Backup Drive

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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
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Open Finder - browse the drive and see if your files are there.

If you want it to show up on your desktop when it's plugged in - go to Finder Preferences and put a check next to External Disks on the General tab and the same in the Sidebar tab.
 
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white MacBook - 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, 500GB HD iPhone Specs: white 3GS - 32GB
If you're not sure about the drive format then either secondary-click the drive and select "Get Info" or press Command+I. That will tell you the format as well as a lot of other info. If need be, open up Disk Utility to reformat.
 
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It is formatted as MS DOS FAT 32 - all the other data appears OK. When I get over to the actual backup set - I of course can't tell what's in the thirty or so files.

If FAT 32 is OK - (I look for problems to worry about) - why was I able to do a complete BU in 50 minutes? Stupid question. The Mac had 40gb.

Another thing :) I am unable to eject the drive. It keeps saying it's in use. I have closed everything but no luck. Will pulling the plug without "proper" ejection harm anything? Thanks for the info.
 
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white MacBook - 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, 500GB HD iPhone Specs: white 3GS - 32GB
It is formatted as MS DOS FAT 32 - all the other data appears OK. When I get over to the actual backup set - I of course can't tell what's in the thirty or so files.

Yupp, I'm pretty sure it should be a different format, one of the native Mac OS ones. Honestly, Time Machine isn't that bad, maybe you should have another look at it.

If FAT 32 is OK - (I look for problems to worry about) - why was I able to do a complete BU in 50 minutes? Stupid question. The Mac had 40gb.
That's right, 40GB will transfer relatively quickly

Another thing :) I am unable to eject the drive. It keeps saying it's in use. I have closed everything but no luck. Will pulling the plug without "proper" ejection harm anything? Thanks for the info.

If you absolutely cannot find any application or anything to quit, then I believe it is safest to turn off the machine, and unplug the drive once the machine is off. With flash drives that don't eject, I simply pull them out while the computer's asleep.
 
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iMac 21" 2.4G 320G HD OS Snow Leopard. Win7 on Dell PC Inspiron i5 8g Ram 1TB HD
Backup

If you're unhappy with Time Machine, give Silverkeeper a try.it's a freebie,works great for me. Van
 

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