've seen it looks like you get pro-level features (such as RAID 5 (improved error correction/redundancy (for models with 3 or more drive bays)), hot swap (so you can swap out a dead drive without switching the unit off), and so on) at much closer to consumer-level prices - not 100% sure if they do one with FTP/web access, but I'd be surprised if they didn't.
Worth shopping around - there's a lot of alternatives on the market these days.

Airport Extreme + USB HDD = Time Capsule?

Hi!
(Sorry for my poor English, I hope it's possible to understand my problem/question).
I bought a MacBook in January 09. It's connected to the Internet via WLAN and a Fritz.Box (Wireless Router with built-in DSL Modem, unfortunately it uses the old slow LAN and WLAN protocol and a USB1-Port).
I want to backup my files with Time Machine via WLAN. I tried to connect a USB-Drive to my Fritz.Box but it was terribly slow (USB1...)
It's important, that the backups go automatically when I'm at home and connected to my WLAN.
Now I think of buying something that's more useful. I have three ideas and I'm not sure what to do...
1) Buying the Time Capsule. Pro: I think, it will work perfectly. I don't need to worry about a thing. Contra: It's terribly expensive. In Germany 1TB will cost about 600$. (Maybe I should buy the 500GB-Version and update it by myself to 1GB or 2GB).
2) Buying the Airport Extreme. Unfortunately I'm not sure if a Airport Extreme + USB-HDD is the same as the Time Capsule. Apple writes: "Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but you cannot choose AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk as a Time Machine backup volume. " On the other hand some Users wrote that they managed to get their TM-Backup on a AE-HDD (but did this work via WLAN?). With the Airport Extreme it would be easy to manage a itunes-stream-server (the Airport Express is not too expensive). And the Airport Extreme isn't too expensive as well.
3) Using a Network-HDD. It would be not too good, since I had to use my slow WLAN-Connection and since this wouldn't be supported by Apple at all. On the other hand this would be the least expensive version.
What should I do? Is it possible to work with the Airport Extreme and an external USB-HDD via WLAN and without any problems (like mounting the drive manually each time I connect to my Network).
It would be much more fun, if everything ran automatically, when I got in reach of my Network...
Thanks in advance! Gerrit

A couple of pointers.
The hard drive must be specifically formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with the AirPort Extreme's USB port. Check the documentation that came with the drive to find out how it is formatted at the present time.....it is likely formatted to work with Windows, which is not compatible with the AirPort Extreme.
Unfortunately, even if the drive is formatted correctly, Apple does not officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme, so that will be the next hurdle to deal with.
Some users actually do seem to be able to make this work, but overall, it is not a reliable method to backup your data if it is important to you.

160 GB external USB HDD won't mount in 10.4.9; does in 10.4.0

I'm using a Beige G3 (though I don't think the model is the issue).
I know there's nothing wrong with the drive whatsoever, because it mounts on PCs, and it mounts when booted from both other hard drives on the system, on Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS 10.4.0.
I know it used to mount on 10.4.9, too. I thought maybe when I installed a 4-port USB 2 card things would resolve, but they haven't.... so I expect it's a driver (extension) issue.
I deleted a bunch of extensions a while back that I was sure I didn't need... I suppose it's possible I deleted one vital for USB HDD support on the HDD using 10.4.9, only I don't know which it would be... things were self-explanatory in the days of OS 9, not so much with OS X, it would seem.
I didn't notice it until fairly recently since I'd been networking to the external HDD via another computer as the built-in 10BT was sadly faster than the USB 1.1 card I had installed prior.
Anyway.... since I assume this is an extensions problem (it says when I turn on the drive that a certain extension is missing, but I can't remember which), can anyone tell me what particular extension it is that enables USB Hard Drives?
By the way, USB flash drives mount and run at USB 2 speeds just fine. Thanks.

It's an adaptec card, but that's actually not the issue; it stopped working on the old USB card where it'd worked just fine before, whilst still working when I booted into 10.4.0.
Once upon a time it was working fine on both 10.4.9 and 10.4.0.
It now says "AppleXsanFilter.kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used" when I start up the drive. It knows it's there, it just can't access it. It then says "device was improperly removed" when I shut off the HDD.

Dynadock Universal USB 3.0 Docking Station: no autoconnect of USB-HDD after Win8 power-up

Hello,
I've recently obtained a Dell XPS-12 which only has a SSD-HDD.
In order to overcome the limitations in terms of available connections I bought a Dynadock which works fine so far.
I want to use the Dynadock in a configuration where it is the only device connected to the laptop and all peripherals are connected to the dynadock.
If I connect a USB-HDD to the dynadock I so far did not manage to have the HDD reliably connected to the laptop after power-up, sometimes it works, sometimes I need to unplug the HDD.
I did not find a sequence of powering up laptop/dynadock that does the job.
Any ideas?
Best regards
Tim Tom

Did you ever resolve this issue, because I am having exactly the same issue! Thanks!

Advice request - which external HDD for Adobe Lightroom?

Hi,
I'm going to buy myself an external hdd this week, and I would be very grateful for your advice.
1) I'm shooting with Nikon D70, Canon A520, and my mobile(;]).
2) After over 1 year of shooting I have ~130GB of photos taken with these cameras + I have some negative from analog times, which I'm going to scan (I estimate them to be next ~20GB)
3) I would like to keep all of above photos on external hdd and import them into Abobe Lightroom (tagging + developing), and and of course apply retouching to some of them in PS CS2.
4) My computers are : old PC desktop with XP, on which I will be only viewing these pictures, and IBM T43 with Vista on which I'm going to do all the developing. [Yes, I know that Apple is better, and I love Apple, but I can'tafford one yet].
Given above assumptions, which external hdd from the ones I've preselected should I choose ? I'm on the budget here, and the ones that I can afford are :
WD My Book Pro 250GB USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 16MB Cache
WD My Book Premium 320GB USB 2.0/FireWire400 8MB Cache
WD My Book Essential 500GB USB2.0 8MB Cache
LaCie Porsche 500GB USB 2.0 8MB Cache
I'm asking mainly because I don't have any idea about how fast should a drive be to work with Lightroom with decent speed.
Also : should I buy FireWire controller for my T43 laptop, or will USB 2.0 be enough for my purposes ?
Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.
Chris

>Yes, I know that Apple is better, and I love Apple, but I can't afford one yet
Either a PC or MAC is fine, but you've entered a field where affordability is proportional to the number of photos you manage, the type of processing you perform and the level of security you are comfortable with. This is entirely separate of your budget.
USB2 and/or Firewire Drives work fine. From your list, I've owned both the LaCie Porsche and a WD MyBook. They both failed for different reasons. All hard drives will eventually fail. If you can't afford to lose your photo library you need some sort of redundency. The reliability of that redundency (RAID) and or speed of retrieval determines what technology is the minimum you need to afford. Or, if you have more time than budget, you can archive on DVDs. Keep in mind that even DVD's will fail over time.
The faster the drive, the faster the backup (redundency), the faster the throughput, and the faster you have access to managing and processing your image library.
Did I answer your question: No. However, whatever you get, and assuming you value your photos, make sure you get two of them so you can build some redundency into your budget. If you're feeling lucky, get the largest drive you can afford and make sure you leave yourself a lot of time for those backups.
Welcome to "photo shoebox management" of the new millenium! It ain't cheap ... :-)

External USB HDD Wireless Sharing

HI,
I have an external USB HDD which has an HFS partition which I used to backup my macbook using TimeMachine. Now I want to share my external USB HDD wirelessly.
I know it can be possible by using Airport Exterme Base Station or use the Time Capsule.
I want to know if any other Wireless Routers support the HFS partition to be shared wirelessly?

By default, Personal File Sharing only shares specific directories on your boot drive and home directories. If you want to share external volumes you need to configure them manually.
The easiest way to do this is to get a copy of SharePoints which puts a nice GUI on the file sharing configuration files.

USB HDD not mounting on 10.4.9 but does in 10.4

Posted this in Tiger forum too (I know, probably not really supposed to), but I thought I'd post it here too.
I know there's nothing wrong with the drive whatsoever, because it mounts on PCs, and it mounts when booted from both other hard drives on the system, on Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS 10.4.0.
I know it used to mount on 10.4.9, too. I thought maybe when I installed a 4-port USB 2 card things would resolve, but they haven't.... so I expect it's a driver (extension) issue.
I deleted a bunch of extensions a while back that I was sure I didn't need... I suppose it's possible I deleted one vital for USB HDD support on the HDD using 10.4.9, only I don't know which it would be... things were self-explanatory in the days of OS 9, not so much with OS X, it would seem.
I didn't notice it until fairly recently since I'd been networking to the external HDD via another computer as the built-in 10BT was sadly faster than the USB 1.1 card I had installed prior.
Anyway.... since I assume this is an extensions problem (it says when I turn on the drive that a certain extension is missing, but I can't remember which), can anyone tell me what particular extension it is that enables USB Hard Drives?
By the way, USB flash drives mount and run at USB 2 speeds just fine.

"AppleXsanFilter.kext"
That is likely an extension for Storage Area Networks. If your Mac is complaining about it, it probably has unsatisfied external references in some of the Mass Storage Extensions. I don't know why you would need a lot of stuff in those folders, but they are tiny. You get no payback from throwing them out.
To fix those complaints, presuming the extension is located in the correct folder, you need to repair permissions (so that the System owns it) and delete the cache files named:
extensions.kextcache
extensions.mkext
which are pre-linked versions of most of the kext files. Then your Mac will recreate the cache files with the newly fixed-up kext added.

Which USB port output power provides Satellite M70-159

Hi!
I have a Satellite M70-159 and I'm looking to buy an external HDD 2.5".
I would like to know if the power provided from my notebook's USB port is 500mA or 1000mA because the external HDD I want to buy needs 1000mA to work.
Eitherwise what can I do to provide to the external HDD the power needed to work?
Thank you

Hi
In my knowledge the notebooks USB ports provides the standard power of 500mA.
Generally if a external USB HDD needs more as 500mA then either the special, external power supply cable is delivered together with the 2.5 HDD or the HDD is delivered together with an double USB cable.
By double USB cable I mean the cable which supports 2 USB jacks. In such case you can connect the HDD to two USB ports.
Check this pic:
[Double USB cable|http://www.n-c.fr/webshopncrevendeurs/catalog/images/Double_Cable_USB.jpg]
Best regards

Can't access my Seagate USB HDD on my Airport Extreme

I can not access my 1TB Seagate Freeagent USB Harddrive over the working AEBS network. Hoping to be able to share and stream files to all remote laptops in the house. I have the HD connected to the AEBS and the AEBS client identifies the HD under Disks by name with the correct information. It's set for file sharing and Share Over the WAN. The workgroup is set to WORKGROUP to match my laptop and I've also gone into Windows and dissabled Windows Search per other suggestions on another discussion.
All that said and done, I still can not see or access the HD via my Win7 laptop. I see there are tons of disscussions on this issue and seams many are frustrated because the meager AEBS instructions that come with the unit simply say "Connect the hard disk to the AirPort Extreme USB port using a USB cable. Open AirPort extreme utility, select your base station, and then click Continue. Follow the onscreen instructions to create a new network, if you have not already set up your network." which I already have. Do I need to do this again? Are there any other settings I can do in my Win7 system or in the AEBS system to be able to access my ext HD? I really don't want to format the HD as some users are talking about.
Any thoughts or suggestions woudl be helpful. This was a main selling point for me deciding to buy this router.
Thank you much.

Update...I've also formated my USB HDD to exFAT and still can not access it via the network. It is still completely visable in the AEBS client software. MAC OS was not an option for formating. I thought that exFAT would work since its the newer type of FAT32. Is there a program I can download to format the drive to a MAC OS format and then be able to acces the drive on my four Win7 PC's?
I'm at my wits end with this AEBS and am ready to pull the plug and take it back for an exchange to a Cisco Linux 4200. Please let me know if there is hope for a fix.

Unable to empty trash due to external USB HDD's locked files and no permission?

Hello.
I was doing a major cleanup with an external Seagate USB HDD due to low free disk spaces. It has two partitions/drives: FAT32 (using it for on other non-Apple machines like Windows 2000 SP4) and HFS [Time Machine only]). I threw about 30,000 items (copied from an old Windows 2000 SP4 machine's HDD with NTFS back a few years ago) from FAT32 partition/drive into the trash can. However, I am having problems emptying it. Most of them were emptied, but some were left behind.
This four years old MacBook Pro's Mac OS X 10.5.8's Trash dialog boxes said "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items." and "Emptying the Trash cannot be completed because "<filename>" is locked. To empty everything in the Trash, including locked items, press the Options key while selecting Empty Trash". http://i.imgur.com/XFBfF.gif for the screen shots/captures of the error messages.
I tried holding Option key and emptying trash, but that didn't help/work. I used Finder to look at the files, and they had locked status. So I unlocked them which worked, but I can't delete the empty folders/directories, and these don't have locked.
What's going on and how do I empty the trash? Thank you in advance.

BDAqua wrote:
Hi again, are there maybe hidden files in those folders?
Show Hidden Files 1.0...
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29096/show-hidden-files
Hidden Way is a toggle for hidden files view in Finder...
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25716/hidden-way
Show hidden files in OSX Finder
Open the Terminal and type or copy/paste:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true
Reverting to the default of NOT showing hidden files:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool false
*Restart or Force Quit Finder required to take effect.*
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/hiddenfiles.html
http://www.burobjorn.nl/blog/?p=96
Finder Force Quit, or restart required to take effect.
Not that I saw through Terminal's ls -all and Windows XP Pro. SP3 machine. Someone told me to try secured empty trash and it did more, but not fully.
I used the administrator (sudo) account in Mac OS X 10.5.8's Terminal to delete the trash, but it still failed:
$ sudo rm -rf *
Password:
rm: 501/2010/07252010/My Documents/My Pictures: Operation not permitted
rm: 501/2010/07252010/My Documents: Directory not empty
rm: 501/2010/07252010: Directory not empty
rm: 501/2010/01162010and05042010/My Documents/My Pictures: Operation not permitted
rm: 501/2010/01162010and05042010/My Documents: Directory not empty
rm: 501/2010/01162010and05042010/Favorites: Operation not permitted
rm: 501/2010/01162010and05042010: Directory not empty
rm: 501/2010: Directory not empty
rm: 501/06182011/My Documents/My Pictures: Operation not permitted
rm: 501/06182011/My Documents: Directory not empty
rm: 501/06182011/Favorites: Operation not permitted
rm: 501/06182011: Directory not empty
rm: 501: Directory not empty
I tried deleting this on an old, updated Windows XP Pro. SP3 machine and it had no problems! Weird. I wonder why Mac OS X 10.5.8 failed to delete it through its Finder and Terminal (sudo rm -rf command).

Turning USB HDD (Mac Pro) into Time Capsule for MacBook Pro

I have both a Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro, and have an external HDD connected to my Mac Pro, which is on all the time. I really don't want to keep re-connecting the HDD to my laptop and back to my Desktop computer when I backup my devices. Is there a way, without buying extra hardware, to make the USB HDD a wireless HDD from my Mac Pro, where I can backup my MacBook Pro? Thanks all for your help.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Yes.
See #22 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Which USB HDD?

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