iMac is asking me to subscribe to MobileMe for a local USB HD - Normal?

[entreprenerd]

This is my first post here. I tried searching for an answer but can't seem to find one.

I purchased a 1TB Western Elements HD the other day and formatted it to work on my Mac. I then dumped all of my photos and music on it. Now I want to reload those photos into iPhoto or Picasa, but it's saying I need MobileMe.

Since when do I need to pay $99 a year to access a local drive? I'm not looking to sync to my iPod or phone or anything. I just want to free up my internal HD a bit because my Mac is getting sluggish.

I'm on an iMac purchased in 2009 and running Snow Leopard. Also, my Mac named my disk "iDisk" and wanted to back things up to it.

I was a Mac user for years, but had to switch to PC when I worked as a Realtor because of the MLS program. I hated PCs and came back to Mac in '09, so I'm not on the "up and up" on new stuff like MobileMe.

What can I do? I just want to access my files on this USB drive.

 

[old-wiz]

If you still have the photos on another disk, reformat the external disk and name it something other than iDisk.

I have 4 external HDs that I partitioned and formatted as HFS and never heard of disk utility naming them as iDisk. Maybe you picked an incorrect option when you formatted it?

 

[Makosuke]

This is just a random guess, but are you sure you're actually selecting your external disk and not just the default iDisk icon that shows up in the Finder?

I've seen people get confused by this one or twice before; when you set up a default Snow Leopard installation, there is an iDisk item in the Finder/Open dialogue sidebar by default, whether you signed up for MobileMe or not. It doesn't actually DO anything unless you have a MobileMe account, but it LOOKS like an external hard drive.

I've also never heard of a reformatted external getting named iDisk (much less getting treated as one), unless you did it on purpose; the default is Untitled 1. The external will show in the sidebar as a yellow icon, while iDisk will show as blue, but depending on settings it's possible for an external to not show there, even if it's connected and mounted.

Try this: Get a Finder window open, hold down the Command key, and click on the title of the window. You should get a drop down showing you where in the filesystem you are currently looking. Select the item at the bottom of the list--it should be the name of your computer. When you select this, you should see a list that shows Macintosh HD (or whatever your internal drive is called), Network, and the name of your external, if it's attached (plus any other mounted drives). You will NOT see an iDisk here unless it's actually connected. Use this to confirm that you're actually getting the MobileMe warning when you open your external--double click and see if you can access your stuff.

 

[entreprenerd]

Makosuke - You are totally right! I was mistaking the iDisk for the HD. What happened is, when I plugged in and reformatted the drive for Mac, it named it "Time Machine Backups", so I thought that was a disk image and not the HD. iDisk sounded more like a HD and it had the actual disk icon. The Time Machine one had the clock icon.

Everything is fine now. Thank you!

 

[Makosuke]

Glad you got that sorted out.

A couple of tips: When the OS first asked if you wanted to use your newly-formatted external drive for Time Machine backups, you must have clicked yes. That's why it got the Time Machine moniker and (I assume) green icon. I think you can still copy stuff onto it manually, as well, which may have been what you were doing. Either way, if you DIDN'T want to use it as a Time Machine automatic backup, you might consider deselecting it in the Time Machine preference pane, and/or reformatting it and starting fresh (after, of course, making sure that you already have all the data that was copied onto it). Of course, having a backup copy is a VERY important thing, so if you don't have another backup, then this is your chance.

Second, you can easily get rid of that iDisk icon by either dragging it out of the sidebar--it'll go "poof" and vanish permanently--or opening up Finder preferences and unchecking it in the list of things shown in the sidebar.