Questions tagged [hard-drive]

A hard drive is a device for permanent or long-term storage in computers.

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Mac Application to defrag my Mac drive

I work on media files as per my profession. I find my Mac (Mac Lion) going slower day by day. I think it will be beneficial to defrag the drive but didn't find any Apple tool for it. I want a an ...
ranvir's user avatar
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Wiped drive, now can’t reinstall El Capitan from Recovery because the "item is temporarily unavailable"

I wanted to clear room on my computer, so I restarted the computer with cmd+r keys and opened OS X Utilities. I erased my drive and wanted to reinstall OS X El Capitan. After I agreed to the terms ...
Dylan Wolfe's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
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Not enough storage for El Capitan; no way to free up space

I wanted to upgrade my Macbook 2008 from Yosemite to El Capitan. Unfortunately, when I downloaded it and restarted my computer, on the "select the disk on which to install" page the only location, ...
user2252374's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
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How can I modify an existing FAT partition without losing its data?

I have a 1tb hard drive. Long a go I split it it into two partitions. One I left as a Mac OS extended (journaled) with 990GB and one as FAT with 10GB. Now I would like to add about 100GB to the FAT ...
aurel's user avatar
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How to restore from a Time Machine backup when there is already a user account set up?

I can't figure out how to access my Time Machine backups since Apple replaced a defective hard drive. Some Background: My setup: iMac 24" (Early 2009), 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, OS X 10.7.3. I have been ...
Mico's user avatar
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1 answer
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How do I change the name of the hard drive

Right now my hard drive is called "Macintosh HD." How do I change it to something cool like "Death Killer"
user160917's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
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Can I upgrade the SSD drive in Mac Mini M1?

Can people buy 256 SSD Mac Mini M1 and upgrade it later, or can't upgrade it like memory?
Châu's user avatar
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What are the risks with low disk space on a Mac?

I've seen some suggestions about not allowing free disk space to go critically low or ... to have no less than about 15% of your drive's capacity free ... Currently, I've been silencing the "disk ...
anki's user avatar
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Encrypt backups on encrypted APFS drive for Time Machine backup?

I have a 1 TB internal drive (with APFS file system and FileVault enabled) I want to backup using Time Machine to an external USB hard drive. I want the backup itself encrypted so no one who has the ...
Hedge's user avatar
  • 545
6 votes
2 answers
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Install OS on iMac with blank hard drive

Is is possible to get a late 2010 iMac with a blank/new hard drive up and running with the latest OS and XCode? All the answers I've seen involve duplicating or restoring an existing OS. Is there a ...
juhraffe's user avatar
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iMac 27" late 2012 SSD upgrade

I'm the proud owner of an 27-inch iMac 2012 with high-end configuration, but the 1TB fusion drive keeps being the bottleneck. As my warranty has expired now, I want to upgrade the 128GB SSD to a ...
LukeLR's user avatar
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Backup/Time Machine solution for an office full of iMacs?

Update: For anyone coming across this question, the best solution I've found is a cloud backup company called Backblaze — it's in the cloud, so no longer have to worry about hardware failures and we ...
Alexander Wigmore's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
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How to fix "Error: -5341: MediaKit reports partition (map) too small" after upgrading to a larger hard disk?

I recently bought a new SSD drive, as my stored data amounts outgrew the old one a little bit. After copying all data using dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk1, I want to enlarge my system partition, but ...
Jens Erat's user avatar
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What is an SSD drive's negotiated link speed?

When I look at my Apple SSD TS256C (Toshiba) in the System Profiler on my MacBook Pro (Late 2011), I see: Link Speed: 6 Gigabit Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit Why is that? Does that mean that ...
Baumr's user avatar
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Recovering data off of a dead hard drive

My hard drive died in my macbook and it no longer will start up. It will not mount in an external enclosure but disk utility is still reading that the hard drive is there, and I tried to repair disk ...
Stephen's user avatar
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Can't read/write via `dd`: got /dev/disk2: Permission denied (to Physical device)

I can't do anything via dd with my Physical devices agreed. I can only work with partitions like disk2s1, but can not read from whole disk like disk2. Can't find where is the root of problem. Steps: ...
skywinder's user avatar
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Paragon NTFS for Mac 14 doesn't see NTFS disk (OS X 10.11 El Capitan)

I upgraded my Yosemite to El Capitan few days ago. Also recently Paragon sent me an e-mail with an offer of free upgrade from version 12 to 14. Since I bought ver. 12, I decided to install version 14. ...
Matt Komarnicki's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
29k views

How to upgrade firmware and reperform a Samsung 840 Evo on a Mac

i got one of these Samsung 840 Evo Basic 500GB on an iMac (used externally in a TB case - standalone, not Fusion). I know there's a firmware update out which is already available for Mac users too ...
Helmi's user avatar
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2 answers
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Permanently Disable/Ignore Secondary Disk?

I have a 256G SSD and a 1T HDD in my 27" iMac. The 1T HDD is dying due to hardware failure. Is there a file in OS X similar to /etc/fstab in Linux where I can prevent this 1T HDD from mounting? I'd ...
Deefour's user avatar
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Can't mount (Core Storage) encrypted volume anymore

I use the following setup: SSD: System Internal HDD: Data (Documents, Music, etc.) Both disks are encrypted via the Core Storage utility. It seems I can't mount the "Data" disk anymore. I wanted ...
vare's user avatar
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2 answers
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Why do I get back more disk space when I restart my Macbook on Mountain Lion 10.8.3?

I frequently run low on disk space on my laptop. When I'm down to my last gig or so on my 256MB SSD (as reported by iStat Menu), I'll get various warnings from the OS and apps saying that I'm running ...
emmby's user avatar
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Failed to verify InstallESD.dmg: hdiutil verify failed (Trying to reinstall Mac OS X Lion)

Alright about a week and a half ago my Macbook Pro started acting up. All of my applications were crashing randomly and what not so I decided to just try and reinstall El Capitan onto it. I tried and ...
Dev 404's user avatar
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Aperture: Library over multiple Hard Drives

I switched to Aperture some time ago. And right now, the moment has come that I want to save some space on my internal hard drive. What I found on the Apple website is this: I can't seem to find this ...
Martijn Courteaux's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
12k views

What kind of encryption does Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrptyed) use?

Since my primary hard disk is encrypted with FileVault2, I also wanted my backup drive to be encrypted. I plugged in my external drive, brought up Disk Utility, and went to erase/format the disk. I ...
jeffmaher's user avatar
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2 answers
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How can I prevent external hard disk from sleeping when connected to Airport Extreme?

I have a 1TB external hard disk from Seagate connected to the USB port of my Airport Extreme and everytime I need to access it I have to wait some time until it leaves the sleep mode. Is there a way ...
holiveira's user avatar
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6 votes
4 answers
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Hard drive full with 200GB of used space that I can't find

All of a sudden I've run out of space. On my 250GB hard drive, 236GB is used up with only 13GB free. I used Finder to find big files. Nothing significant. I used tools like Disk Inventory X, ...
Nathaniel S's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
56k views

How do I fix a corrupted USB drive on OS X?

I accidentally bumped the drive while repartitioning it and it unmounted. After that when I tried to repartition with Disk Utility I got Partition Failed with the error: Could not open device Now I ...
b2550's user avatar
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How can I do a fresh install of OSX Mountain Lion onto my SSD for my Macbook?

My macbook is sluggish and has so much stuff that I don't use anymore and just want to start over from scratch basically. I did a time machine backup just in case something goes wrong. New blank SSD ...
Justin's user avatar
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In Disk Utility, what advantages do "read/write disk image"s have over "sparse bundle disk image"s?

If I want a read/write disk image, then aren't sparse bundle disk images always the way to go? They start at 0 kb in size, and grow to accommodate whatever you add to them, and if you delete stuff, ...
Gary's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
572 views

Is it safe to unplug a drive while MacBook is asleep? (i.e., does sleep unmount drives?)

Is it safe to unplug a drive while MacBook is asleep? (i.e., does sleep unmount drives?) I think probably not, at least if a file operation was running when you put the computer to sleep, I guess it ...
Petruza's user avatar
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can i delete "developer-old" folder?

I've got a "developer-old" folder besides for my "developer" folder. "developer-old" contains "headers", "SDKs", etc folders. It'd be nice to delete this folder bc it takes up 10GB. Can I?
LuxuryMode's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
3k views

Reading HFS standard and MFS on Catalina

During the lockdown I decided to use some of my time to backup all the all Mac disks and floppies I have at home so I can store them in a somewhat more readable format that SyQuest cartridges and MFS ...
gio91ber's user avatar
  • 151
6 votes
2 answers
677 views

How do I force Time Machine to back up to a USB HDD, instead of a .sparsebundle on that USB HDD?

I use an iMac as an external monitor for my MacBook pro (OS X 11.6), over a thunderbolt cable. I usually have a USB 3 hard drive attached to my MacBook pro as a Time Machine backup. Last week I ...
Dylan Richard Muir's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Space Occupied By Other Files And Folders On Hard Drive

I have been using VirtualBox to create a virtual machine to run Windows 8 on and after deleting the virtual drives and virtualbox due to having issues with Windows 8, I am missing a lot of memory from ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 193
6 votes
1 answer
408 views

How to restore a specific file from APFS Time Machine backup drive with tmutil?

I've been using an HFS+ drive for Time Machine, but I recently formatted a drive in APFS as my Time Machine backup drive on macOS Monterey. Now I find the implementation with APFS very confusing. If I ...
Nathaniel_Wu's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
3k views

fsck_msdos keep blocking external HD

MacOS Sierra 10.12.5 early 2015 MacBook pro 13inch Transcend 1TB Keep doing this since 2015 when I bought both. Every time it is disconnected improperly it hangs a long time upon trying to remount it ...
RiccardoBucchi's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
385 views

How can I block access to USB drives?

In an office environment I need to block access to USB drives for security reasons. I know how to do this on Windows, but how can I accomplish this on macOS?
Sam David's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
3k views

Can't add shared drive as Time Machine drive

Solved by this. Can't post as answer due to low reputation on this network site. on the server (in my case the iMac) in the settings --> sharing tab, disable file sharing (no need to reboot or ...
jdp's user avatar
  • 61
6 votes
0 answers
27k views

How do I fix hard disk "Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed"

How can I resolve the Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed error I'm getting when trying to verify my hard drive? So far these are the steps I've taken: In Terminal I ran: diskutil ...
Daniele C.'s user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
13k views

I want to install Windows 7 on an external drive

I've read two articles about booting Windows from external drives as opposed to a stock Bootcamp install. Here are the links: http://kevtg-compuproductive.tumblr.com/ http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.fr/...
Andrew's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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Am I able to partition my internal SSD safely without loss of data?

I'm new to the Mac. I am wondering if it's safely guaranteed that I can make a small partition on my active internal hard drive that already contains data and apps, and then delete said partition (...
kanayt's user avatar
  • 351
5 votes
2 answers
33k views

External hard drive not indexed by Spolight on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

I recently bought a new hard drive and it is not indexed by Finder. I tried to get it re-indexed by following this tutorial: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330114-263.html and I even tried ...
esmitex's user avatar
  • 71
5 votes
9 answers
121k views

External HDD can be seen in Disk Utility but not in Finder

I've been using my external HDD a lot of times before on my Macbook Pro 13" OS X version 10.9.5, but it doesn't seem to appear in my Finder anymore. It can be seen in Disk Utility, though. Can anyone ...
Heini's user avatar
  • 51
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Secure erased drive - always one file can be found

I've been going through some old HD drives, secure erasing before sending to recycle. I periodically run Disk Drill over one of them, just to make sure I'm doing the job right. No matter whether I do ...
Tetsujin's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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Enable writing to NTFS harddrive with non-standard name on Mac

I have a lot of NTFS hard drives back when I used a Windows PC. I'm trying to write to these drives with my Macbook Pro on OSX Yosemite 10.10.2. I'm going through this tutorial. I have to write this ...
JoJo's user avatar
  • 596
5 votes
2 answers
90k views

Cannot Unmount Mac OS X Base System Disk

My Mac running Lion was being slow, so I was decided to reinstall OS X. I don't have any Time Machine backups. Everything went file, but in the middle of the installation, it got stuck, and later the ...
knightrider's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
354 views

Time Machine External Drive

What factors are important when selecting an external hard drive for time machine backups?
epotter's user avatar
  • 151
5 votes
3 answers
6k views

My external disk made a clicking noise. What should I do?

I have a USB2+Firewire external disk that made a clicking noise, and Mac OS X immediately unmounted it and put up a dialog box saying that a peripheral is misbehaving. The disk made a clicking noise ...
Kartick Vaddadi's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
10k views

APFS partition inaccessible, container missing

I'm running macOS Mojave on a late-2015 4k 21.5" iMac. I have lost access to my internal hard drive, but I can use my iMac by running macOS from an external drive or through recovery mode. When I ...
user306251's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
6k views

Recover deleted Encrypted OS X Extended volume

I accidentally formatted an external 1TB HD to FAT file system using Disk Utility in Mac OS. The disk used to be HFS+ encrypted. Encryption was done when I created the OS X Extended partition, not ...
waffle's user avatar
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