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Now have 2 'LaCie' USB hard drives (one to be used with Time Machine)

J

james-bailey

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2010
165
4
Hey folks, newbie here...

I have had a Lacie USB HD for a while now and iTunes finds files from it so the name of the drive cannot be altered (I think?)

Just bought a second ITB Lacie HD for use with Time Machine.

I have installed and formatted the new HD fine.

It appears that its 'name' is 'LaCie' also. (I havent plugged in both drives at once yet)

Few questions, what happens when both are plugged in at the same time? Does one name change?

If I have the ability to change the name of the drive, is this best done before I even load up TM for the first time?

Its imperative that the inital drive keeps the name 'LaCie' as Im guessing if its changed then my iTunes will be full of broken links?

Just want to make sure before I do anyting drastic!

PS, I also plan on backing up the inital USB HD onto the new LaCie, by using TM if possible?

Cheers

James
 
You can change the name to whatever you want, the links in iTunes will not be broken, as Mac OS X stores the location information outside of the name you see you have chosen for the HDD.
 
Yep, just click on the name of the drive and change it. iTunes is smart enough (or rather, Mac OS X is smart enough) that it won't lose your library location. You can change them both or just one, but go ahead and change them.

To answer the less important but original question, Mac OS X will change the name of one of them (the second one plugged in) if you have them both plugged in, so that it's Lacie 1, although that may not display, but it will also be a temporary change, only until it's unmounted. It won't change the permanently stored drive name, only you can do that.

jW
 
Thanks for that, well ive made progress...

I loaded up Time Machine, and was surprised at how minimal the settings were! ;-)

At this time, both HDs were plugged in(named the same, but with different icons as it happpens) so I knew which one was which) and it suggested to make the smaller current HD a back up exception which makes sense at this point.

Hit the backup button and it backed up 50gb in about 45 mins.

It looks like it is wanting to back up hourly, which is fine by me but I obviously wont have the TB HD plugged in then - I take it that it will just do it on hour when it is next plugged in? Im aiming to have it plugged in only a couple of times a week.

JB
 
In time machine preferences you can turn automatic backups off. I usually backup about once a week unless I do something I don't want to lose. I start time machine in manual mode. Everyone has different needs. My external disks are usually not hooked up to my laptop unless I need to use them. Same with my backup drive. You can give your disks different names. You can name them after planets, colors, countries... anything that you want.
 
Excellent, sounds good!

Im a Mac virgin really, life long PC user and had this Mac about a month.

I remember dropping a load of tunes into iTunes one day and not noticing that the Drive Path Letter wasnt E as usual so I was goosed! I take it that that cannot really happen on a Mac? If its the same drive then i'll be okay regardless of name or whether the other one is plugged in also?
 
xlii said:
In time machine preferences you can turn automatic backups off. I usually backup about once a week unless I do something I don't want to lose. I start time machine in manual mode. Everyone has different needs.
Click to expand...

In the OP's case, it sounds like leaving the automatic backups on and just letting it backup when it's connected is the best bet. OP, if you don't have the drive connected, it'll just wait until the drive is connected to start the next backup, but also will remind you if you wait longer than 10 days before plugging it in the backup. That's how I work, although I often see warnings that it's been 30-40 days before I actually plug it in. :eek:

jW
 
All makes sense, cheers.

One more question whilst we are kinda on the topic.

Re: iTunes, I have 120GB of tunes on the USB Hard Drive and all found by iTunes on there perfectly, but what if, for whatever reason this HD was to break or get lost - Id make a new copy via Time Machine on a new drive, would iTunes still be ok to locate these songs bearing in mind it may not be a LaCie?

Sorry to be asking these questions but its essential I cover all angles because if it didnt work then my livlihood would be at risk as I am a DJ.

Thanks
 
james-bailey said:
All makes sense, cheers.

One more question whilst we are kinda on the topic.

Re: iTunes, I have 120GB of tunes on the USB Hard Drive and all found by iTunes on there perfectly, but what if, for whatever reason this HD was to break or get lost - Id make a new copy via Time Machine on a new drive, would iTunes still be ok to locate these songs bearing in mind it may not be a LaCie?

Sorry to be asking these questions but its essential I cover all angles because if it didnt work then my livlihood would be at risk as I am a DJ.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Hook up all the disks to your machine that you want to backup, plus your time machine disk. Go into time machine preferences and make sure that all the disks you want backed up are selected in time machine. Make sure only the time machine disk is EXCLUDED from the time machine backup.

Then just start time machine and it will back up all your disks. You will need a big enough backup disk to do this.
You can check that this worked by entering time machine and looking around in the finder to check that all the disks you wanted to be backed up are.
 
xlii said:
Hook up all the disks to your machine that you want to backup, plus your time machine disk. Go into time machine preferences and make sure that all the disks you want backed up are selected in time machine. Make sure only the time machine disk is EXCLUDED from the time machine backup.

Then just start time machine and it will back up all your disks. You will need a big enough backup disk to do this.
You can check that this worked by entering time machine and looking around in the finder to check that all the disks you wanted to be backed up are.
Click to expand...

Yep done that, but now another issue has arose!
The initial HD was formatted NTFS for when I was using it with my PC many moons ago.
For it to work on my mac and iTunes, I downloaded NTFS-3G and now it works excellently.

But Time Machine has thrown up a message saying:

Are you sure you want to erase the backup disk “LaCie 1TB”? Erasing will destroy all information on the disk and can’t be undone.

The disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because a disk you are backing up is case sensitive, but the backup disk is not.

Is this because the intial HD is NTFS?

I dont mind reformatting my new 1TB HD as its only a few days old and got 1 day of backups on.

JB
 
Time Machine requires a drive that is formatted in HFS+ Journaled in order to function (NTFS doesn't support all of the techniques that Time Machine uses to track and store it's backups, nor do most other formats). So yes, you'll have to let Time Machine erase and reformat the drive in order to use it.

jW
 
I have excluded everything, except the backup drive from the list but Time Machine still doesnt back the initial USB HD up.....The 'Estimated size of full backup' now showing at 412GB instead of 26GB earlier but still no joy. hmm

Does this mean that the NTFS drive will never able to be backed up onto the new TB drive?
 
Last edited:
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