OS X :: Convert Mac System Drive To Regular Media Drive - Without Formatting?
Jan 8, 2011
I have a Mac OS X install on a hard drive which I've removed from my system due to installing a new SSD with a brand new install of OS X. I'd like to use the old 500GB drive as a storage/backup drive, but the file system/all my data is still intact on the drive. This could be useful as I want to keep all my data and would save me having to copy across to another drive, format the entire disk and then copy it all back.
I'm just a bit worried about what to do with the system files that were on there... can I just move all the files I want to keep out of the usual Mac home folders and then just delete all the system folders as if they were never there? Or do I have to re-format/re-partition to get the most out of the 'new' media drive?
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Nov 4, 2010
Just put a new Hard Drive into my Imac Dual Core. I Know I need to start up from the CD drive to format the disk... I am holding down the "C" key at startup but it isn't reading the drive.
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May 18, 2009
this may seem strange to ask but i recently purchased a 1 TB drive and formatted it correctly to use it as a time machine archve.
after a few HOURS my 160 gig mac primary disk was backed up.
i then created a second folder entitled "not time machine backups" and am copying my iphoto library etc to it.
i plan on using that drive to store my photos from now on. it this ok?
can i use this so called "time machine" drive as a second hdd? i figure as long as i dont actually touch the time machine folder, i should be ok, right?
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Apr 29, 2010
I have been the proud owner of a 17" MacBook Pro that I have owned for 4 years now without any problems and still running perfectly. I am not interested in picking up a 15" MBP and once question that I have kept on asking myself is whether or not to go with the less memory of the SSD or just get more memory with the older hard drives. My question is if I go with the default hard drive can you swap that out and use a SSD drive later on? Or do they both fit into the MBS's differently?
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Feb 12, 2012
I have an older tme capsule and I'd like to use it as just a 1-tb extenal hard drive with my Mac Pro. I messed around with the Time Capsule configuration and finally have a green light, yay! BUT, I was hoping it would show up on my desktop like the other drives.The Time Capsule: Is connected directly to my Mac Pro via a cat 5 cable. It is showing a solid green light. I have wifi turned off. I have a time machine set up with a western digital 2TB external drive. I see it show up in my finder side bar as a shared device. When I right click it the TC icon in the side menu and select open, the window shpw "not connected" at the top. (Even thought the light is green)
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May 12, 2012
Can I convert songs in my iTunes library to MP3 format?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Aug 6, 2009
is installing an ssd into a mini the same as a regular sata drive? i had some problems with a mini upgrade, wondering if i did something wrong during the hdd upgrade
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Jun 15, 2010
I know that the server version has a 7200 rpm HD, but what about the regular version? Also, is the 500GB upgrade HD on the vanilla model a 7200 version?
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Jun 3, 2012
How do i play media files from my external hard drive without transferring the files to my mac hard drive? I have a lot of media files and want to be able to play them soley from my external hard drive.
Info:
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), iOS 5.1.1
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Jan 30, 2009
i'm about 9gb into my 200gb backup, and its been going 3.5 hours. i always knew this first one would take forever, i should have bought the firewire version i knew it.
anyway, does anyone know if i can still access my shiny new Western Digital drive as a regular external hard drive now i've set it for time machine?
i'll only be able to find out around wednesday next week at this rate.
this is obviously how i roll at work over three different servers/drives. i'm just wondering if time machine kills its ability to be a plug and play storage facility.
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Mar 24, 2010
I am having the biggest trouble with a usb drive.
A while ago i needed to format a usb drive to have a bootable linux image on it because a server at work didnt have a optical drive. So i had a big fight with my usb drive to make it bootable and at the end it all worked fine.
Anyway now i need the usb drive and i cant write to it because its read only and diskutil doesnt let me do anything to it...
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Nov 3, 2010
I know Macs don't play nice with NTSF drive and I don't need to do anything with it, other then to plug in a new 1.5TB drive I have and convert it into NTSF so I can plug it into my server.
Anyway I can format it because Disk Utility only gives you Fat32
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Oct 14, 2009
I am trying to format a 4gb USb flash drive and I just can't seem to figure out how. I saw some people say you have to empty the trash while the drive is plugged in, but that doesn't seem to work either.
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Jun 23, 2010
So my exact problem is that I usually use my Flash between my Mac and other PCs. And I just installed OSX Snow Leopard from my 8GB Kingston Flash. Now I know to use Disk Utility to reformat to MS-DOS (FAT) to be able to to use it between the to OSs again.
So I do that but PCs won't read it and ask me to reformat it again. I'd happily do that cuz I know as long as it's in FAT or FAT32 the two OSs will be able to read and write from each other. But the PC only recognizes 200 mb and when I do reformat it on the PC there are now 2 different Partitions. One being the PC's 200 mb in FAT and the other Mac's almost 8GB MS-DOS.
I've tried a few different things too. I've tried Partitioning the whole thing over again int MS-DOS after having erased everything. Which I see only causes the Flash drive to shrink from 8.01 GB to 7.80GB and still isn't readable by a PC.
Then I tried Erasing it to free space but PCs still don't recognize it and still ask me to reformat the 200mb is sees on the Flash.
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May 18, 2010
I have a 500GB hard drive in my laptop, I partitioned it and I put 80GB for Windwos and then the rest of it for MAC, I don't know how but I somehow got rid of the Windows. I ejected the BOOTCAMP on the Desktop of the Mac OS X and then I tried to delete the partition but it didn't work. Now I tried to go to BootCamp Assistant but It doesn't show that I have partitioned hard drive. It shows me that I have only 420GB and it shows only my Macintosh HD. The 80GB are lost somewhere. Tell me how can I format the whole hard drive and get the 500GB again? And i want to do it while the hard drive is in the laptop and is working? Is there any way of doing that(it is fine if i have to install the OS again) Or what do i have to get done so that I can fix it?
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Jul 8, 2009
I'm switching back to PCs for now, what is the best way of getting all my data over? The external HD is Mac OS X "Journaled", what would I need to format it to for Vista to read it?
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Sep 14, 2009
I've just made some space on a USB passport drive and made a FAT32 partition in windows with partition magic (I already have files on it that I needed to keep). Now should I let time machine reformat, it'll only wipe the partition right? Or should i format it with disk utility? I'm thinking I can let time machine do it's thing but just double checking as I've managed to wipe a whole hard drive of data before now trying to make new partitions.
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Apr 18, 2009
I have a G4 Powermac dual 1.25 with a 160Gig drive which is partitioned into two. I'd like to reformat the drive as a single partition. I have booted from an OS X CD but can't find a way with Disk utilities to 'UN-partition' the drive(s).
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Sep 14, 2010
I have a new iMac 27, which I'm running primarily as a Windows machine. Using Bootcamp, I sectioned off 150GB of the 256GB SSD for Windows and installed W7 on it (the rest I leave for OS X, in case Windows fails, or upgrades become available). I've installed programs on the Windows drive, transferred my emails, etc. Now I still have to do something with the 1T hard drive, which I've decided not to partition, and to use exclusively in Windows mode. Two questions:
1. Please talk me through the process of formatting the 1T drive, as if I were a child!
2. I will use this drive mostly for large data files, but perhaps also for less important programs. Installations seem to happen more or less automatically when you insert a disc - how would I direct a program in the normal course of an automatic installation towards this second larger hard drive, AND is there any way (simply) to have programs running on the SSD with associated data files sitting on the other drive (e.g. with iTunes)?
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Sep 15, 2010
just received my brand new iMac 27" i7 today (2.93Ghz /2TB HDD + 256GB SSD/12GB RAM (4GB stock, although I upgraded 8GB more)) and I couldn't be happier. It's absolutely wonderful although it really burnt my wallet! I have managed to successfully install Windows XP via Boot Camp and have both Mac OSX & Windows running natively. I am very suprised that XP can see all the hard drives available within the mac itself even though they are HFS although I assume I cannot write onto them.
I believe I am at the stage where I would like to partition the 2TB HDD as discussed previously in my previous questions on this board. I would like 1TB for mac data storage (Mac OS extended) but I would like the other 1TB for Windows data storage (NTFS), however, this does not seem possible in the disk utility There is, however, an option for 'free space' or ExFat (FAT 32). Would I be right in saying I could format the hard drive as 2 partitions, partition 1 being Mac OS Extended and the 2nd Partition as free space or ExFat via Disk Utility. Once that is complete, I boot up XP and right click on the 2nd Parition which is ExFAT or Free Space and reformat the partition as NTFS? Does that work and make sense or is that stupidity?
(also on a side note, completely off topic, does anyone know how to get the magic mouse working in XP? I've got the keyboard (wired) working fine, however, the mouse doesn't seem to commicate. I've followed the tutorial/guides of adding the bluetooth mouse but when I tick the box "keyboard, mouse and misc functions (HID)" it states "access denied". I've tried several times and the device that i've just added disappears?
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Oct 24, 2010
I just received my new MacBook Air 11" and love it! Though I no longer want the USB Software Reinstall Drive to contain the 10.6 and iLife '11 and I am looking for a way to format the USB thumb drive into a usable flash drive. I tried using the disk utility, but it only sees the drive like a CD containing the information and not like a flash drive, eliminating the simple option to just use the disk utility to erase. Hoping that someone can help me use this neat looking USB drive for something more than a piece of plastic I never pull back out of my box.
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Mar 20, 2008
I just purchased a new 750GB Seagate FreeAgent drive. I hooked it up via FireWire 400, opened Disk Utility and tried to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It gave me an error message saying it was the wrong format (or something like that - I can't remember exactly). I tried every Mac OS option and it gave me the same error message.
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Apr 21, 2008
I have an external external 500gb Seagate hard drive, that works fine as a USB external but I wanted to put it inside my MacPro, is this possible without any need to format, just plug and play?
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Jan 3, 2009
I installed a new hard drive into my wife's older iBook G4 since the HD that came with the machine was only 30GB and was max'ed out shortly after we added some applications and photos. (Never should have bought such a small hard drive in the 1st place!) The new hard drive is an 80GB hard drive I bought online. I turned on the machine and got the question mark (?) blinking with something else on the 1st screen that came up. I proceeded to insert the original iBook OSX install cds. First I cleared the hard drive under disk utility and then the computer recognized the new drive. Then installation began. Got through the first disk no problem. Then it restarted and asked for disk two, which I inserted.
Then, if it decided to start installing from disk 2 (it kept going back and forth before it actually started disk two installation), it would get about 75% through the disk two installation and I keep getting a message saying 'There were errors installing the software'. I have tried to eject and re-insert the cd and I get the same message. I started from scratch by re-booting, wiping the hard drive clean again and started with disk one, only to get to disk two and encounter the same problem. I don't want to take this computer in and pay a service company to get me straight. This is an experiment to see if I could upgrade the hard drive and memory to make a slower/older machine perform better. We really only use it for organizing photos, surfing the net, office applications, etc.
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May 18, 2009
I have a USB key and would like to format it under NTFS, under Disk Utility, there isn't that option. I don't really have time to google this, does someone know what to do? Is there a console command to do?
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May 26, 2009
I have a Ibook g4 that got trashed the scree stoped working it would flicker on and off so i tryed to fix it and made it worse because I have not skill so I then pulled the HD and put it in a pc laptop I have I am now trying to get files off it through linux i tryed ubuntu because that is the only thing i have used but it is way to slow on my laptop because the cd drive is older then time so I tryed dsl and puppy linux but don't know how to mount the drive it shows up in the bios but not when i try to use the simple mount tool in puppy or dsl I know this is a mac fourm but I am hoping someone has done this before
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Jun 20, 2009
I was doing a 7-Pass Erase of a hard drive that I had switched out of my MBP. During the process, the USB cable connecting my hard drive to my MBP got disconnected. Now, whenever I connect this external drive to my MBP, it doesn't show up in the desktop or under disk utiltiy. How can I can continue the process of erasing and formatting the drive? What do I have to do in order for OS X to recognize it?
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Jul 25, 2009
I'm selling my old white Macbook so I can purchase the new Unibody one. I wasn't sure how exactly to "wipe" my old hard drive on Mac. Do I have to install the OS all over again? Did my Macbook come with the disc so I could do this? If not, is there a way to wipe everything without formatting the hard drive?
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Oct 21, 2009
i have a hard drive that began as a formatted win NTFS drive, which i formatted with hfs a couple of times to do some hackintosh experimenting. apparently i missed one of the document folders that were important to me when i did the backup to a bigger drive of the windows files. i am looking into data recovery software but i don't know much about it. the format has changed, and it has been formatted a couple of times. is it still possbile to use data recovery software and are there any recommendations? if anyone feels i have a better chance getting this answered in a different part of the forum, let me know.
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Dec 11, 2009
I've got an 8GB Sony Micro Vault Pen Drive that's stopped working. When I opened up Disk Utility it appears but doesn't give me the option to erase.
Can I try doing it with anything else before I bin it and buy a new one.
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