Best way to use an external hard drive?

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

You shouldn't have to format the drive. If it appears on your desktop, you can copy to it. How did you try to copy? Through a program or drag and drop?

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

Leo:

I just copied using Photoshop Elements 2. The instructions that came with the hard drive were very poor (whatever happened to operating manuals)? This is my first external hard drive, which I bought to store my digital camera images. It seems to be a nice, well build unit, but I am at a loss on how to effectively use it.

Rick

Leo Salais said:

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

This is the best place to get the help you need>
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]@.ee6ba28

That being said, I would install OSX on the drive and make it bootable. This will help you organize
your stuff.

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

My best guess: start by formatting the drive with Disk Utility.

Nico

I second MacNico’s comment. I didn’t purchase the brand you have, but when I just recently bought an external hard drive, I formatted it using the Disk Utility (I recall it only took a few seconds). I drag and drop using the Finder to choose the destination folder.

MarkD
-----

MacNico said:

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

My best guess: start by formatting the drive with Disk Utility.

Nico

Click to expand...

For performance, format it as HFS+. Journaling is optional for safety with a slight performance hit. If you want compatibility, format it as DOS. This way you can carry it around and use it on a PC.

And yes you can share the drive with other mac's & pc's but it's a single machine at a time.

MacNico said:

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

My best guess: start by formatting the drive with Disk Utility.

Nico

Click to expand...

Before I bought my external hard drive, I would save all my digital images on my iMac hard drive and would use iPhoto to organize the images. How do I organize and use my digital images that are saved to the external hard drive? Do I need to add iPhoto 4 software on to my external hard drive?

Rick Robinson said:

Before I bought my external hard drive, I would save all my digital
images on my iMac hard drive and would use iPhoto to organize the
images. How do I organize and use my digital images that are saved
to the external hard drive? Do I need to add iPhoto 4 software on
to my external hard drive?

Click to expand...

similarly, I would save all photos to my iBook. w/ the external drive, I use iPhoto Library Manager to create additional libraries, 1 of which is on the external drive. this lets me keep a local (smaller) library that can travel w/ me, while the ext drive has a complete library.

the downside is that I've not found a good 'merging' technique to get pics w/ keyword/comments/etc from the main ext library to the iBook's local library.

check versiontracker.com for the latest release.

I moved my iPhoto library over to my external hard drive then ran iPhoto. It said it couldn't find the library and wanted to know if I wanted to look for one or make a new one. Look for one, then select the folder on the external drive. It will remember that. I believe at that point you are done.

I personally don't know the benefit of putting Mac OS X on the ext drive, or of installing applications. I believe in simplicity and setups that I don't have to remember what the heck I did or why the previous year. I just use my LaCie d2 200gig as a data drive. It works great. It holds my itunes Library and iPhoto Library, all DV footage and all iDVD, DVDSP2, and FCE projects.

If you have photos on your external drive and you want to use iPhoto and have iPhoto store them on your external drive instead. Do what I mentioned above, but remember that after importing the photos into iPhoto, delete their previous files/folders off your hard drive because iPhoto copies them and stores them in its own Library folder.

Rick Robinson said:

Before I bought my external hard drive, I would save all my digital
images on my iMac hard drive and would use iPhoto to organize the
images. How do I organize and use my digital images that are saved
to the external hard drive? Do I need to add iPhoto 4 software on
to my external hard drive?

Click to expand...

The HD should already be formatted and the fact it shows up on your desktop says it is. The easiest way to place your photos on the external drive is to drag and drop an entire folder from either your CF card or your internal HD.

Ken

Leo Salais said:

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
Your comments and critiques always welcome

Ken Leonard
Belmont Shore, SoCal
pbase supporter since 2001
Nikon Coolpix 5000 w/ WC-E68 19 mm equiv. wide angle adaptor
Nikon Coolpix 8700
Nikon Coolpix 8700 test shots

http://www.pbase.com/xl1ken/87t

Nikon Coolpix 8700 Online Resource Guide

http://home.earthlink.net/~xl1ken

12,000 + classic car photos online at:

http://www.kensclassics.com

I'll be brave and differ with everyone.

The main advantage of a backup hard drive is that if your main computer's hard drive is corrupted, you can get EVERYTHING, not just your photos back.

Here's what I would do:

1) Use Disk Utility (in the utilities folder of Applications folder) and select the back-up hard drive's name NOT your main computer, and erase it. Do extended HFS but not with journaling on.

2) Download Carbon Copy Cloner (do a google search) and down load it and install it on your computer and put it in the Applications folder.

3) Clone your entire computer's drive. In the preferences of Carbon Copy Cloner you should check the "repair the permissions" and possibly make it bootable. (It would probably be bootable on your back-up drive even if you didn't select to bootable square.

4) Make your target disk your back-up disk, and clone it all.

5) Repair the permissions on your back-up hard drive with disk utility.

You will now have a total back-up of your computer's hard drive on your back up hard drive.

6) Send the creator of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) a donation--it's worth it.

If your computer dies, use your system start up CD to launch CCC on your back-up drive and clone your back-up to your computer.

Look into this on other forums to make sure what I'm telling you is well grounded.

John VL

Rick Robinson said:

I just received my 160gb external hard drive (SimpleTech
SimpleDrive). I connected the drive to my iMac by firewire and it
shows on my desktop. This is my first external hard drive, so I
have some very dumb questions. I tried to save a few photos on the
external drive and nothing happens. Do I need to format the
external hard drive (I am using Panther)? What is the best way to
use an external hard drive? I will be adding a Powerbook G4. Can I
share the external hard drive with my iMac?

I apologize for these "beginner" questions.

Click to expand...