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Disk Drive For Mac

Disk Drive For Mac Average ratng: 7,5/10 5482 votes

If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.

Sep 20, 2017  Just purchased a iMac (was pc user) Where is the disc drive on my new iMac? IMac, iOS 7.0.3 Posted on Oct 27, 2013 4:18 PM. Say coming from using Windows OS all their lives, or even someone coming from an old Mac, think to check if one of the most basic features of a computer was present? I'm sure you didn't mean to sound. You also get backup software, and the drive is compatible with both Windows and Macs, though it's formatted for Windows out of the box unless you go for a Mac-specific hard drive - though these. With OS X El Capitan and later versions of the Mac OS, Apple changed the process for using Disk Utility to clone a Mac’s drive. While it's still possible to create an exact copy (a clone) of any drive connected directly to your Mac, the changes made to Disk Utility means there are extra steps involved if you wish to use Disk Utility’s Restore function to clone your startup drive. If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use. How to erase a disk for Mac - How to erase a disk If you're erasing the disk that your Mac started up from, start up from macOS Recovery. Open Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities window. Choose View Show All Devices from the menu bar. From the sidebar in Disk Utility, select the disk. The drive is designed with a slit opening to feed in disk and no mechanical way to eject. This would be ok if the drive function correctly but that is rare. Frequently the drive becomes obsessed with trying to process a disk and prevents the disk from ejecting, forcing you to wait 5, 10, or 15 minutes for it to decide its done with the disk.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac data to an external drive. You should backup your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.

I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for the High Sierra update. You may also be interested in taking a look at the issues I encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest macOS.

Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to backup your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also alternatives worth considering.

Where is Time Machine on Mac?

As I said, Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.

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In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.

What does Time Machine Backup?

Time Machine is definitely the easiest way to backup Mac. In addition, the app is created and recommended by Apple. Microsoft access for mac 2016. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.

So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything! Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it: They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.

Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac is bootable.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive

Note: the screenshots below are taken based on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra. If your Mac has High Sierra or an older version, differences may exist, but the process should look similar to what’s displayed below.

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.

First, use the USB cable (or USC-C cable if you’re on a newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac. Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Select the disk for backup.

Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.

Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).

If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.

Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.

Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.

It says I have to wait 5 hours

After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining

Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.

When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.

One More Thing

Disk Drive For Apple Mac

Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It is advisable to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”! One good option is to use cloud storage services. I now use IDrive (read our full review here), and I really like it because the app is so easy to use, and it also allows me to back up my Facebook albums and photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I have yet to give them a try.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party recovery program like Prosoft Data Rescue and Stellar Mac Data Recovery, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.

Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: Backup your Mac with Time Machine and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.

Lot of Mac OS X users reported this issue in Apple support communities. External hard drive showing up in Disk utility not in Devices. This problem also happened after OS X Yosemite update.
Solution 1:-
Go to Settings -> Finder Preferences . Under the General tab, select External drive in “Show these items on the desktop”.


Solution 2 :-
Go to Disk utility and select the external drive from the left sidebar. Choose verify disc. It will find and correct minor errors.
Solution 3:-
If you are connecting your external hard drive with Mac using USB Hub, check the USB hub first.
Solution 4:-
  1. Open Disk Utility. If your external USB drive drive faded/greyed out and unmountable?
  2. Connect another external drive or Pen drive to computer. This drive also not recognized drive?
  3. Do the proper eject from the Finder window list.
  4. Restart your computer and connect the external drive.

Solution 5:-

  1. From the Finder menu, select “Go to Finder”.
  2. Type the external drive path what appears under Disk Utility. Ex: /Volumes/sleekdisk

External Disk Drive For Macbook Air

Solution 6:-
Drive not showing up in Finder but visible in Disk Utility?
Go to Finder window and view below the favourite list. If the drive greyed Out? Select the drive. It might visible.
Solution 7 :-

Hard Disk Drive For Mac

  1. Shut down your Mac computer .
  2. Unplug the power cord.
  3. Unplug all USB connections.
  4. Wait 30 seconds or 5 minutes then plug it back in.
  5. Then turn on your MacBook Pro or iMac.
  6. Plug the external drive only to the USB port. Open Finder and check your drive.

Macbook Disk Drive

Solution 8:-
Install and run run Onyx (maintenance freeware) or
run Kext_Utility.app.v2.6.1 and restart your Mac machine.
Solution 9:-
Some times this issue might happened because of the unsupported drive format.
Install Fuse for OS X, NTFS-3G for Mac OS X and Fuse wait.
Restart your computer and check the issue.
If the above methods not working?

  • Install fresh OSX Yosemite.
  • Connect your segate external drive or WD passport to Windows computer. Delete the partition and connect back to MacBook Pro.

Internal Disk Drive For Mac

If you knew any other solutions, inform us via comment.