Working off External Hard Drive

This is a curious question from me. I will be traveling for a few days to my folks home. My dad has an imac (glossy screen version with leopard so same operating system). I'm wondering if I make a carbon copy clone my system and programs to a hard drive, can I just work from the hard drive while I'm there?

Should be able to do that. Just verify that your clone boots before you depart.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
You can substitute Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! if you wish. Both will be somewhat faster than DU's Restore option.

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Time Machine once worked, now external hard drive is "read only"

I have a 2005 iMac G5, running OS X 10.5. Had some power issues, and reinstalled (and archived) my OS a couple of time.
Recently purchased Western Digital 1TB external hard drive for back up. It worked once or twice, but now shows "read only" status.
Disk Utility won't do anything, because it's read only (can't repair, erase, partition or convert).
Hard drive works on PC running Windows 7, and newer Mac with Snow Leopard, just not the one computer I need it for. Any suggestions?

This may help:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also visit the User Tips found at the top of this forum's Topics list: Time Machine User Tips.

Will Time Capsule work as External Hard-Drive?

I'm looking for a device to move all my pics and video to as my MacBook Air is running out of storage. I was told by a sales guy at a Mac Store (not apple store) that the Airport Time Capsule would not work because it only does a mirror back-up and any files that I delete off my MacBook would also get deleted off the Time Capsule. First, is this true? Second if so what device will work as a wireless external hard drive for my MacBook?

I was told by a sales guy at a Mac Store (not apple store) that the Airport Time Capsule would not work because it only does a mirror back-up and any files that I delete off my MacBook would also get deleted off the Time Capsule.
There is some confusion here between Time Machine and Time Capsule.
The software that backs up your Mac is Time Machine.. it is not going to provide an alternative to storage locally.. so if you delete items from the Mac hard disk .. TM will delete the file from the backup.
What the Time Capsule basically is.. a wireless router with a dumb hard disk inside.. that has nothing to do with backups... but neither is it a fully fledged NAS.. it is kind of like any low level router to which you plug in a hard disk.. the fact that TC has it internal helps its speed but adds nothing to its functionality.
You can indeed store your files on a TC..
With the following provisions..
1. Time Machine will no longer work. TM is limited to local disks..
2. iphoto in particular is specifically stated by apple to be an application that needs a local disk.. using network disk.. ie TC will result in corruption.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168
Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198
Note this applies to all network drives.. not just TC .. everything.
3. No backup.. your files are now sitting on a Time Capsule.. TM cannot back them.. and here TC fails to be a NAS.. all NAS can back themselves up to a backup USB disk.. TC cannot do this.. there is no incremental backup available.. and so if you want to backup your files you must do it manually ie copy and paste .. or use a decent backup software like Carbon Copy Cloner.. since it is beyond TM. And then the question arises . .where are you going to target the backups.. the very worst location is over wireless to a USB on the TC.. since that will make for extraordinarily slow backups.
I'm looking for a device to move all my pics and video to as my MacBook Air is running out of storage.
The correct place to do this is an external drive plugged into the MBA. So TM can continue to backup the files to the TC.
if so what device will work as a wireless external hard drive for my MacBook?
There is no such thing as a wireless external hard drive.. you must plug an external drive into the MBA by USB or FW or Thunderbolt depending on the age of the unit.. All wireless drives are network.. very few exist.. Most NAS are devices you plug into a wireless router.. and I would recommend against wireless built into a NAS.. it will not be as good or fast as a wireless router.
TC can be pressed into service.. as long as you are prepared to deal with backups.. and the fact that you will eventually corrupt your iphoto library and should really use TC only for storage not live files.

Running Disk Utility off External Hard drive

To run "repair disk" in disk utility on my internal hard drive I'm supposed to insert my Install DVD, restart my mac and run disk utility - however running this program off the disk is much slower than running it off my 800firewire external hard drive. I've tried a few different ways of going about this:
1) Partitioning my hard drive in two (both HFS+) with more than enough room for the DVD, I've tried both making a Disk Image of the Install DVD and dragging it into the source field in the "restore" tab and dragged my Install partition into the destination field, after that was complete, I restarted my computer while holding the "alt" key I wasn't even offered the option to boot to my external hard drive
2) I've also tried after partitioning the external drive, in the restore tab just dragging the Install DVD (not the disk image) from the left of the disk utility window into the "source field" and again the partition into the destination field, and when restarting both with the "alt" key and by going to system preferences -> start up disk and choosing my external drive to boot from, I was still unable to boot off my drive.
Please let me know if anyone has any suggestions! This would be such a big help for me since I'm constantly helping people with diagnostic issues with their macs and this would save me so much time. Thanks in advance
George

I'm not sure why you can't make a bootable copy of the installer DVD using Disk Utility but as Niel suggests, it is much better to install the OS on a partition on the external drive using the DVD & then use that instead of a 'clone' of the DVD as a boot source to run utilities. There are several reasons for this:
1. You can update the installed version of the OS on the external to take advantage of any improvements, including to Disk Utility, that may be released in the future.
2. The version of Snow Leopard that runs from the DVD is a special one that among other things is optimized for read-only media. For instance, it doesn't write log files to the startup disk since it doesn't expect that to be possible.
3. You can include other utilities on the external & easily customize it to your liking. For instance, configure it for automatic login to an admin user account, drop Disk Utility into that account's login items & it will automatically launch at the end of the boot process. You can do the same with shell scripts or Applescript applications for just about as much automation as your scripting skills & imagination can dream up.
However, one thing to keep in mind: since a HD is not read-only but a DVD is, you can never be as certain that your external is as reliable as the DVD, since it is possible for something to change or corrupt files on the HD but short of physical damage the DVD is immutable.

Upgrading to Mavericks wrecked my MacBook Pro & now it only works when external hard drive is plugged in

So I tried to upgrade to Mavericks today and it failed (same error as in this post which seemed to be a common problem). It wouldn't let me repair the disk, and after trying all sorts I rebooted my computer in recovery mode - it wouldn't let me reinstall Lion because the hard drive was apparently locked and I could see no way around this. So I decided to restore from a Time Machine backup on an external hard drive and that worked okay, except my MacBook now only works when the external hard drive is connected. If I remove the external hard drive, I'm back to square one as it still won't let me reinstall Lion as the HD is locked!
I have no idea what's going on. HELP!

The startup drive is failing, or there is some other internal hardware fault.
Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider.
If privacy is a concern, erase the data partition(s) with the option to write zeros* (do this only if you have at least two complete, independent backups, and you know how to restore to an empty drive from any of them.) Don’t erase the recovery partition, if present.
Keeping your confidential data secure during hardware repair
Apple also recommends that you deauthorize a device in the iTunes Store before having it serviced.
*An SSD doesn't need to be zeroed.

Can I work from external hard drive?

I have a client with a current non-Intel PowerBook and ready to go for Final Cut Studio. Can any of the 40 gigabytes of installed data be moved to an external drive, deleted from the PowerBook and accessed from the external drive?
Ken
[email protected]

Hi Ken,
I have not tried exactly what you want to do, but when I worked with an external hard drive, I had some conflicts. However, I was using it to edit projects within FCP. The problems occured when I was trying to playback to a DV deck. Just an f.y.i. good luck with what you are going to do
-RB

How to get things working after External Hard Drive Died

I had all of my iMovie videos (about 800 GB) on an external drive that died. Fortunately it was backed up to another external drive using Time Machine. I bought a new drive and couldn't figure out how to restore using Time Machine so i transfered the files manually using Finder. The transfer was successful, but now the movies do not appear in the iMovie event library. How do I get iMovie to work with the new external hard drive. The drive itself appears in the Event Library window, but none of the movies do. Then I also need to figure out how to back up the movies again to Time Machine. When it looks to do it now, it wants to duplicate the moveis which exceeds the Time Machine hard drive capacity (2TB). Thanks!!

For you to see them in iMovie, the Events need to be in a folder called iMovie Events. This folder must be at the top level of the drive.
Move it there and restart iMovie, and you should see them.

Run itunes off external hard drive and keep settings

I have an imac which has my consolidated music library on it. I also have a macbook which i use while traveling. My itunes is about 130 gigs, which is fine on my imac, but too big for my macbook. in the past what i have done is just put everything on my 80 gig ipod, and then do the manual setting in itunes so that, if i get new music while traveling, i can put it on the ipod. anyway, that ipod was stolen and now i have a nano. So what i want to do is somehow copy my itunes from my imac onto an external hard drive, and then run itunes off that from my macbook. the point being to have my whole music collection there. The problem is that i cant seem to keep all my ratings, play counts and settings and stuff, the macbook doesnt recognize the setting file when its on the hard drive. Is there a way to do this? I tried changing the iTunes music folder location to the folder on the hard drive, but that did not make the songs appear in itunes on the macbook.
In addition, what id like to be able to do is, when i come back, copy the itunes from the external back onto my imac with all the new ratings, play counts, and music.
Message was edited by: poil66

See this article, iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
"If you just want to move all those music and media files to another hard drive on your system, here's a way to make the move while retaining all your playlists, ratings, and play history."

Turning off external hard drive

I just connected a Seagate external 300gb hard drive to my 12 inch Powerbook G4. I am wondering if there is an "order of operations" as far as turning the external hard drive off with the laptop?
The manual is not exactly clear to my understanding. It does mention dragging the external hard drive icon to the trash icon in my dock area but I think that is if I would like to DISCONNECT it from my laptop?
I am GUESSING that I would turn off the hard drive first THEN the laptop? Does anyone know if it matters, I do not want to damage the drive or any info on it.
Any info woul be appreciated, thanks in advance people!

wow, thanks so much for the all the comprehensive info! I appreciate the fact that you guys didn't leave anything out didn't assume anything! It makes things much more clear.
So it sounds like the jist is make sure that if I AM turning the external HD off to make sure I drag the external HD icon on my desktop to the dock FIRST in order to avoid potentially damaging or loosing files.
But what about turning the external HD and laptop ON? Is there also an order? I am assuming the external HD should be turned on first?
It would be nice if the external HD could turn on and off whenever I turn on/off my laptop but I doubt that is a possibility.
thanks again, looking forward to learning more!!!
Powerbook 12 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Airport extreme working with external hard drive via USB port adaptor :)

Hi Everyone. I hope this post will be helpful because I have been very frustrated with apple and their customer support and I figured this out on my own by reading all of the discussions and playing with my settings but it took me a while...
I recently for school bought all apple products and I have non-mac products as well. I bought the airport extreme believing I could hook up all of my computers through it and share the printers and my mybook external hard drive with my husbands desktop and the other lap tops. Unfortunately this was not as easy as advertised...
I was not able to successfully have both computers stay connected to the printers so I have to have mine for my laptop connected via the airport extreme and my husband has his desktop connected to a different printer via a ethernet cable. It would work at set up and then a few hours later not print anymore and reinstalling the drivers just confused it... if anyone knows a solution for this please let me know. It worked wirelessly for me but not for him.
As far as the external drive for the airport extreme goes I went and bought an additional USB port hub so I could access my printer wirelessly and my external hard drive as well for time machine back ups.
I set up my external hard drive so that it will save files from both a mac and a non-mac computer and we can both access it (not sure if that matters in the solution or problem for others); however, the desktop (non-mac) was able to by clicking and dragging files to it assess the hard drive and utilize it and my macbook was not able to because the airport extreme showed the drive under disks but when I tried to access it through time machine it was not there. I played with this for a long time and finally figured it out.
I believe I went under finder, then chose go from the menu bar, then chose connect to server and the default for it is afp://10.0.1.1.. You enter this in under server address and you may be prompted to give your password. The password was tricky as well because it showed my computers user name and I thought it would want that password but instead it wanted the password to log into my internet or my airport extreme's password. Once I put this in I was able to open my time machine preferences, finally choose the mybook external hard drive that was now showing up, choose it and my computer is currently doing a back up as I type without the error message of failed, unable to locate volume, or any others.
Hope this posting was helpful and not to confusing and feel free to message me if you need clarification and think this may solve your problem as well. GOOD LUCK!

Seems to me you should have done your homework setting up your network and not assuming that any third party device you choose to use would work without problems.

Spotlight search not working on external hard drive

Hi all,
The spotlight search doesn't seem to be working on my external hard drive.
It is also not working as part of Time Machine, I cannot retreive anything via the spotlight search that has been backed on on the external drive.
I know I have the files on there but it's not picking it up like it used to.
Any ideas???

Solution:
1. System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
2. Drag and drop or add your external hard drive in the Privacy window. This will reset the old preference.
3. Then remove the external hard and close the System Preferences.
4. Wait for 30 seconds. Spotlight will start indexing of your external hard drive.
Update: It's supposed to scan for 8 hours but it took only 15 minutes and stopped. I tested the search and it's still not working. It's strange that it works on my other two external hard drives (USB and Firewire) but not this particular one (USB). I have three external hard drives.

Touchsmart 610-1030f webcam not working when external Hard Drive plugged in

Purchased a Touchsmart 610-1030f ... problem when I have my Western Digital ( My book ) plugged in the Web cam will not work
and a usb hub error indicates that the Devise My Computer is not recognized ,everything works great but the webcam ,
and there is no issues with the external hard drive ( My book) ... if I unplug the usb cable to the external hard drive and reboot the computer everything works but of course not the external hard drive because it is now unplugged ...... Help , I would like to keep the external hard drive plugged in all the time .....

The issue is the Canon camera not the brand of the external hard drive. Canon's implementation of the firewire prototcol seems particularly problematic. Acquiring another external hard drive from a different manufacturer is unlikely to fix the issue.
The reliable solution to your problem is to add a second firewire bus to your mac. Unfortunately only the G5 tower, MacPro or the MacBookPro come with the requisite slot to add a firewire card. Beyond the slot, the MacPro and G5 tower have the ability to add an additional internal drive which negates the need for an external drive for editing.
At this point you have three options from least to most expensive:
1. capture to your system hard drive then move the files over to the external for editing.
2. get a different camera/dv VTR to use as the capture device.
3. get a MacPro or MacBookPro for your editing computer.
Good luck.
x

Deleting time machine files off external hard drive

Can someone please help me?? I stored my time machine backups on an external hard drive which is now full because of time machine! I just want to delete the time machine files so I have space again on my external drive. Can anyone please explain how to delete this? Nothing seems to be working.

Can someone please help me?? I stored my time machine backups on an external hard drive which is now full because of time machine! I just want to delete the time machine files so I have space again on my external drive. Can anyone please explain how to delete this? Nothing seems to be working.

White Prohibitory Sign When Trying To Move Files Off External Hard Drive

Why am I getting the white prohibitory sign when trying to add a new file to an external hard drive? I have run Disk Utility and permissions repair.

See Mac OS X: "Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or kernel panic when computer starts
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805
 Cheers, Tom

What is the best option for working live off external hard drive?

I have 3 iMacs all networked together and working off 1TB of files stored on an old MacPro. I'm wondering what my best option would be for upgrading moving forward. I need more space (preferable 2TB or more) and I'd like the connection to be as fast as possible. A server seems like overkill ...
I have an external 3TB WD Cloud backing up all of the files, but it's far too slow to work off of live as it needs to 'wake up' every time I ping it.
Would running a 'headless' Mini directly off my router work? Or perhaps attached to one of the iMacs?
Other options?
Thanks in advance

Hi there,
Ive always followed the idea that journalling is turned off, so I would follow the advice given and turn journalling off.
In addition I would also make that drive "private" to spotlight so it doesn't search or catalogue there.
If its of interest, I've always formatted my drives in the following way
make 2 partitions,
partition 1 - make this about 10% of the drives capacity and label DO NOT USE
partition 2 - make this the remainder of the capacity
the reason being (So Im told by the drive gurus) is that the first sector contains the volumes boot block - this can get corrupted/damaged so having it partitioned like this means you can erase it safely whilst keeping your media.
Ive followed this for years and it has worked on the few occasions a drive has misbehaved.
cheers
Andy

Working off External Hard Drive

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