I am not normally one who is greatly concerned with backing up. Now I find myself as Trustee for a substantial Trust, and I have several Excel spreadsheets to protect. As a recent convert to Mac, I decided to get an external HD for backup purposes. I gave Time Machine a run using a WD drive. The whole concept of TM does not exactly fit my purpose.
So I buy a Toshiba 1T “desktop external drive”. I suppose it’s desktop because it has a little stand to rest in. Opening the package, I find literally one-half page of “quick start” instructions.
Connected via USB I get two icons on the desktop - a virtual CD and another which looks like the Mac HD icon. Nothing happens, although I was supposed to be presented with a setup menu. So I go venturing into the depths of these icons and having a bit of experience found the files which looked “Mac like”. Finally I managed to install the backup software and something called the disk monitor.
Ran a full backup in less than an hour. Or did I? The monitor shows I put something on it but now I am full of doubt.
Here are some factors causing my concern. The drive is for both Windows and Mac OS X 10.3+ so I am wondering if I was supposed to format the drive before using? I assume it came out of the box as a FAT 32. So many files without any guide at all, I may have missed some in the setup.
Box is sitting here, Should I return and get ??????? That’s the question. I think I like the Mac, but it’s at times like this I miss DOS. How can I determine exactly what I put on the drive? Recommendations? I would love a good old Dir command about now.
By the way, I tried the drive on my wife’s PC and it started right up with the setup program.
RB
So I buy a Toshiba 1T “desktop external drive”. I suppose it’s desktop because it has a little stand to rest in. Opening the package, I find literally one-half page of “quick start” instructions.
Connected via USB I get two icons on the desktop - a virtual CD and another which looks like the Mac HD icon. Nothing happens, although I was supposed to be presented with a setup menu. So I go venturing into the depths of these icons and having a bit of experience found the files which looked “Mac like”. Finally I managed to install the backup software and something called the disk monitor.
Ran a full backup in less than an hour. Or did I? The monitor shows I put something on it but now I am full of doubt.
Here are some factors causing my concern. The drive is for both Windows and Mac OS X 10.3+ so I am wondering if I was supposed to format the drive before using? I assume it came out of the box as a FAT 32. So many files without any guide at all, I may have missed some in the setup.
Box is sitting here, Should I return and get ??????? That’s the question. I think I like the Mac, but it’s at times like this I miss DOS. How can I determine exactly what I put on the drive? Recommendations? I would love a good old Dir command about now.
By the way, I tried the drive on my wife’s PC and it started right up with the setup program.
RB