trying to copy 1 hard drive to another

paulpod · 10-03-2011 5:18pm #1

hi can anyone tell me how to copy from from 1TB media player hard drive to another. Im a new Mac user and just cant seem to suss it. i know how to do it on a Pc.
cheers folks

Sad Professor · 10-03-2011 6:16pm

Drag and drop?

barryj · 10-03-2011 6:27pm

I think you need to supply a little more information about what kind of devices and what you've tried.

I assume you have both devices plugged in to your Mac?

Do they both show up in the finder/on the desktop.

If the device you are trying to copy to is formatted as NTFS, then you won't be able to write anything to it directly from the finder - as OSX only supports reading of NTFS volumes, not writing. You can do it, by installing some extra components.

- barry

paulpod · 10-03-2011 7:03pm

Hi Barry and Sad Professor,
I tried the drop and drag bur it didnt work. the devices are iomega 1TB media players. 1 of them has 900GB and the other is free. I'm trying to copy everything from 1 to another. The 2 of them are visible on finder and desktop

barryj · 10-03-2011 7:15pm

I'd say it's formatted in NTFS. You can check the partition type by running Disk Utility, and selecting your drive, and the partition section.

You'll need to reformat it if you want to write to it from your Mac, unless you want to install some additional software to write to NTFS disks (google for it) Be aware that formatting will completely erase it.

If you're only going to use it on a Mac, then Mac OS Extended format would be best. If you'll need to share it with a PC at some point, then FAT would be best.

FAT32 has some limitations including a max file size of 4GB I think. FAT64 or exFAT is a newer version, that will work with Snow Leoparad 10.6.5 or later and with Windows Vista SP1 or later.

- barry

paulpod · 10-03-2011 7:24pm

Thanks Barry,
a bit too technical for me so i think ill just crank up the pc for old times sake!! cheers for the reply dude

muggyog · 10-03-2011 8:06pm

You need to reformat your drive so you can write ( from the Mac ) to it.
You need to use the Disk Utility application to format.
You need to decide if you want to use both Mac and PC to write to the drives hence the mention of NTFS/FAT32/Mac OS Extended ( different ways of formatting)

conor.hogan.2 · 11-03-2011 5:37pm

Oh nm thought you had data on it but just format it in disk utliity as others have said.

trying to copy 1 hard drive to another

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