external hard drive primer

external hard drive doesn't show up

I have a related problem. I have an iMac 17", admittedly 5 years old but I love it and don't want it to go into a landfill. I bought a Western Edition My Book, Essential Edition, recommended by the store (Best Buy). It doesn't show up on the desktop. It does show up in Disk Utilities but refuses to be partitioned--"input/output error". Another salesman at Best Buy said, well, it won't work with a machine that old. You have to buy a special, more expensive hard drive. I have less confidence in the store than i had in the beginning. Any suggestions?

Yvonne (7-18-2009)

 

Best Buy is yanking your chain - it's probably NTFS. When you connect the drive, open Disk Utility. When the drive shows up, click on it (and not the partition that is indented and below). The Partition tab should become available; click on it and choose 1 partition from the pull down, then click on the Option button. If your iMac is G4 or G5, then choose Apple Partition Map. If it's an Intel iMac, then choose GUID. After that, initialize the drive with HFS+ with journaling (Mac OS X Extended).

 

external hard drive doesn't show up

Thanks, I'll give it a try before I return it forever.

 

I have just bought an external hard drive to back up my mac (tiger) but i have tried 2 of the programs from the internet; 1)superduper! but my hard drive is greyed out an a destination option and 2) carbon cloner - says that my harddrive is not HFS+ formatted.

I don't really know that much about macs, can anyone help me out?

 

You have to use Disk Utility on your Mac to initialize the new drive as HFS+ (OS X Extended). In DU, be sure to click on the drive and not the partition that is indented and below the drive (which is probably a NTFS volume). Once you do that the Partition tab becomes available where you choose 1 volume, Mac HFS+ and under Options set to GUID partition table if you have an Intel Mac; otherwise Apple Partition Map for a PPC Mac.

 

External hard drive recommendations

I've been trying to find recommendations for a FireWire 800 external hard drive (500G+ capacity) but seems like the only options are Seagate and some Lacie drives...are there any other recommendations?

I've read a number of warnings against the Western Digital drives that they end up failing (plus is seems they only have USB connections).

Any advice?

 

I never buy canned drives because if they fail you cannot disassemble them without voiding the warranty. Oftentimes, it's the controller that fails and not the drive. I only buy Rosewill, MacAlly or OWC enclosures and put Samsung or Seagate drives in them.

 

I 2nd the recommendation for Rosewill or OWC enclosures... and have had good luck with WD and Seagate harddrives.

 

guid partition

i've got 60gig of tunes on an ext hdd, that simplifymedia can't/won't recognise, could it be because it's not guid partitioned? it's plugged into an intel mac mini.
cheers
steve

 

Once you get your drive formatted properly using Disk Utility, as someone later described, I have found that making a clone is the easiest way of making a bootable external version of OSX. I've used both CCC and Superduper! and can't really recommend one over the other. Until I recently deleted it, finally, I had a Tiger clone and could boot into Tiger. Now I have a clone of Leopard. Leopard runs on my iMac, but I have a fairly new Macbook with Snow Leopard. I'm going to connect the external to my Macbook and see if by booting into Leopard can correct the one lingering apparent bug I'm experiencing with SL - the fact that my Macbook won't recognize my HDTV when connected via HDMI. After Christmas, when I should have an additional external HD, I'm going to clone SL.

 

As for external recommendations - I've been really happy with the LaCie D2 for firewire and USB, and WD elements and passport drives for USB. The LaCie is a little bit more pricey, but that thing has been rock solid and fast. I've been eyeing the Iomega eGo portable with USB and firewire for use with my Macbook if anyone has experience with it I would be interested.

 

I have been looking into the eGO for about 6 months now. Too be honest I cant find a bad review about it. Every respectable place (like Cnet) that reviews it says its great.

So I got a new MBP and ordered an 80G intel SSD (because I cant afford anything bigger.) I decided to put all my programs, which is only about 30 gigs on the SSD and buy a good external (eGo) to put all my music and videos on.

The only problem I was having is what has been mentioned here a few times. If something happens to the drivers you have to rip the thing open and rig it up to get your info off of it. So after 6 months of contomplating the eGo, I decided to go with this setup.

OWC external case.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTG800U2/

WD Black 7200 RPM Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

I think im going this route because i have 3 other smaller drives I could swap in and out of this case.

Just figured I would give my 2 cents because I am/ was in the same boat as you. The eGo is still a great choice I think. But this route gives you the option of hot swapping which I like.

 

Macbook Air External Hard Drive Help... lost at sea...

Let me first say say that I'm a total noob when it comes to external hard drives. Never had to run one before as first time with a laptop with so little space.

I bought a 1 TB external drive for my Macbook Air as, duh, the internal HD has little space.

It is currently running Time Machine Backups to save my old stuff, which is good.

However, I'm getting a message that my MacOSX Startup disk is running very low on space.

There's loads of empty space on the external drive. Is there a way I can set it up so that it actually works as an internal drive and therefore new things are automatically saved to the external drive instead of the internal, as it's clearly running out of space, and not just in Time Machine Backups?

Or could you please explain, (in detail please... as I'm a noob) the best way to clean up my startup disk, or partition the external drive to move all the extra start up disk things there?

I'm sorry if this sounds ridiculous. As I said, I'm a total noob at this, please be patient. If anyone can give me some help with this it would be sincerely appreciated...and please, sorry, explain in terms as if I'm totally clueless. As in this case, I am. My apologies.

Kind Regards,

Darrin

 

The message about your startup disk means you probably only have a few hundred (or less) megabytes left. That message has nothing to do with your external drive. What you need to do is copy files from your internal drive to your external drive, then delete those same files from your internal drive (i.e., move to trash, then empty the trash).

You can use the external drive as your boot drive, but that negates the value of a laptop and USB2 is painfully slow for a boot drive.

 

Boot from external, USB Firewire?

Something in the back of my head is thinking we can only boot externally from fireware drives. I can not find that mentioned. Maybe this is Old school 10.3 Panther days?

Or old hardware?

On external enclosures: how about $7 http://www.shop4tech.com/item8570.html. It is USB only but hey $7

I see mentions of
OWC external case.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTG800U2/ but that is $63
Undoubtedly nice and Fireware but $63?

 

All Intel-based Macs can boot from USB hard drives. The Power PC Macs could not (without some system mods).

 

bootable firewire external HD won't boot....just spins wheel

Hi, I'm new here so bear with me if I don't follow proper procedure. i hope this is the appropriate thread for this issue.

I have a Power Book G4 800 MHz running OS x 10.3.9.
I replaced the original 40GB Hard Drive with an 80GB hard drive and
had the old one converted into an external HD. I want to be able
to boot up from the external drive, so using desk utility, I restored
from the Hard Drive to the back up Hard Drive.
I have it connected using fire wire. It appears to be
bootable and is available in the start-up disc preference pane, but when
I opt to reboot from it, although the Apple appears and the wheel spins
it never opens. I am posting the info I get about each drive in disk utility's
info pane, hoping someone more knowledgeable than I can figure out what's wrong. Any and all suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm stuck.
here goes:

Name : HD
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk0s10
Mount Point : /
File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus : ATA
IO Content : Apple_HFS
Device Tree : mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:10
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 74.4 GB (79,891,202,048 Bytes)
Free Space : 41.0 GB (43,998,220,288 Bytes)
Used : 33.4 GB (35,885,690,880 Bytes)
Number of Files : 200,860
Number of Folders : 49,452
Permissions Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Permissions Off : Yes
Can Repair Permissions : Yes
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk Number : 0
Partition Number : 10




Name : HD_backup
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk2s5
Mount Point : /Volumes/HD_backup
File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus : FireWire
IO Content : Apple_HFS
Device Tree : fw/node@1d202e005020a/sbp-2@c000/@0:5
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 37.3 GB (40,007,283,712 Bytes)
Free Space : 3.8 GB (4,079,366,144 Bytes)
Used : 33.5 GB (35,924,832,256 Bytes)
Number of Files : 200,818
Number of Folders : 49,441
Permissions Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Permissions Off : Yes
Can Repair Permissions : Yes
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 5

 

I'm trying to get subscribed to this thread. It appears that my first post didn't accomplish that so I am posting again to activate the option.

 

You might try to repair permissions or repair disk using Disk Utility on the external drive, but it sounds like something is compromised about the disk.

 

Holy cow, this might be the reason I have a problem, because I copied the indented partition.
I will try it this way.

 

How funny you were responding just when I was reading that older post of yours. I've done repair permissions and it took forever, but now I will try
to re-restore according to your instructions.

UPDATE: I cannot restore using your instructions. Disk Utility
won't allow me to drag the icon that you said to use to the source or destination
box. I can only use the indented icons. I don't think the disc is compromised.
It was my old internal hardrive and it does boot up as far as the apple appears and the wheel spins....how long should I let the wheel spin. Normally it spins for about 10 to 15 seconds for the internal HD. I've let the external drive spin for 10 minutes with no sign of opening.

ooops, please forgive me for misunderstanding your instructions. I just re-read and realized you were referring to preparing the external HD for restoring....I am
working on that now and will post back about results. thanks

 

UPDATE on above situation:
No luck at all.
I repaired permissions on all the drives and it still didn't open past the apple and 7 minutes of the spinning wheel. I didn't to the partitioning as it appears to be okay in that respect.
I am posting the info from DiskUtility regarding the hard drives.
Maybe there's a clue in there....anyone?

internal hard drive:
Name : Hitachi HTS541680J9AT00
Type : Disk

Disk Identifier : disk0
Media Name : Hitachi HTS541680J9AT00 Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : ATA
Connection ID : Device 0
IO Content : Apple_partition_scheme
Device Tree : mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : No
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : Yes
Location : Internal
Total Capacity : 74.5 GB (80,026,361,856 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. status : Verified
Disk Number : 0
Partition Number : 0

external harddrive:
Name : Other World Computing
Type : Disk

Disk Identifier : disk1
Media Name : IBM-IC25 N040ATCS04-0 Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 512384766902794
IO Content : Apple_partition_scheme
Device Tree : fw/node@1d202e005020a/sbp-2@c000/@0:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : No
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : Yes
Location : External
Total Capacity : 37.3 GB (40,007,761,920 Bytes)
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 0

 

Certainly a n00b question, but how easy is it to make up your own external HDD from a case and a drive? I have negligible DIY skills but I like the ideea of having something flexible.

Woulkd it involve difficult scary stuff like (shudder) soldering?

 

You just buy the case. They are not that expensive and they usually have a number of different cable outlet options too. USB, Firewire etc.
I think you can find them for $20 to $30.
BTW, I solved my problem opening the external hard drive. Evidently I had re-moved some files, or renamed them, can't even remember which now, and that is an absolute never do when you are making a boot up disk.
I re-copied my hard drive to the external one using the wonderful Disk Utility Restore, and it worked like a charm...oh yeah, also you must remember to enable permissions.

 

I agree with mysmin, why the hell make one when you can buy one with a 5 star rating from new egg for 10 bucks?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182145