Question about external hard drives

bhcoker · bhcoker #1 (**permalink**)

03-01-2009, 07:03 PM

I have a 24" iMac (for a week now) and I bought 2 1TB hard drives. I plugged them up, ran the disk utility to format them and partitioned each of them to 500GB each.

OK, storing stuff on them is working fine...I have one set up for photos another for a back up etc...

I only have the 320GB hard drive in the Mac and I want to install programs on one of the partitions on the external drives... when I go to install a program, it doesn't let me select one of the external drives because there is no OSX on the drives??? What am I doing wrong? Is it the way I erased the drives to begin with?

Thanks,

Heath+

chscag · chscag #2 (**permalink**)

03-01-2009, 07:58 PM

I don't think it has anything to do with the format of the drive(s). Most programs will only install to the startup volume. Your startup volume is probably "Macintosh HD", and that's where the program installer will look to for installation. Not all programs will insist on installing to the startup volume but most I'm familiar with do.

Regards.

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bhcoker #1 (permalink)
Member Since: Feb 02, 2009 Location: SC Posts: 14 Mac Specs: 24" 2.8 GHz 4GB Ram, 320Gb, Internal HD; 2 x 1TB External HDs iPod: 16GB touch	03-01-2009, 07:03 PM I have a 24" iMac (for a week now) and I bought 2 1TB hard drives. I plugged them up, ran the disk utility to format them and partitioned each of them to 500GB each. OK, storing stuff on them is working fine...I have one set up for photos another for a back up etc... I only have the 320GB hard drive in the Mac and I want to install programs on one of the partitions on the external drives... when I go to install a program, it doesn't let me select one of the external drives because there is no OSX on the drives??? What am I doing wrong? Is it the way I erased the drives to begin with? Thanks, Heath+
	QUOTE Thanks

chscag #2 (permalink)
Member Since: Jan 23, 2008 Location: Fort Worth, Texas Posts: 38,487 Mac Specs: 27" iMac i5, 3.2 GHz, iPad 3, iPhone 5c, 3 iPods, OS X Mavericks	03-01-2009, 07:58 PM I don't think it has anything to do with the format of the drive(s). Most programs will only install to the startup volume. Your startup volume is probably "Macintosh HD", and that's where the program installer will look to for installation. Not all programs will insist on installing to the startup volume but most I'm familiar with do. Regards.
	QUOTE Thanks

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