Best Solution for storing files from a real old Partioned iMac...

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n8cas


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My iMac is ancient. The hard drive is busted. I can't even get OS X to start, BUT I partitioned it way back when and can still run Windows. I have access to my files through some software (boot camp, maybe?) Anyways, I want to back up a lot of my old jpegs, .movs, and .doc files.

What's the best way to rescue these files? I can access them through windows, but I'd want an external that would work with a MAC (I'm never going back to windows). Should I get another external hard drive? I have an old seagate that won't let me write to it anymore (I'm not even sure if I could access what's on that old external). My iMac only has old USB and 1 or 2 firewire connectors. I'd be running windows, so would that mean I would need a hard drive for Windows and Mac? I don't want to spend more than $150-200 on a new hard drive that will eventually break on me 4 years down the road. Should I just buy a bunch of high capacity USB drives?

Ultimately, it'd be great if I could get all my family's photos, movies, and documents up to the cloud - but I don't know how that's going to happen given my sticky situation. Plus, I'm low on funds. Thanks for your help.
 
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MacInWin

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OK, couple of things. Can you tell us what your "ancient" machine really is? If it can boot Windows, the drive is probably not "busted" but may take some fixing to get OS X going again. What version of OS X was installed before the problems started? What makes you think the drive is busted? If you can read the OS X partition from Windows, then you can copy the files you want off to any external drive. But that ability creates an interesting choice for you: the USB port is not going to be as fast as the firewire, but firewire drives cost more than USB drives. So you will have to make a decision of "Do I spend more money to save a lot of time, or do I save money and invest time in recovering my files?" You also didn't say how big the current drive is, but drives are crazy cheap now. Take a look at macsales.com and you'll see what I mean. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA-FW800-FW400-USB

In general, hard drives start to show age at about 4-5 years, so anything you buy now will most likely need replacing no matter the path you take. That's just how life goes.
 
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n8cas


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MacInWin said:
OK, couple of things. Can you tell us what your "ancient" machine really is? If it can boot Windows, the drive is probably not "busted" but may take some fixing to get OS X going again. What version of OS X was installed before the problems started? What makes you think the drive is busted? If you can read the OS X partition from Windows, then you can copy the files you want off to any external drive. But that ability creates an interesting choice for you: the USB port is not going to be as fast as the firewire, but firewire drives cost more than USB drives. So you will have to make a decision of "Do I spend more money to save a lot of time, or do I save money and invest time in recovering my files?" You also didn't say how big the current drive is, but drives are crazy cheap now. Take a look at macsales.com and you'll see what I mean. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA-FW800-FW400-USB

In general, hard drives start to show age at about 4-5 years, so anything you buy now will most likely need replacing no matter the path you take. That's just how life goes.
Click to expand...


Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.29f1
Serial Number (system): W88*********
Hardware UUID: *************************

I tried fixing it back in 2011! HA! See my old posts! Will I run into OS issues with an external hard drive? I'd need it to format to Windows (Because that's the only way I can get to these files), but I'd want to access these files on my future Mac. Thanks.
 
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MacInWin

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Well, you can take a couple of paths for that, too. You could get Paragon NTFS for Mac and be able to read/write to the Windows formatted drive, or you could format the drive for FAT32 and both Windows/OSX can read and write to that. Or you can format it for NTFS, which OS X can read but not write, and use the drive just to hold the files for you to copy from the external to the new internal or future Mac. Any/all of those options would work and only the Paragon NTFS solution costs any more. According to OWC that machine can handle 6GB of memory, so that could help it get going again. But to be perfectly honest, I think it's time to start saving pennies for a new(er) system. That's a 2008 machine, getting on to 8 years old now, and it's going to be more expensive to upgrade than maybe it's worth. If it's running Windows fine, and if you can rescue your files from the OS X partition, maybe you just live with it, save pennies and wait for it to die (Making backups against that day, of course).

EDIT: The OWC link has slower memory than you need, so the prices may not be right. You'd have to contact OWC or Crucial to see if they can tell you the exact memory that fits in your machine. (Apple had two different busses in that model, just to add to the complexity.)
 
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n8cas


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I just know that any day, even windows won't load for me. I need to rescue the pics, movies, and old school/work .doc files before that happens. I'd like to keep these files in a reliable place until the time comes when I can afford to upload it all to the cloud.

I'm thinking that if I get an external hard drive and format it to FAT32, it would mean I could rescue the old files via windows, and when I'm ready to upload them to the cloud via a newer Mac (maybe my wife's macbook pro - late 2013), I could do that too.

What would you do? And what external hard drive do I get? ($150-200 max) Thanks.
 
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MacInWin

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I'd get a drive from OWC, maybe a USB3 interface. Your older system won't be able to go at that speed, but the system should adjust down to USB3, and then when you have a new machine with USB3 or more, you'll have the higher speed. Get as big a drive as you can afford, drives are NEVER too big. And I would then immediately move those files to that drive to get them off the failing system. I presume you have looked and can, in fact, see the files from Windows?
 
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n8cas


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MacInWin said:
I'd get a drive from OWC, maybe a USB3 interface. Your older system won't be able to go at that speed, but the system should adjust down to USB3, and then when you have a new machine with USB3 or more, you'll have the higher speed. Get as big a drive as you can afford, drives are NEVER too big. And I would then immediately move those files to that drive to get them off the failing system. I presume you have looked and can, in fact, see the files from Windows?
Click to expand...

Yes, I can see the files, open them, copy them, etc. from Windows - I'll definitely use OWC - any preference on a brand ?

Would this do the trick ?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEF3MH7T1.0/
 
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MacInWin

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Yes, that should do nicely. The Firewire interface will make transfer of your files faster, and the USB3 interface should be compatible with a new(er) Mac down the road.
 
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chas_m

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A cheaper option, if money is a factor, is a simple USB thumb drive. If you're referring to this machine as "ancient," I'm guessing there's not enough data you want to preserve to fill up a modestly-priced thumb drive, which have really grown in capacity and come down in price these days. Maybe a 32GB thumb drive would be enough, even for a sizable photo library.
 
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n8cas


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Another question - if I'm weary of my old external seagate 500gb - and I want to move SOME of it to a safer place, I would need a computer to hold say 100gb before I can then upload to the cloud or a SSD, correct?

Static state can last how much longer than the old hard drives ?
 
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MacInWin

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Hard to answer that first question without knowing how much data we're talking about. If what's on it is about 100GB, then yes, you'd need a place to put it. But it doesn't need to be an different computer, it just needs to be on a external storage device somewhere. SSDs don't have an advantage over spinner hard drives in terms of life, they are all about speed. SSDs are many times faster than HDs at just about all disk activities. So it would boot faster, read a file faster, save a file faster, etc. The best overall performance improvement is to add Memory, but close behind is swapping a spinner for an SSD. In fact, adding memory and an SSD to my early-2011 MBP 17" has significantly improved the performance at just about everything! But I'm not sure I would invest that kind of money into your older machine. Three more years is a long time in computer terms.

As for the cloud, be careful how you proceed. Dropbox, for example, is great for sharing files (pictures, videos), but the way it works is that you have a copy on your machine in your Dropbox folder and a copy in the cloud. If you delete the copy on your machine, the copy in the cloud is also deleted. So while the concept of the cloud as a place to store stuff is great, I personally don't think it's a good backup location because if I accidentally delete a file from my Dropbox, it disappears from the cloud. Just be careful to read how any cloud service you may decide to use works to make sure it does what you want it to do.
 
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n8cas


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MacInWin said:
Hard to answer that first question without knowing how much data we're talking about. If what's on it is about 100GB, then yes, you'd need a place to put it. But it doesn't need to be an different computer, it just needs to be on a external storage device somewhere. SSDs don't have an advantage over spinner hard drives in terms of life, they are all about speed. SSDs are many times faster than HDs at just about all disk activities. So it would boot faster, read a file faster, save a file faster, etc. The best overall performance improvement is to add Memory, but close behind is swapping a spinner for an SSD. In fact, adding memory and an SSD to my early-2011 MBP 17" has significantly improved the performance at just about everything! But I'm not sure I would invest that kind of money into your older machine. Three more years is a long time in computer terms.

As for the cloud, be careful how you proceed. Dropbox, for example, is great for sharing files (pictures, videos), but the way it works is that you have a copy on your machine in your Dropbox folder and a copy in the cloud. If you delete the copy on your machine, the copy in the cloud is also deleted. So while the concept of the cloud as a place to store stuff is great, I personally don't think it's a good backup location because if I accidentally delete a file from my Dropbox, it disappears from the cloud. Just be careful to read how any cloud service you may decide to use works to make sure it does what you want it to do.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I did not know that about Dropbox - but surely there are other storage providers where you can store data without having a mirror copy on your own local HD.

I'm just skeptical because throwing 15 years worth of photos, movies and .doc on an external seems risky. If the external fails after 4 years - you have to hope the data can be moved from an old external back to a computer, then onto a new external.

Is there a way to move data from one external drive to another - without the data having to be put temporarily on a computer HD? This will be my last question - you've been more than helpful ! Thanks again !
 
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MacInWin

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All storage is ephemeral. All of it can be destroyed, misplaced, overcome by events or technology. What I have done is to put my family pictures on multiple hard drives so that if one dies, I have backups. Nothing is in just ONE place. And as technology changes, I move along with it, moving my pictures from CDs to DVDs to thumb drives to SSDs. And I don't assume that putting them on a drive and putting the drive in a drawer is "permanent" storage. Bits fade from disks, chips, DVDs and CDs. Data needs to be refreshed periodically, so even on the drives I'm using now I move the pictures every few years, just to refresh the writing of them and to make sure they are still readable.

As for moving data, if you have two drives and attach the both to the same computer, you can move data between them directly. Yes, the data transits the computer, but it doesn't get written to the internal HD of the computer in that transit.
 
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n8cas


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MacInWin said:
As for moving data, if you have two drives and attach the both to the same computer, you can move data between them directly. Yes, the data transits the computer, but it doesn't get written to the internal HD of the computer in that transit.
Click to expand...

If I hook two externals to my wife's 2013 macbook pro, it wouldn't ruin it? Thanks for the help. I guess I'll have to start working on a plan for digital storage based on your helpful information.
 
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MacInWin

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I have 5 drives connected to my MBP, and a 6th on my internal network. So, in short, no, connecting two drives won't ruin anything. If her machine has ports, you can connect two drives. IF the drives can be daisy chained by connecting one to the MBP and then another into that one, that should work too, unless they need USB power. If they are powered by an external power supply, daisy chaining works well.
 

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