external hard drive rookie question

[Gotmoose]

Hello,

What would I do without the help of all you good people?

!)I have a full external hard drive and would like to transfer all my time machine back-ups to a new larger one. How do I do this?

2) And when I'm ready to transfer all time machine data to my new iMac using external hard drive can I choose all dates so I'm including all pictures videos etc?

Thanks

 

[richard.mac]

unplug your old Time Machine external drive and plug in the new one and try choosing it in Time Machine preferences. it might ask you if you want to format it and use for Time Machine backups. it will then do a new initial backup of everything.

 

[BlueRevolution]

unplug your old Time Machine external drive and plug in the new one and try choosing it in Time Machine preferences. it might ask you if you want to format it and use for Time Machine backups. it will then do a new initial backup of everything.

This won't copy your existing backups. If you're okay with starting again, that's the way to go.

 -> System Preferences -> Time Machine -> Change Disk -> (select new hard drive)

2) And when I'm ready to transfer all time machine data to my new iMac using external hard drive can I choose all dates so I'm including all pictures videos etc?

When you install from a Time Machine backup, you'll be asked to choose a date to restore from, and Time Machine will include all files present on the system when the backup was made, even if they hadn't been changed since a previous revision. So you don't have to do anything special.

 

[fdefore]

Didn't want to start a new thread but I've got an amateurish external hard drive question...

I'm wanting to transfer basic files from my old HP laptop to my new MBP. Basic files meaning iTunes, jpgs, Adobe files, etc. I'd be storing some program files in the external drive but not transferring. In theory I'd also like to use this drive to backup files from my new machine.

What drive should I be looking for?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Depends how much stuff you've got. The amount of information you've provided is a bit underwhelming. You can transfer data just as easily by networking the two computers, so don't let that be a determining factor when shopping for drives.

 

[fdefore]

Depends how much stuff you've got. The amount of information you've provided is a bit underwhelming. You can transfer data just as easily by networking the two computers, so don't let that be a determining factor when shopping for drives.

Apologies for not providing enough or the proper information. What else should I add?

Essentially --- I'm looking for external hard drive that is can store / transfer files from both Mac and Windows. I admittedly know next to nothing about external hard drives. I'm looking at external hard drives over networking because of the simultaneous storage, understanding a network could work for the transferring aspect.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I'm just wondering how much data you'll be wanting to put on it. All external hard drives work in exactly the same way, so the selection is pretty linear. It's just a matter of what size you buy.

 

[fdefore]

So there are no formatting complications? I was told by someone to look for a Mac / Universal label

if I wanted to use it to store both PC and Mac files. He implied that was the only kind that would work -- so perhaps his information wasn't entirely correct and that's where I'm getting confused.

In terms of how much I space I currently need: not much. We're talking 30ish GB. But I'll be needing an external drive to store future film projects.

 

[BlueRevolution]

He is an idiot. The only things that distinguish "Mac" hard drives from other hard drives is a $30-$40 higher price tag and about 20 seconds less setup time because they come pre-formatted for Macs. Just buy a reasonably-priced drive and format it yourself in Disk Utility.

I believe Apple recommends using Time Machine with an external drive that can fit the data from your system hard drive two times over. (So if you have a 500 GB internal hard drive but only 140 GB of data, a 320 GB backup drive would be fine.)

I'm not sure what kind of/how many film projects you're talking about here, but I'm sure you can tally things up just as well as I can. Last time I checked, 1 TB drives had the lowest price per gigabyte.

 

[Lloyd Christmas]

He is an idiot

this sums up the whole post ha ha Lloyd