External hard showing "weird". Better known as, sharing an external/portable hard drive between osx and winxp. [more inside]
posted on Jun 23, 2008 - 9 answers

I just got my Macbook back from the Apple Store today after they replaced the logic board on the unit. I've noticed that every song I play in iTunes seems to skip. Finding this odd, I opened up the Activity Monitor and looked at disk usage. It seems like whenever a read to the disk is made, iTunes seems to begin skipping. Furthermore, I have the same problem after trying to play mp3's via mpg123. I'm worried that the skipping could be a sign my hard drive might be failing. I recently installed a brand new 250 GB hard drive from Newegg about a month and a half ago, so I'm somewhat skeptical. Is it a reasonable concern?
posted on Jun 20, 2008 - 4 answers

My external hard-drive's on the fritz. What can I do to make sure I get all my data off it before it goes? [more inside]
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - 5 answers

Will I screw up my Mac if I empty out the /Library/Printers folder? [more inside]
posted on Oct 20, 2007 - 12 answers

How do I get my PC to recognize my Apple-formatted external hard drive? [more inside]
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - 5 answers

Am I courting disaster by doubting the Mac Genius? [more inside]
posted on Jun 18, 2007 - 29 answers

OSXFileSharingFilter: I have a friend who's trying to make himself a great file server off an old iBook - and has hit a snag involving a MyBook external hard drive. The problem makes no sense to me, and my Google-fu as failed me once again. [more inside]
posted on Mar 11, 2007 - 7 answers

Need more hard drive space... am about to buy a 500 or 600 gb external (LaCie) drive and mentioned it to a friend and she said not to go higher than a 320 due to overheating problems. Experienced MeFites, what do you say? Also, being a Firewire person, I have a dumb USB 2.0 question: can they be chained together? Any other drive anecdotes that might be useful in my purchase are appreciated. I'm on a Mac. [more inside]
posted on Mar 1, 2007 - 23 answers

Data recovery in target disk mode: what are the pitfalls? [more inside]
posted on Jul 30, 2006 - 8 answers

I've got an intermittent iBook hard drive problem that has me stumped. The computer works fine for a short period of time, then completely freezes. The "good" period of time has gotten shorter and shorter. [more inside]
posted on Jun 4, 2006 - 9 answers

I'm looking to buy a new Macbook as a secondary computer, however, I want it to be the sole host to my 60gb iPod. I currently have a Toshiba laptop, which has an 80BG hard drive. After two years of use, I've realized I need at least a 120 GB hard drive in any new laptop I get. I don't want to shell out the cash for Apple to throw an upgraded drive in ($250!!!!), but instead I want to buy a new hard drive off ebay or something and replace the 80GB one inside the fresh Macbook. Since I'm only accustomed to the Windows OS -- How do I go about doing this for an Apple computer? Also, does anyone know where I can get a good deal on a laptop drive? :) [more inside]
posted on May 30, 2006 - 29 answers

I need help using my external USB hard drive with Mac OS X, and there's [more inside]
posted on May 12, 2006 - 2 answers

I just got a new 250GB SATA hard drive and a SATA to USB 2.0 enclosure to put it in. When I plug everything in & hook it to my iBook, I get the following error: "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click Ignore" (3 options: "Initialize...", "Ignore" or "Eject"). How do I get it to work? [more inside]
posted on Apr 7, 2006 - 8 answers

I want to boot my Mac G5 from an internal striped software raid. Possible? [more inside]
posted on Feb 12, 2006 - 2 answers

Lacie hard drive problem - Mac OS Panther. For the past couple days, I was ripping CDs as MP3s via iTunes and writing them to my Lacie 160 Gig Firewire hard drive (the Porsche one). This morning, the drive "is unreadable by Mac OSX..." What gives? [more inside]
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - 12 answers

I just managed to delete my entire iTunes library. But I have it on my iPod. Problem is, the iPod is set to auto-update, and if I plug it into a computer with no music on it, it'll all vanish. Help. [more inside]
posted on Sep 17, 2005 - 10 answers

Locally mounting physical Mac OS X drives/volumes in a Windows machine? [more inside]
posted on Mar 30, 2005 - 4 answers

A couple of days ago, my iBook (G4, dual USB, 800Mhz) hard drive started making excessive noise, like it was continually writing, and the computer slowed wayyy down. I backed up all the important data, then ran several diagnostic programs: TechTool Pro 4, Drive 10, Norton Utilities 8. All came up with major errors, first with the volume bitmap, then with the disk surface itself, i.e. bad blocks. None of them could fix the problem (although Norton said it did), so I erased the disk with the option to write zeroes selected. After erasing three times, TechTool Pro still found bad blocks on the surface scan test. [more inside]
posted on Feb 21, 2005 - 14 answers

OS X stumper: My internal boot drive (160 GB) "info" reports 12.4 GB available, 136.63 GB on disk. A bootable (120 GB) clone shows 55.42 GB available, 55.24 GB on disk. I've run Disk Utility and Disk Warrior, repaired and rebuilt and the report persists. (I checked the disk used with "WhatSize" and, while I've not done the math, the rough aggregate of disk used appears to be more in line with the clone, which is what I expect. I am not sure when this apparent mis-reporting began but I know it was recently.) Googling has failed me. What is going on and how do I fix it?
posted on Jan 22, 2005 - 14 answers

A long-time PC user, I am planning to switch to Apple, replacing my centrino laptop by a 12" ibook G4 (I want a small computer).

Most of the standard Apple configurations come with 256MB of RAM: is this because OSX needs less memory than XP (since most laptop configs today come with 512MB), or do I need to go for 512 (768?) megs?

I mainly use my computer to browse the web, send & receive e-mails, do some word processing, and manage my MP3, which I only store on my iPod.

Other question:
If I buy the computer at the local Apple Store (I'm in NYC), I'll only be able to get a memory upgrade, and not a hard disk upgrade. The laptop comes with a 30GB drive. For a Windows PC, I'd go for 60GB: should I do the same here? This would make me have to order it online, which is a bit of a problem (I'm not often at home...).
posted on Dec 6, 2004 - 33 answers

New External Drive for OSX: So I bought a new external, as I've been threatening in other posts. It's a 200gb Maxtor. I plug it into my Powerbook which tells me it can't recognize the format. Do I want to Initialize? I say yes... and it identifies the drive as having a 128gb capacity. What gives? Where are the other 72gb? What format should I choose for this sucker? Help!
posted on Nov 11, 2004 - 18 answers

iMac notebook + OS9 + OSX = no hard drive space. Even more helpful, installing/reinstalling anything doesn't seem to work. iMore inside...
posted on Nov 8, 2004 - 5 answers

I've just bought a Lacie 160 gigabyte firewire drive. It's to be plugged into a Windows XP machine, but also to be written to and read by a Mac OSX machine. I want to format it with the FAT32 file system, but Windows won't let me. Is there a way to force the drive to format as FAT32? [More inside...]
posted on Oct 28, 2004 - 6 answers

External hard drives.... I have a 160gb Lacie, which works great. (I'm on a Powerbook, btw.) However, it's nearing full of MP3s and I'm not done archiving all my stuff. Should I a) buy another 160 or b) buy a 300gb and sell the 160? {more}
posted on Oct 23, 2004 - 12 answers