Okay, so i bought this mainly just to store files on it so i could have more room on my 13" Macbook, and all it really seems to do is back everything up, is there anyway I could use it JUST for storage. I heard partitioning, but i dont understand how to do that, please help, thanks.
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Help with My Book for Mac (1TB)
- Thread starter PatrickCarroll
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So you configured it as Time Machine?
You can switch that off by System Preferences > Time Machine.
If you don't need the Time Machine backup you can either delete the created folder on that drive or go to Disk Utility and erase the drive and even partition it with more than one partition.
For further reading: http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitysize.htm
You can switch that off by System Preferences > Time Machine.
If you don't need the Time Machine backup you can either delete the created folder on that drive or go to Disk Utility and erase the drive and even partition it with more than one partition.
For further reading: http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitysize.htm
Yea i did time machine but i turned it off. And the problem is that when i drag a file into the drive folder, then delete it from my MacBooks hard drive, it deletes it from the My Book too, and i dont want that.
With drive folder do you mean the drive itself or the folder called Backups.backupdb on the drive?
And how does the original file get deleted on the MacBook's HDD?
Do you press any key while dragging a file from your MB to the external drive?
And how does the original file get deleted on the MacBook's HDD?
Do you press any key while dragging a file from your MB to the external drive?
i have that folder, and im saying the file gets deleted off the My Book when i delete it on the MacBook HDD, then its starts to make doubles.
Did you install software that came on the drive? (I'm not sure if WD ships its Mac drives with backup software, but some manufacturers do.)
It sounds like you are not using this external hard drive as a backup clone of your MacBook's hard drive, but rather as an extra hard drive so that you can place files into instead of your MacBook's? If that is correct then you shouldn't use Time Machine for that task and just manually drag and drop the files onto your new hard drive yourself.
That is pretty much what I do for files that are no longer on my computer. What I mean by this is that these are files that I want to keep but I don't need them to be on my computer so I store them onto an external hard drive. Time Machine wouldn't work because the files are no longer on my computer. The only copies of the file is on the external and a backup of the external.
If you want both a Time Machine backup and an external hard drive just for storage of files no longer on your computer then you either need to get two external hard drives or partition your one hard drive so that you can divide it into two pieces. I recommend getting two hard drives because if that one hard drive failed then you will probably lose your storaged data also. Unless you had a second backup for it then it will be gone forever. If your Time Machine backup is gone then your computer's hard drive is the second copy so it's not as bad.
In order to use your external hard drive like a big USB flash memory stick you just have to go into Disk Utilities and erase and format it as Mac Extended Journaled. This is also where you can choose to partition your external hard drive and put both Time Machine and your storaged data on the same hard drive or choose to use this whole drive for your stored date. This will erase all data on your external hard drive so be sure to restore any files from Time Machine that you want back before formatting.
You know how to setup Time Machine since you have already done so but to manually backup your files all you have to do is plug in your hard drive and it will show up on your desktop. You then just open it like any folder and then drag and drop your files on your computer to the external hard drive. You can make up new folders like you do on your computer. Manually backing up your files is also great if you know you only want to backup your digital images for example since that will use up less hard drive space than backing up your whole computer. All your applications you can reinstall yourself. It's just quicker to get back to work if you get a full copy of your computer's hard drive and restore it if your computer's hard drive dies which is one of the benefits of Time Machine. Manual backups was the way I backed up everything before Time Machine was invented.