OS X :: What External Hard Drive Should I Get For My Mac Book
Sep 2, 2009
I bought my macbook last august and am just now getting around to backing up my files (why I waited this long is beyond me).
I'm not sure what kind of external hard drive to get. I simply want a copy of my files on something that's not my computer. Storage, in case something happens to my Mac and that I could transfer onto a new computer.
I don't need anything fancy, just something I can back stuff up on.
I'm not a techie and I am still learning the ways of being a mac.
I purchased a My Book external hard drive (Studio Edition). It's loaded onto my iBookG4 - now how do I use it. Let's say I just added a few pictures to iPhoto - what do I do to save them? AND can I keep it plugged in all the time to my laptop?
I have just purchased the new OS X 10.5.4 operating system and wish to upgrade to this. Before I upgrade the operating system I want to upgrade to a bigger and faster hard drive. I currently have a 100 GB 5200 hard drive. I wish to upgrade to a 300 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.
What I need help is copying all my apps and files over to the new hard drive and to install the new OS X operating system. Shall I just upgrade the OS X on to my current 100 GB hard drive, then create a clone/ boot disk so then when I install my new hard drive I create the clone on to the new hard drive.
What is the best option for me as I want to upgrade my hard drive and upgrade my OS X, without installing my apps and files again.
Is there a way to safely loosen the screws on the bracket holding the hard drive in place on a mac book pro 17 inch? I've got one loose, but the other one simply won't budge and the head is starting to strip. the amount of downward force I'm having to exert to try to get it to move seems excessive to the point of dangerous to me. i'm using a Philips 00 screwdriver which is the correct tool, I believe, but I just cannot shift it. given that Apple say this is a user replaceable part, there must be an easy wy to do it, but all I can see me doing is more damage and being stuck with a captive screw that no one can move.
with cloning/copying the content one an external hard drive onto a new external hard drive. Basically, I have a 500GB FW400 drive which I use to store my media files. It's full, so I purchased a 1TB FW800 drive to replace it. Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting "insufficient space" errors.
Recently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive). After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too. Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
I just recently bought a LaCie 500GB Rikki portable hard drive. Anyways I'm trying to back up my Address Book to it. So I drag the Address Book to the hard drive thinking it would back up all my contacts. Went to test it on my wife's MacBook Pro, it just shows her contacts in there and not mine. What am I doing wrong?
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
i have a power mac g-5 quad with an external dvd drive and a external hard drive and 2gb of ram. on my ext. hard drive i downloaded mac the ripper and that is where i put all my dvds, now today on my pmac i was using mac the ripper, popcorn, itunes, safari all at once and it froze up on me?why? could the ram be an issue? how may programs can i use at once with my pmac?
A friend's G4 iMac has died - possibly with a fried mainboard - and she didn't have a backup of her Address Book, which is a big problem for her. I've pulled the hard drive and using an IDE-to-USB adapter on my MBP have confirmed that it's still working.
We need to merge the Address Book details from the G4 HD into the Address Book on her MacBook - so at the risk of asking a dumb question, what's the best way of doing this?
I've just taken a look at the Address Book import options, and it looks like "Import... Address Book archive" might be what we want, but do you need to have specifically exported an archive first (which of course she hasn't, and won't be able to do anyway), or by "archive" does it mean "older version of Address Book"? I don't want to try it without getting some kind of clarification first, just in case it wipes the existing contacts from her MacBook rather than simply merge the ones from the old drive.
Looking for opinions or comparisons on performance between an internal mac hard drive vs an external firewire 800 hard drive or better. Is the performance on an internal MP drive or iMac internal drive much faster than connecting to a firewire 800 drive? I'm sure it depends on the drive, I'm wondering about apple factory installed internal drive vs say a WD external firewire 800
In other words... I have moved my music library to the external hard drive, as per an earlier thread I read here on the forums. It worked like quite well. Now that it is working perfectly, I am having a hard time leaving well enough alone. It is never a good idea for me to think too much...Can itunes be installed and run on/from an external hard drive? If so, how?
my mac has a pioneer dvd drive in it and it wont read my dvd+r dl and I am wanting to burn a mac os 10.5.dmg to it and install 10.5 but the dang thing is ejecting it. So what should I do to get it to work get the external dvd and run it from it or get a external hard drive and try it that way.
This is what im trying to do. I have a macbook with 120gb hard drive. thats not enough space from my music collection. So i was wondering how to make itunes run off a external hard drive. I looked around and found was for a PC.
I have an elderly Q950 with an external hard drive with everything backed up onto it. The external drive is a Micronet ADV1000E, with a sticker on the back saying it's Macintosh or PC compatible. I also have an iBook laptop, & PC Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. As I have the 2 laptops, the Quadra hadn't been switched on for maybe one year. On the weekend I tried to get it to boot up (with & without the external drive switched on), but all it does is display a grey screen with an image of a 3.5" disk with a '?' in the middle. If I start up from a Norton 3.5" disk it still can't find the external or internal drive. If I try booting up with my finger in the shift key it doesn't want to know.
1. Any idea why the Quadra isn't seeing either the external or internal drive & what can I try to do? 2. Is there any way I can connect my external drive to either my iBook or Dell? At the moment I have no cables to connect the old & new - are cables available & if so any idea where from? I've looked high & low but so far no joy. 3. Is it possible to remove the hard drive from the Quadra or the external drive & put in an external drive enclosure, then connect that to either laptop? I see there are drive enclosures available which are Mac & pc compatible. This by the way would be a major undertaking for me. I'm by no means a computer dunce but would be wary of trying it.
when I went into the "get info" window for the G-Drive and switched the ownership/permissions dropdown from "read/write" to "no access". When I tried to switch it back to read/write, it would say read/write in the dropdown, but then I'd try to access the g-drive and I'd only get to the first set of folders--when I'd click on a folder, there would appear to be nothing in it. (Not sure if this is really related to my current problem.) I then tried ejecting and remounting the drive, but it didn't show up on my desktop. Stupidly, I assumed my computer didn't recognize it at all and unplugged the firewire without ejecting thru disk utility. When I did this I got the device removal error. I then plugged the firewire back in and tried repairing the disk in disk utility, but it said it didn't need repair. When I click on the G-Drive in disk utility the info at the bottom says:
Mount Point :/Volumes/G-DRIVECapacity :465.6 GB (499,973,603,328 Bytes) Format :Mac OS ExtendedAvailable : Owners Enabled :NoUsed : Number of Folders :0Number of Files :0
0 Files! I'm worried about losing all my stuff! I then tried DiskWarrior (v4.0). When I first opened it I think the info at the bottom said "This disk is a Mac OS Extended disk. This disk does NOT appear on the desktop." I'm not quite sure about that "not" b/c after rebuilding the directory of the G-DRIVE I know it now says "This disk does appear on the desktop." Anyway, it's definitely not appearing on my desktop. After building the directory it said "All file and folder data was easily located. Comparison of the original and replacement directories indicate that there will be changes to the number, the contents and/or the attributes of the files and folders." And later: "19 files (and 2 folders) had a directory entry w/ an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired." And:
I then clicked "Replace" whereupon it said it was successfully replace. But still it did not appear on the desktop even after ejecting, remounting, rebooting computer, etc.
If anyone has any advice I'd really appreciate it. I'm pretty desperate here! Thanks!
(FYI I already tried going into the Finder permissions and unclicking and reclicking the box for showing disks on the desktop. Also, I plan on getting DataRescueII in case that's necessary, but i hope it isn't)
So, I've been searching the forums, as I just had a 1TB (well actually a dual 500GB) external drive stop mounting and start clicking on me. I'm trying to find a way to recover files, and I know I've seen a lot of posts on DriveSavers, which. I was searching around, and I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of a company called "OneWorld Data Recovery." It was something I stumbled across, but I can't find any reviews, or nail down anybody who's used it.
Clearly, this seems fairly suspect, but I figured I'd check and see if anybody had ever heard of it or used it. Thanks!
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 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 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 want to put my old 15" PowerBook hard drive into an external case. I pulled the hard drive out of the PowerBook. And I purchased a NexStar CS 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 external case. But the connections don't match. What do I need to do? Do I need to buy some sort of adaptor? Hard drive is a Hitachi 120GB 5400RPM (model # HTS541612J9AT00) 2.5" Sorry, these photos are blurry as hell. Picture of hard drive pins:
Pins are in the following configuration (1's represent pins):...............
Lately I've been using my external hard drive as the main drive of my imac I5 and every day it freezes when I open 3 or 4 apps or more or while doing several stuff at the same time. This, obviously, doesnt happen when using the internal hard drive of the imac, so I suppose is due to using firewire 800 or usb 2.0. Is it normal for every external hard drive to freeze when using it as the main drive or maybe is it that my external hard drive is bad?
I'm planning on buying a more quieter external hard drive to use as the main drive of my imac, but I wont do so if it also keeps freezing every day. Any suggestions? Is it normal even when using firewire 800? When using the external hard drive I umount the internal drive of the imac. Maybe this is the reason? Its a Lacie Big Disk 500GB. Would an external SSD make a difference or would it still freeze?
So around 5 years ago i got the WD-160JB hard disk drive. I want to see all the things i did back then. I want to be able to connect this WD-160JB drive as a external hard drive to my mac.Â
What i am wondering is if you can somehow have a cable or something which links the USB from the MBP to the hard disk.Â
I'm curious what people use for external storage on their iMacs. I have a Mac Pro which is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm debating whether to get a new Mac Pro or to get an iMac, which would be a pretty good speed bump from my Mac Pro 1,1. I'd get the ssd drive, and the 2TB harddrive and get aftermarket RAM. But what I like about the Mac Pro is the upgrades you can do. And I like the four hard drive bays, for storage and backup. I've got over 3 TB of photos and music/tv/movies, so I'm going to need an external drive. In addition, I'd like to be able to backup everything. Is there an elegant way to do this on an iMac with an external drive that isn't super loud and hot?
