Intel Mac :: Using External Hard Drive As Both A Boot Drive And Timemachine Backup?
Mar 8, 2012
My internal 1TB hard drive on my iMac is dead and I don't have the money to replace it at the moment. I have everything backed up on an external 1TB drive using Time Machine. As a workaround for the time being,Is there any way I can install the system on the external drive and use that as the boot drive without erasing the Time Machine Backups? It seems to me I would have to have two partitions for the external drive, one for the system, and one for Time Machine. But is there any way to add a partition without erasing the existing one with Time Machine only on it? Â
I have an imac with two time capsules (1TB and 3TB). I am using the 1TB as a shared drive on the network (mac + pc's), and the second one (3TB) as the time machine backup drive. I have not been able to include the shared drive (1TB) in the time machine backup, it only included the imac hard drive. When I purchased the seconf time capsule, I was told this is possible. Can you help with any configuration recomendations to make this work?Â
I've had an external 1.5TB MyBook for around five years now and recently decided to backup/replace it with a 2.0TB MyBook. However I'm having a lot of trouble finding a simple, painless way to copy all my files from one to the other. The hard drive is simply an external host for my iTunes library, which contains nearly 140,000 files. Initially I tried copying the entirety of my Music folder over, but for some reason it hit a hang at 96.58GB/947.06GB and has never progressed. I then attempted to do smaller transfers and got about 1/4 of the way through my library doing so, but I've experienced more hangs along the way.
Can't cancel the copy operation once they occur, so they just sit there on my screen. I attempted to restart my computer but Finder won't allow me to shut down without first canceling the copy processes. All of the guides I have found on the internet, including the Apple website, seem to indicate that this is the only way to do things, which is beginning to really frustrate me since it also seems to be a method that doesn't work very well; in fact, it seems to succeed mostly by random chance. Is there something I could do to ensure this doesn't keep happening, preferably so that I could go back to my original idea of copying the entire folder over at once?
Info: iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I would like to use FileVault to encrypt both my hard drive and time machine back up external drive. Does encryption noticeable slow down the computer.
Info: MacBook Air (13-INCH, MID 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Basically I have a 750GB hard drive in my Macbook Pro and over 300GB is taken up with 'BackUp' data. This is more than the total of everything I have on the drive other than that. Time Machine has always been setup on an external drive and when searching all files on the Macbook there is nothing for backup files so don't know where it is coming from.
I just bought a MacBook Pro 2009 model and would like to have a dedicated external hard drive for performing TimeMachine backups. I know there are probably great options out there for me to purchase, but I'd like to take one of the two that I currently have, format it to GUID and for Mac via disk utilities, and then use it for TM.
The two external drives drives I have are:
1.) WD5000AAV 500gb (about 2 years old, requires AC outlet) 2.) Toshiba Canvio 640gb (about 3 months old, no AC outlet required).
I just can't find specs for the actual drives inside of these external drives (drive speed, cache, etc.). Maybe it doesn't matter which? I just want whichever is fastest and most reliable.
I want to verify if Migration Assistant will restore a backup from NAS drive to a new computer. I just got a WD My Book Live Duo NAS drive which supports Time Machine backups for Lion (and Snow Leopard). Unlike backups in Snow Leopard and the WD My Book World Edition (white light), the new NAS drive creates a sparsebundle the first time a backup is initiated. When I open Time Machine, a single volume for my backup appears. I have 3 Macbooks backing up to this drive but when I open Time Machine on any computer, only the backup created for that computer is shown. This raised a question for me that if my computer dies, how do I restore the backup from the NAS drive to the new computer? Is this what Migration Assistant will do? What are the limitations? Does the new computer have to have the same IP address as the old computer? Can I select what gets restored? Â
I have a requirement to encrypt the whole of my boot drive and my mobile Time Machine backup drive that I shall be taking with me on travels. I know I can use FileVault, which will give me an encrypted disk image but I don't like the reliability of sparse images and need the whole of the boot drive to be encrypted. I have tried Truecrypt to encrypt the TM disk, but could not get Time Machine to see it. I've been looking at the Checkpoint Full Disk Encryption product. What I'm trying to find out is if I can encrypt a USB HD with it, but seem to be going round in loops between Checkpoint and resellers.
I have just installed a 240GB LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbold SSD as a boot drive for my 2011 iMac (which contains only the 7,200 prm HDD). This has improved read/write speeds dramatically. I have transferred all my data and applications to the external drive in order to see the full benefit of the SSD.
However, I had not considered Time Machine. I thought it would simply be a matter of identifying the external drive and then connecting to the Time Capsule. However, the external drive is not visible in Time Machine set up and I suspect there could be a good reason: that it is not possible.
I was using Mail I have set up my email again, so I don't want to lose anything currently in my inbox, but want to retrieve old messages and addresses. Running 10.6.8 OS.
I just bought a new iomega external drive that I would like to format to be a bootable backup drive. (I'm not sure if I'll use rsync or TimeMachine yet for doing the actual backups).
Should I format it using DiskUtility or TimeMachine? Will TimeMachine create a bootable backup?
My 6-year old MBP17 just lost its logic board. It is now officially a paper weight. Can I boot-up an old Mac Mini from the Time Machine backup created from my laptop (until I purchase a new MBP) ?
OK, I read about formatting Fat 32 to transfer files. I will try it tomorrow. My other question has to do with using this for backup. it is a 750 hard drive and I was wondering if I should do anything special if I want to use it for both Timeline and video storage separate from timeline.
Basically I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro (unibody) and a USB external hard drive (500GB) I want to wirelessly back up my Macbook Pro and the iMac with the hard drive connected to the iMac. A sort of time capsule concept. But i don't have an airport base station to make this process easier I only have a wanadoo livebox.
I have multiple computers that all need to be backed up! The macbook that I bought for my girlfriend last year suffered a major hit, the hard drive crashed and she lost all of her information. Now I am worried!! I have the computers listed in my signature and a Lenovo s10e netbook that I would like to back up on the same external hard drive. I don't plan on doing anything but backing them up once every week or two.
First question is what external hard drive should I get to be able to back-up four macs and a windows machine? (I would like to have a desktop external, not portable)
Second question is when I get the drive should I separate the drive into multiple section or what?
I was thinking of getting an external hard drive for use with Time Machine. On Amazon I found a Seagate 1.5 TB unit for $129. However there is a similar model "for the mac" for $192. I am wondering if the cheaper unit would work, or if the one for 50% has some indispensable feature.
I am currently making the switch from Windows, I can't wait for my MacBook to arrive. My lovely Dell currently has a 320 GB HD that would prove a very nice external backup storage unit. I plan to remove it and find a case to mount and use it as such!
Only problem is, I'm fairly certain that I'll run into some compatibility issues and have never used an external HD. I'm unsure of how the process works. This is the HD in my personal laptop (only PC I own), so it's not like I have it hooked up to play around with as an external at the moment.Â
The Hard Drive is a Toshiba MK3255GSX (SATA): [URL]  Can I connect with FireWire (or Is that dependent on my hard drive, or do I get a cable converter)?When/how do I partition it?Since this is my personal home use PC, it's loaded with a bunch of programs/Win32/cache/temp files/garbage. Can I just access/delete these from the Mac?Â
Sorry if I am in the wrong forum, as you can guess im a newbie at the forum - not at computers though (6 years experience.. )
So I have a 1TB WD Hard drive USB and I copied the Leopard Disk image and restored it onto it in a 500GB partition.
I have tried to boot it up normally by holding down Alt on start up but the drive doesn't come up. Ok.
I have tried going into the Start up Disk, it comes up and when I click on it and click restart it doesn't restart, it just does that Mac Beep thing.
I have recently just tried to boot it up manually using the Open Firmware technique. It doesn't work.
I have a PPC Mac and I know that they can't normally boot up USB Drives but the other users which I read on the thread how to boot up by the Firmware technique said they're PPC and it worked.
I just wanted to format my computer, My leopard disk is gone now but I got it copied JUST IN TIME to my Hard drive.
I formatted my computer and now i'm stuck on Tiger.
I want to make a bootable clone of my iMac (PowerPC G5 running OS 10.5.8) and also backup my MacBook Pro onto an external USB hard drive so that I can restore from the external hard drive if my iMac dies (which is beginning to have startup problems).
I was planning to create 3 partitions - one for iMac's data which I'll continue to backup using TimeMachine, one for my MacBook Pro's data and one partition as a bootable clone of my iMac.
My question is.... if my iMac dies, how do I use the external hard drive to boot up from? Do I need Carbon Copy Cloner or will I be able to boot up from the external hard drive and access Apple's Disk Utility?
Went and did the bootcamp thing and installed Windows 7. I tried to connect my HD external via firewire, but it would not show up in Windows. This is after I did a backup of my mac to time machine. Will it work after time machine backup?
I was thinking of getting an external hard drive (or a raid 1 setup) for backup. What I'm wondering is if it's possible to do this: Have Time Machine back up the entire system on to the drive (or raid), and also add files to it from a different computer that wouldn't interfere with the stuff that's already on there from Time Machine. Would this be ok, or would the drive only be able to do one or the other?
I have a MacBook and will be purchasing an external harddrive to backup all my info from OS X. I also have a partition on the drive in the MacBook for windows and would like to use the external as a backup for that as well. Do I have to format the external and partition to backup each OS? I am new to the whole backup of info with an external harddrive.
Can I setup time machine to backup an external hard drive if I have another external hard drive? I don't have any files on my laptop but on an external hard drive. Or will time machine only work on files in the internal disk.
I am a new convert to Mac, and loving every minute. I use a 21.5 iMac and my wife uses a MacBook. I am trying to figure out the best way up set up an external harddrive system that will automatically backup both Macs. But I am also trying to figure out if I can store and access music through iTunes for both Macs.
I have an airport extreme base station. I was wondering that if I buy an external hard drive to backup wirelessly with time machine, will that external stay on all the time? is there a way to control when the external powers up and down? or does that depend on the make and model of the external?
