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Just Bought A Western Digital 1tb external Hard Drive & i want to Save Directly to it

2

2fresh12

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 19, 2008
23
0
I bought my 13inch unibody mac about a month ago and i dont want to save all my media files to the internal hard drive and crash it like i've done my last couple of computers so i bought an external hard drive. It came up as time capsule and backs up perfectly but I just want to know now that i have the hard drive how do i save directly to it and not on the internal hard drive. I'm sure i just need to change some settings or something simple like that i must have just missed it somebody please guide me on what i need to do Thanx :apple: .
 
When your saving something, whatever it may be, just choose "save as" then select your external hard drive as the save destination..
 
when i download a file it just comes up open with or save file and the save file option doesnt have any place where i can change where it saves to so it just goes to the internal hard drive
 
In your preferences for whatever browser you are using, you can tell it to either always download to a destination, or to ask which destination to save to. Or at least I know it's that way for Firefox. Look through your settings/preferences. You might find a way to change the default there.
 
ok and now when i download a torrent how do i get it to save to the external hard drive?
 
2fresh12 said:
when i download a file it just comes up open with or save file and the save file option doesnt have any place where i can change where it saves to so it just goes to the internal hard drive
Click to expand...

you need to change that setting in preferences
 
Ok for some reason i change the preferences and it still doesnt seem to be working right it saves to the external hardrive but the memory on my internal hardrive keeps going down too. Idk what the problem is i changed it in preferences and it saves in the external hardrive but could it be because when i first took it out of the box i plugged it in and it came up as time machine? do all external hardives come up as time machine on mac or did i mess something up when i installed?? IDK i just wanna save all my media to the external hardrive and not the internal help please :eek:
 
2fresh12 said:
Ok for some reason i change the preferences and it still doesnt seem to be working right it saves to the external hardrive but the memory on my internal hardrive keeps going down too. Idk what the problem is i changed it in preferences and it saves in the external hardrive but could it be because when i first took it out of the box i plugged it in and it came up as time machine? do all external hardives come up as time machine on mac or did i mess something up when i installed?? IDK i just wanna save all my media to the external hardrive and not the internal help please :eek:
Click to expand...

I see you mentioned torrent program above some of these save the incomplete files on your main drive before moving them to the complete directory you should check around in there for an option on where to save both types of files. For the time machine part I would think that was OS X asking you if you wanted to initialize the drive as a time machine backup device.
 
i use utorrent do u know where the options to change my preferences are in that program because i havent been using that program for long and i'm not very farmiliar with it. And when i plug the drive in it recogniges it as time capsule i'm just not sure if this is bad because i want to do more with it than just back up wants in my internal HD. thanx:eek:
 
2fresh12 said:
i use utorrent do u know where the options to change my preferences are in that program because i havent been using that program for long and i'm not very farmiliar with it. And when i plug the drive in it recogniges it as time capsule i'm just not sure if this is bad because i want to do more with it than just back up wants in my internal HD. thanx:eek:
Click to expand...

When I last checked it there was no option to do that unlike the windows version you can set both directories if it is there it will be in the preferences dialog somewhere. Azureus (now Vuze) allows you to set these and I believe Transmission allowed it as well so these may be an option you want to check out, personally I use VirtualBox to run XP where I have uTorrent going because Mac torrent clients just plain suck IMHO. Sounds like you really need to repartition that external drive into at least two partitions then use one for time machine the other for your storage you can use diskutil to do this.
 
ok thats what i need to do so how do u partition it?? disk util then what do u do??
 
Ok i Figured it out thanx a lot for the help!!!!!
Thats why i love Macs because u can always come and get help in a forum from knowledgeble people that are willing to take time and answer your questions just another reason MACS > PC!! :apple: :D
 
2fresh12 said:
ok thats what i need to do so how do u partition it?? disk util then what do u do??
Click to expand...

First thing to do is backup all important data on the drive it will be gone after a repartition so unless you want to lose it put it somewhere safe. Then it is just a matter of opening diskutil selecting your external drive in the list on the left you want the drive itself not the partition that will be shown underneath it. Now on the right you will see the Partition option so you select that and once there you see the Volume Scheme currently set select the drop down menu for it choose the new one if wanting two partitions then the two option of course. To the right of this you will see Volume Information where you can set the desired size of the new partitions plus the name it will display when mounted and the format for the file system. You click on the newly created partitions one at a time then you have the option of changing any of these settings I would suggest HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) for the formatting, the name whatever you want same with the size once done all these steps click the apply at the bottom to have it applied. When your done this you would want to go to your Time Machine preferences to select the new partition you created for it as the new backup device and it will initialize it for its use and probably start an entirely new first backup of your machine then continue on with it normal schedule you have set once it is done.

Edit: Your welcome and I really should preview before I post otherwise I would have seen you sorted it out.
 
only $119 @best buy it was on sale...
Ok one more question i re partioned the drive fine now say i wanted to repartion it again would it delete all the information??
 
ok thats cool i partioned it half and half so it should work fora while thanx for the help
 
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