I have a few external drives for my Macbook Pro. One of the drives is an Iomega MaxMini with USB ports on the back to add drives.
My question is; when I hook up the drives to my laptop I get about 4 drive icons on the desktop for each of the partitions, and when I need to remove them I have to eject them or move them to the trash icon.
Is there a way I can put the drives in a folder of some kind that I can just eject and make the desktop look less cluttered?
I would like to sort out all my drives and keep the organisation simple... it's recently turned into a bit of a mess after my hard drive on the iMac went into melt-down (fixed but having other issues... see other post! ) and as it had difficulty in backing up (for several months!) etc I did a mini panic of just saving my most important stuff on other drives - sometimes it would save on one drive but not other stuff so then had to use another drive etc... I have all my files etc but it's a bit of a mess... sooooooo. I have different things on different drives etc and it would be interesting to see how others organise themselves if they have multiple external drives. Which is best to use for time-machine back-ups and the other to keep all my photo's, videos and general other work on. I would like to keep my computer free of most of my work... maybe just have the current projects kept there. so far I have 53GB of photo's (I dabble in photography and work as a retoucher) I usually keep some original images and then there's the retouched or best images in separate folders. I'm studying digital media as well (BA) and while websites don't take that much space, the 3D stuff did and I've started doing stop motion animation ... then trying out different formats etc I end up with a huge amount of GB used up with .mov files (I'm new to moving images!) I have two desktop Western Digital Studios drives - 1.5TB and 500GB
I did used to just have the 500GB and kept the time-machine/backups on this disc and I recently switched this over to the 1.5TB but I'm wondering if I really need all that space just for back-ups - I can't personally see wanting a back-up from a year ago... a couple of months back maybe so should I switch my back-ups to the 500Gb drive and keep all my images/video/docs etc on the 1.5TB instead? also have 2 Western Digital portable drives - 320GB each. use one for Uni/work which means I can transfer large files to and from work computers to my home computer and I don't have to lug my macbook around ... plus the Uni doesn't have the same software versions as I do and it's easier just to take the files in rather than my laptop etc. I use one for keeping movies on - it's more convenient to keep my DVD films on the drive rather than keep taking dvd's out of the case etc... so my dvd collection is in a box on the wardrobe How do others organise themselves?
This is the third drive that has failed since I was assigned this Mac Pro at work a few weeks ago, and the drive was purchased less than a week ago. The other two were older drives. They would suddenly stop being readable. Sometimes there was a problem ejecting the drive before it stopped becomeing readable (message would say the drive couldn't be ejected because another program is using it, when there were no programs open). One of them eventually mounted again and I recovered some of the files (but some files weren't readable when I tried to copy them). But that was just luck as they all seem now to be consistently unreadable. When I plug them in I get the message: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". same if I plug it into a different computer. And when I try to repair, it shows this: http://i.imgur.com/ivK9d.png. When it happed to the second drive, I just thought it was a fluke... but now a third, brand new drive? Something about the computer must be causing it.
I have a mid 2010 Mac Pro with two internal drives. Last night I experimented with boot camp by partitioning 50gb of my startup drive to test Windows out. Worked beautifully with the exception of lacking in some graphical processing power for some of my editing suites like 3ds max and Maya (taking care of that buy replacing the 5870 with an r9 270x).
I decided that I want to make Windows a permanent useful option on my Mac Pro by providing dedicated drives for it. Specifically, I was wondering if it is possible to install Windows on an ssd and then use another hard drive as storage for Windows. For example, can I use a 128gb ssd for my windows startup partition while using another 1.5tb hard drive for Windows applications and stuff?
Currently, I have time machine backing up my iMac on to an external drive.
I also have a third drive filled with movies and music. I would like to set iTunes to play directly off of that drive but I don't want to risk losing that stuff.
Can I set time machine to back up my iMac on HD2 AND ALSO back up HD3 to HD4?
Currently I keep my time machine backup on an external usb hard drive which is a seagate hd in an enclosure I bought a while ago. I want to maintain a second copy of the time machine back up.
Is it better to buy an external RAID enclosure, put the current drive in there, get another drive, and then just have time machine backup to that drive?
Or should I just get another enclosure and another drive? If I do it this way, can I automate the time machine backups across two drives in any way, or I have to manually run it twice?
First one was a portable 500gb freeagent, and also I put it in a folder in my 1.5tb time machine drive. Tonight I am updating the second, and I think I'm noticing a problem, but not sure. First of all, when I move my library locatation in preferences to the ext. drive in preferences, and do consolidate library the "info" on a few of the songs still shows a filepath leading to the built in hard drive on my mac (the original library). Also, when I perform the Library>consolidate library function it seems like it copies all of the files that are already on the drive, too. So they only appear in itunes once but they appear in the actual folder more than once, in appended form. Anyone else think this is unnormal. How do you manage a library on mulitple drives? The original reason I did this was to clear some space on my macbook's hard drive, but I'm always too scared to delete the files on it.
Here is what I want to achieve: I have my MBP with a 500GB hard drive that I want backed up to an external 750GB drive (A). Then I have an external 1TB drive (B) that I also wanted backed up to an external 1TB drive (C). Or: Internal -> drive A Drive B -> drive C
Can Time Machine do this all for me or am I going to need a 3rd-party app to help. I know I can easily use TM for doing one of the backups, but will it handle both? If not, what's a good 3rd-party app that will help me accomplish this?
I'm having trouble with getting Windows to understand the partition structure of my USB drive. I formatted it into 3 partitions: One HFS+, the second FAT, and the third also FAT. For some odd reason, though, Windows refuses to recognize the FAT partitions and mount them, ignoring the HFS+ partition it doesn't recognize in the process. Instead, what it's doing is mounting only the FIRST partition on the drive, ignoring anything else there - even if said partition is the GPT protective partition. I'm understandably baffled by this.The reason I'm doing this is to make a "universal" development drive. I tried formatting the whole drive as FAT, which sort of works (my IDE loads from the drive okay, but refuses to update itself, complaining that the profile is in use, only tested on the Mac side). So, I came up with what I thought was the brilliant idea of mixed filesystem partitioning to work around the issue... but of course that doesn't work either.
Does anyone know if it's possible to have two sets of striped drives using a single hardware RAID controller? I'm looking at the ARC-1210 and it seems like you can have more than one set of striped drives, but I'm not positive. My plan is to have two small SSDs set up for the boot drive and two HDDs for storage, each pair set up with RAID 0. Can this be accomplished using a single controller? Note: I'd just use OS X's software RAID but I need to keep the cores freed up for computation. I'm not concerned with redundancy--just speed.
I have an old MBP that I am replacing with a new Retina Display MBP. Last night I did a full backup of my entire MBP (there are actually 2 hard drives in it, I took out the optical drive and used an OWC kit). Today, I restore that backup to my new MBP. I set it to restore everything. However, it only restore the one drive as my new MBP does not have 2 hard drives. I know the 2nd drive is in the Time Machine backup. So how do I manually go in and retrieve those items?
I just got a used mac pro quad. I plan to use it for video production- final cut pro, pics - aperture, and music production- protools. THe computer came with 3 - 10k rpm 160g hd's. Two of them are set up as a raid 0. I like the idea of having a faster drive as a boot drive, but 160 seems kind of small to me as the drive to run memory hungry apps and the operating system. Am I right? I could go to a 300g 10k rpm drive. I am also thinking about getting a bigger drive, say a 750g or 1 tb 7200 rpm. Should I use this as the boot drive or as a secondary storage drive?. If it's the boot drive should I add the other 160g 10k drive to the raid or keep it separate? I assume that neither way would be wrong, nor create a problem, but since I haven't put anything on it yet, I'm wondering what would be the most efficient way to manage my files and get the most out of my computer.
Can I attach multiple hard drives to my iMac chained by Firewire or do I need a separate port? I now have multiple Western Digital drives and find that sometimes they don't connect to the iMac so I'm wondering if I need a separate port or if my iMac FW port is faulty.
Although they work fine on other computers, my external hard drive and USB key won't show up on my macbook. I know it gives power to them since my external lights up when it's plugged in, and I see that they're connected in the System Profiler, but they don't appear on the desktop. Also, my ipod shows up in iTunes, but the computer always says it's corrupted, although it works fine. I thought that was an iPod/iTunes thing but since finding out about my hard drives.
I have tried a Samsung Drive and an ASUS slim drive (that worked twice, then stopped working). They do show up in the Disk Utility, but not on the desktop. Disc Utility states that burning is not supported, even though I was able to burn two discs with the ASUS before it stopped as well. I had my keyboard replaced around the same time as the issue starting, it is possible that they could they have messed with something by accident. The tech did also forget to put a screw in above the DVD Drive. I also will note the internal drive is a Combo Drive, not a superdrive.
Info: MacBook (13-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I would like to always have one external hard drive attached to my iMac for Time Machine backups, and another external hard drive off site - periodically swapping the two. The though is that if there is fire or theft, it won't help to have a hard drive onsite attached to the computer, because both the iMac and the hard drive could be lost. Is Time Machine smart enough to allow me to configure two drives, so that whenever I plug in one of the drives, it can figure out what needs to be backed up?
I have an external hard drive that I have been using for my Pcs, and when I hook it up to my mac I cannot write to it (although I can read from it). Is it possible to write to this external hard drive?
I recently got a 2008 Macbook air with 10.5.6 installed. It was a floor model.also, the date when i booted it up was before 2001 for some strange reason.anyway, i have a WD 320 gb passport, usb ind. power external. It worked just fine two days ago, but now i upgraded through "Software Update" and..-It does not mount in finder, sidebar, or disc utility. -the power light turns on -cannot force mount with 3rd party software (Mount Me! 2.05) -the MBA will also not mount any SD cards!! I have tried two different cables and even my printer!!-iPod Touch works just fine in the same port-SD cards and WD Passport work fine in anything else
Managing a MBP with SSD and external drives for data?
Its come to the point of upgrading my 2007 MBP 2.4 to a new i7 that I'm thinking of ordering it with a SSD drive. Its the biggest 'hit' to increase performance it seems. Problem is the size of the SSD drives for cost. I can justify the 256GB model but not $1300 for 500GB which would be ideal, and even if I wait 6 months or so to get a 500GB I don't see the price coming down all that much. So...
Let say I order an APPLE SSD in my MBP and use it for a boot drive and some files. How do I configure/set-up the external drive to read its files for Aperture, iTunes, documents.... Thinking now is that I would use a WD 2TB external drive in RAID so I have the files on one 1TB and auto back-up on the other 1TB in one inclosure, and another 1TB drive for Time Machine.
This kind of limits my portability, so I'm also thinking I'd also have a portable larger HD to take with me when I need it. How do I sync the files I'm working on and adding to on one external drive with the other (as easy as possible)?
I may be thinking this all wrong, so any suggestions besides just the 'how to?'
I've had a LaCie Porsche Design for the last 6 years with no problems but with the upgrade to a MBP I'm looking to get a new portable hard drive (LaCie or another brand). My old LaCie was FW400 so I'd be looking at FW800 now. Which make and model do you use and are you happy with it's performance?
