OS X :: Use An External Hard Drive For Extra Storage?
May 3, 2010
Somewhat new to Macs. Year old aluminum macbook (not pro) with 160 gb hard drive - "Startup disk full" message - Finder says 159 gb used, 1 gb available. I am sure I could delete some software or photos but will run into same problem later. What is the best solution - put a larger hard drive in or can I use an external hard drive for additional storage (how to do this, will this impact performance). I have a 500 gb external hd for backup - can I use this??
I just bought an external hard drive (My Passport for Mac) because my Macbook's hard drive is almost full. I did not want it necessarily for backup purposes, but rather I wanted to be able to store music, docs, etc. that I might want to access in the future, but want to remove from my computer for now.
Should I use Time Machine? Will time machine let me access my hard drive to obtain certain files when needed? Or is Time Capsule's sole purpose to backup everything on my computer?
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?
I just purchased a 500gb External Hard Drive. I was wondering what is the best way to format and partition it so that I can use 300gb dedicated to Time Machine and then use the ~180gb for external storage. The key part of my situation is that I want to be able to access the ~180 gb from both my Mac and my windows based machines. I know I could go into disk utility and partition it, but what format should I use if I want to do both.
The other part is the hard drive is already setup to use time machine since yesterday, however I am willing to format it completely to partition it to use on windows machines (XP and Vista.)
I've got my iTunes Library on an external drive, but for some reason all of my Apps download onto my internal hard-drive, and if I move them onto the external drive they all corrupt.Any suggestions? The music/videos work perfectly.
Is this hard drive going to work as an extra drive in a: Power Mac G5 Power PC G5 (2.2) existing ram 2x512MB PC3200U-30330 Western Digital Caviar (WD5000AAKS) 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Buffer (OEM)
I have a G4 iBook that I use as my play computer and my mod book... I just dyed the top case and the bottom case (also the battery cover) all black and I changed the apple to red! It looks really sweet and it matches my backpack... Ok well I just read about a guy that wants to take out his optical drive out and put another hard drive in.
My question is... Would that be possible with my iBook? It is a early 2004 ibook g4 1.07 GHz, 768 MB RAM, and a small 30 gig hard drive! I would love to add more hard drive space without having to go through the hassle of finding a way to transfer all of my data on this hard drive to another!
Im encountering space issues when erasing the HD free space! I get a popup message saying that i need to free up more space in order to get the job done. I cant remove any more data from the drive in order to make it more spacious for the free space erasing!
Is there a way i can hook up an external drive so that it will use that extra space?
Yesterday I completed a 4 hour backup of my 64 Gb iPad on my 11" MBA. I started with 75 GB available before I synced and backed up my iPad and then checked it again after the sync completed and ended up with 67 GB available. I can't figure why I dropped so much storage after everything backed up. I checked my mobile sync folder and can only attribute 2.25 GB as my backup size for my ipad which means I lost an additional 5.75 GB and is being tied up somewhere on my flash drive. Could anyone please give me a suggestion or idea in how I can determine where the extra storage went?
The guy I called from apple today was clueless and told me he didn't know how to do it, and then told me the wrong thing!I bought the storage under the impression that it was a useful product, but it wasn't doing what I thought it was supposed to do! I just want to get rid of this extra storage!! I mean, this is ridiculous if the apple employees aren't trained in this!
I've been using my external hard drive for Time Machine for a while now (a Western Digital My Book) and have only used up about 100 of its 500 GB capacity. However, I'd like to temporarily use the remaining space on the drive as extra storage, since my other hard drive just died. Is there any way to do this without erasing everything that I've backed up with Time Machine already?
I just purchased a used mid 2012 macbook pro and one of the features that made me buy it was a 1 terabyte storage space. determine if it is actually 1 TB because the first screenshot showing the disk space does not update. Also each time I download a huge file, it's shows I have a specified amount of space out of a total of 499 GBÂ
I am looking for a 2TB HDD to add to my 3rd and 4th bay. They will be used for storage and backup only and need to be as silent as possible. I was looking at the 2TB caviar green. Is this a good choice? Is it a lot less noisy compared to a caviar black or blue? [URL]
I have eyeTV on my computer and it is absolutely great. I have downloaded so many movies off my cable that my 500 gig hard drive is almost full. Now I am in the navy and will more than likely get sent out to a ship soon. That being said, I am limited on space of what I can and cannot bring. I would definitely like to bring with me as many movies/recording with me. What would be my options in terms of storage?
I run a small business which has a new Mac Mini 10.7 and iMacs 10.5.8 which we currently store all our on-going work on a Hard Drive connected via ethernet. However, I want to try and achieve the following:Â
1 storage device for all work (around 1TB in size)
Access to my work from home, main office or another office
Work directly on drive (don't want to download, amend, and re-upload)
Access via various Mac OS, from 10.5-10.7
Not too expensive! Is there any on-line storage site or Live Hard Drive I can use to gain access to my work, work live directly to from various locations using the Macs as above, or am I just dreaming of something that does not exist?Â
I hope this makes sense, it foes to me, but do ask if I am talking gobbledegook!Â
My mac says I have 126 gig of movies in my memory and I can not find where it is so I can delete it. I looked in itunes and found movies and deleted them but I am unable to find the 126 gig that is remaining. How do I find the movies? It also says I have 113 gig of other, what and how do I find other so that I can clean up my mac?Â
I was shocked to see that my hard drive was close to full last night when I checked on its capacity. Mainly because I just wiped clean a month ago and reinstalled with the current version of Mavericks.  It would appear that my problem lies within a massive amount of storage used classified as "other". My HD holds 320 GB and of that, "other" is taking up 161 GB along with my Audio, Movies, Photos and Apps taking up a combined 120 GB. This leaves me with about 40 GB left of free space.Â
I am unable to pinpoint the location of these "other" files. Totaling up the four subfolders in my HD (System, Library, Users and Applications) only amounts to 120 GB which can be traced back to my Audio, Movies, Photos and Apps. This leaves 161 GB floating around used somewhere that I haven't the slightest clue of where it is. I have used Grand Perspective and a disk space analyzer from the app store and they both only recognize 120 GB being used by the hard drive. Â
To make things a little more interesting, when I first noticed this "other" issue, it was taking up 145 GB and over the course of an hour or so after multiple restarts it has worked its way up to the 161 GB it is at now. Is there some type of glitch here?Â
I have tried restarting in Safe Mode to reset any stuck processes, but that didn't work either. I have searched similar problems but most people have found massive log files which they were able to pinpoint using a disk analyzer.Â
With a clean wipe and reset only a month ago, how can the "other" be this big already?Â
I have a 2007 iMac which ran great with snow leopard...I currently have the latest version of Mavericks 10.9.4
I have a 500 gb ext HD, that i will be partitioning to 2 sections, one will be mac os extended for time machine, the other will be fat32 for storage and so that i can use the hd with windows and mac.
so my questions are:
1. how many GB should i leave for back up so that time machine works effectively?
2. any suggestions on how i should divide the 500 gb between mac os extended and fat32? such as 250/250 or 400/100?
I backed up my hard drive to an external drive. I now want to free up my hard drive storage space. How do I do that. I deleted several GB of iTunes but the free file space did not increase. How can I free up disk space?
It seems that the writing is on the wall for my macbook pro internal harddrive.... Currently limping along but I need to start in safe mode and occaisonally internet boot and run diskutil, fsck etc etc etc.... I think it's safe to say it's going to die soon!So, looking to buy a replacement internal hard drive for a 2011 15" macbook pro: currently I have the stock 750gb 5000rpm drive.Looking for recommendations: of course a 750gb solid state drive would be ideal but of course not realistic! Â
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
My main computer is a MPB17 with 256gb SSD and 750gb HD in an optibay. I have huge media libraries and like to have ready access to all my photos and videos. I have a Gen 1 Air that I use at home for mail and surfing and I have been using my iPad for mail and web when out. I have a max spec 11" Air arriving this week. It weighs the same as my iPad with Vaja case so I'm going to take it everywhere and leave the iPad for a reader in bed. Now I'm starting to think I might leave the 17" in my office and sync the 11" Air up and use if when I'm out. Problem is I want a fast, light USB drive to hold my media. Ideally with USB and FW so I can sync it fast with the MBPro.
