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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Sharing 2 hard drives

rswmkw - Jul 7, 2007 - 7:36 am

Hello,

we have a mirrored 1.25 G4 power mac that needs more hard disk space. I want to add a new ATA 100, 160 gig hard drive to one of the bays. Our question is how do we move files and apps to new drive and have them be shared. We have a 2 large groups Itunes and I photo taking up 40 gigs now plus many apps.

Thank you

RSW

earthsaver - Jul 8, 2007 - 6:19 pm

I don't understand what you mean by "shared." You can pretty much just drag the files and apps you want to store elsewhere. You can hold Command and drag to "move" them or you can trash the originals after copying if you don't hold Command.

You'll have to tell iTunes where to find your iTunes Library after the move. Hold Option while opening iTunes to be asked to choose a library and then navigate to the iTunes folder wherever you put it (among your albums). For iPhoto, you're just moving your entire iPhoto Library folder and, similarly, holding Option while opening iPhoto to show iPhoto where to find your photos.

You should not move any of the Apple applications that are in your primary Applications folder because Mac OS X won't know where to find them to apply any subsequent updates. Otherwise, you can pretty much move any app anywhere you wish. You'll only have to replant Dock icons for apps moved to other disks/volumes.

Anything else?

- Ben

rswmkw - Jul 9, 2007 - 5:23 pm

Hello Ben,

Thank you Ben, I am out of hard drive space so I wanted to install a second drive and move apps and Info. I understand what you are saying. Should I just migrate to the new drive and then switch the slave and master after? I am just trying to make this as easy as possable. I did not think I could move say Office to the new drive and docs and pull from either drive. Thank you for clearing that up for me. I just want to manage the space of the drives the best way possable

Thank you

Rob

earthsaver - Jul 9, 2007 - 9:31 pm

I'm guessing the new drive is larger than the old. If so, then the simplest action seems to be to clone to it (I recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner to handle this operation) and then formatting the old drive to use as a spare for whatever you like. There are no master/slave jumper settings to change. If you end up moving your System folder to the new disk, you'll just open the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences to select the appropriate System to start from.

In general, though, you can move Office or most other non-Apple applications to other locations and they'll still work just fine. All of each application's supporting files are either contained in the application's own bundle, in the parent folder of the app, or in a subfolder of the Application Support folder in the main Library folder. For example, Adobe installs a folder in Application Support for its design apps. Unlike Windows, no application resources are strewn elsewhere in the hierarchy and most of the time moving an application is as simple as drag and drop of a single icon.

rswmkw - Jul 9, 2007 - 10:56 pm

Hello Thank you again for the help. Yes the new drive is Segate ATA 160 gig. Could I go larger in the machine I have? 1.25 G4 2 gigs of ram. I will down load Carbon Copy Cloner and move everything too the new drive as you suggested.

Again Thank you

Rob

earthsaver - Jul 9, 2007 - 11:15 pm

For future reference, you can go as high as 3.5" ATA disks are available. Seagate (my preferred brand, too) is still shipping ATA disks as large as 750GB. Or, you could upgrade your machine with an SATA PCI card and expect even greater hard disk sizes for years to come. (Current max is 1TB, which is 1024GB.)

rswmkw - Jul 11, 2007 - 8:33 am

Thank you for the information. Can my G4 handle the extra size hard drive? Micro center rep said I was maxed out at 250Gigs? They have a segate 320 at a great price is this OK to install in our 1.25 mirrior door G4

Aagin Thank you for all the Help and Time

Rob

earthsaver - Jul 11, 2007 - 6:33 pm

I'll go with Microcenter's response only if the rep can point me to a resource that states a 250GB hard disk maximum. To my knowledge, the hard disk size maximum for Mac OS X has not yet been manufactured. The last Power Mac with any HD related restrictions was the Blue & White G3, where OS X has to be in the first 8GB partition of a disk. Otherwise, I know of no such limitations. Have Microcenter prove me wrong.