Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Peripherals Connecting External Hard Drive

I'll guess that you first cloned Mt. Lion to a partition on your external, then you installed Mavericks, which overwrote Mt. Lion on your internal, i.e. your Mt. Lion volume morphed into your Mavericks volume, and finally, you cloned Mavericks to another partition on your external, which could explain, but isn't necessarily why you've got Mt. Lion and Mavericks on your external, but only Mavericks on your internal.

As I said earlier, every volume on every drive shows up in SD!'s pane, so if it ain't there, you ain't got it.

OK, here is a visual 1, 2, 3.

The shot of Disk Utility is to make sure you understand to erase not the top item, but the one immediately beneath it on your internal drive. (I guess it will be named "Mavericks", but it may be "Macintosh Hard Drive", "Untitled"...whatever.) Note that the "Erase" pane gives you the option to change the volume's name, so if you like, you can change it to something uniquely recognizable for the moment; you can always rename it later.

The top SD! shot shows your sources, and as you can see, each one's location is identified by its icon...Mac HD for internal volumes and USB for externals in my instance...maybe FireWire in yours.

Select "Mavericks" on your external as your source.

The middle shot shows your destinations, with their locations also identifiable by their icons.

Select "Edgar" (the volume you just renamed) on your internal as your destination.

The bottom shot shows something similar to what you should see (unless you external is FireWire, in which case you'll see a FW icon on the left).

Click on "Copy Now".

After SD! has done its thing, navigate to System Prefs > Startup Disk and select "Edgar".

Shut down your MBP.

Disconnect your external.

Start up your MBP.

If all went according to plan, your MBP should start up in Mavericks.

Since I am a little nervous about erasing Mavericks from my external HD before I put it back onto my internal HD with the steps you gave me, here is what I am thinking:

(I have no real experience with Time Machine so I'm not clear how to do this)

Would it make sense for me to back up my HD (actually my external hard drive if that makes sense) with a Time Machine backup on my third partition called Misc that already exists and is empty? Then I could try to restore my internal HD from that copy and not worry if it doesn't work because I still have my Mavericks partition to use should something go haywire.

Also, I went to T/M and chose "options". A window came up that said "exclude these items (Mt. Lion and Misc) from backups." Nowhere does it even mention Mavericks which I am using as my start up drive.

So, I'm not sure what steps I take to B/U my ext. HD with T/M onto the misc. partition so I can try to restore it to my HD.

I am not doing this until I get my new computer but I want to be prepared. I am dreading learning a new OS which is maybe why I haven't ordered it yet.

Your opening statement doesn't compute; if you erase Mavericks from your external HD before you put it back onto your internal HD you'll have nothing to put back.

It never hurts to have another backup, so TM (Is your destination partition sufficiently large?) is a good idea; a TM restoration may even be a more desirable way to get Mavericks back onto your old MBP's internal HD than cloning. (I still recommend erasing the HD first.) But I'm not the guy from whom you want to get TM assistance; I haven't even got it on my MBP. (If nobody picks up on this thread you can start a new one.)

And then again, you can forego the Mavericks restoration and restore or clone Sierra to your old MBP after you've got your new one up, migrated, and running.

Update: Oh on my internal drive, not external. But I only have an external drive at this point.

Earlier to said erase the mavericks part of my hard drive:

Did I misunderstand again?

Also, I thought TM came on all Macs.

No misunderstanding; my instructions stand. I was just making certain that you weren't confused and tracked into something self-destructive.

Correct, TM does come on all Macs, but I trash it, because I clean everything I"ve got no intention of using out of my Apps folder. (I can always restore it with Pacifist if the need arises.)

Oh, I'm confused. I will muddle through somehow.

I reported it but it's still happening. For some reason I couldn't find his post directly by using search.

Anyway, I can always try that. When I do it, I will ask for help.

Thanks, as always.

Rita



When the time comes, we'll discuss what's best for you to do, and I"ll walk you through it...no need for muddling.

Thanks, Artie. I know you tried to walk me through but I still had questions. Nothing is very straightforward to me.

Joemike suggested cloning Mavericks over to my empty miscellaneous partition and use that. That sounds like a plan. Also, cloning Sierra when I get my new computer and using that in my backup computer. I couldn't get back to him because this kept coming up: There was a problem looking up this post in our database. I reported it but it's still happening. For some reason I couldn't find his post directly by using search.

Anyway, I can always try that. When I do it, I will ask for help.

Thanks, as always.

Rita

Any time I"ve seen that "There was a problem...." message it has meant that the post in question was deleted.

Stop agonizing; when the time comes, we'll figure it all out.

What connections has your external drive got...FireWire, USB, both? I ask because you need to think about how you're going to do your migration, and then, after you've migrated you info to your new MBP you can give some thought to which OSs you want to keep, and where.

And as for joemike's "cloning Sierra when I get my new computer and using that in my backup computer", a few posts back I suggested "And then again, you can forego the Mavericks restoration and restore or clone Sierra to your old MBP after you've got your new one up, migrated, and running."

By the way, I've been ignoring your post a while back in which you asked a bunch of questions because it seemed pointless to answer before you're ready to proceed...too far before the fact.

My Ex. Drive is plugged into my USB 3.0 port. I don't think it works with FireWire. Different end, right?

I've made the mistake of reading the FTM emails only sometimes and then found out they don't always contained the whole post, so I stopped doing that.

At the risk of sounding sexist, your ignoring my posts because it's too early to deal with it is such a guy thing!! But thanks for explaining silence on some issues. I AM agonizing and wish I knew so much more and didn't have to ask all the time, even after doing my research first. And when explanations don't make sense to me I feel like a dunce.

1. USB and FireWire are completely different protocols (right word?) that use unmistakably different connection ports, and since your external connects via USB you won't have to buy a FireWire to USB adaptor to go along with a new MBP.

2. I read every post at FTM, so I don't bother with emails, but I used to get them back in the MFIF (same software) days, and I stopped, because they came as "quotes", i.e. including all the [xxx] formatting, and were virtually impossible to read.

3. At the risk of sounding equally sexist, then, I'll say that lack of pragmatism and focus must, accordingly, be girl things.

I can't say that you're putting the cart before the horse, because there is no horse; you can't decide which MBP you want or from whom you want to buy it, much less bring yourself to order it, and you're totally distracting yourself from the business at hand by agonizing over what you're going to do with your current MBP and external once you've got it, not to mention that waaay deep down inside you maaay even be dealing with the very strong possibility that there's probably nothing wrong with your current MBP that necessitates your spending ~$1000 for a new one.

Do yourself a favor, and either get a new MBP or try to resuscitate your current one, put off worrying about anything else until you've got a fully functional machine one way or the other, and when you're past that issue you'll be far better able to focus on others.

Sorry; it's a bartender thing.

Oh, and never forget that we're all here to help and never judge anybody poorly for wanting to learn and asking intelligent questions in the process.

After reading all kinds of stuff about "new" no more warrantied macs, (2015 models for example) and refurbished macs, I guess I will go the refurbished way on Apple. Now I need to just quit being cheap and spring for the $929 before it goes away. Do you happen to know how often they discount refurbished Macs? Will the next discount be way down the road?

• FWIW you have IMO made a good decision 👍👍👍
• The prices of factory refurbished Macs are what they are and seldom, if ever, discounted 👎
• You have heard of the law of supply and demand? Apple is unlikely to discount the refurbished prices unless they find themselves overstocked and by far the most common condition for a specific model refurbished Mac is "out of stock". 0️⃣

Anyway, there is definitely something wrong with my Mac, even using the external drive, it's acting wonky now and then. So, I need a new one and will use this as a backup.

You read every post? Wow, that must be time consuming!

After reading all kinds of stuff about "new" no more warrantied macs, (2015 models for example) and refurbished macs, I guess I will go the refurbished way on Apple. Now I need to just quit being cheap and spring for the $929 before it goes away. Do you happen to know how often they discount refurbished Macs? Will the next discount be way down the road?

Thanks, Artie.

Can you be more specific than "wonky"?

If you've never run Apple Hardware Test, you ought to consider running the extended version.

On the other hand, though, chances are that it's no more than your clone having the same issues that were causing your internal to beachball.

Reading every post doesn't take all that much time; composing responses is what eats up my time. At MFIF it took me considerably more time to deal with only the OS X posts, so much so, in fact, that I never looked at any of the other forums.

Wise decision to buy a refurb from Apple, but the price of the discontinued 2012's never varied from $929, and I wouldn't hold my breath for the price of the 2015s to do any differently; Apple's refurb price is their price, same as their current model prices.

It sounds like you've decided on the 128 GB model, and you can expect those to be around for a while, almost continuously at first, but erratically and more erratically as time goes by, because it's the stock model. The configured models, the 256 GB model, for instance, turn up erratically from the get-go, so if you want one of those you should probably act quickly.

I guess FTM was out for awhile. I couldn't get on and neither could anyone else I asked to try it.

By wonky I mean, besides slow and spinning beach ball too often, it's started to get harder to wake up just the screen from sleep. It wanted to stay black. That's really motivating me.

I did the hardware test, extended, and all is well. I've done it twice within a few weeks and no difference.

I got an email from LA Computers and the Applecare is, for sure, $189 for the Macbook Pro so I will get Applecare from there and my computer from Apple Refurbished Store.

I've been watching for my model with the increased SSD but I don't want to pay $175 more so I will probably just go with the 128. It's in the "bag" now just waiting for me to push the button.

I DID IT! Just ordered my Macbook Pro! I could barely wake up the Mac so I got motivated and hit the button. I just read where if the price changes within 14 days I can get a refund for the difference. I highly doubt that will happen, but it's good to know.

By wonky I mean, besides slow and spinning beach ball too often, it's started to get harder to wake up just the screen from sleep. It wanted to stay black. That's really motivating me.

I did the hardware test, extended, and all is well. I've done it twice within a few weeks and no difference.

I've got no idea what's up with that; I don't recall running across those symptoms before.

After you've got your new MBP up and running, we can hopefully get both your old MBP and your external running as expected, and with no data loss.

Are you having problems getting into FTM? It started yesterday when I couldn't get in at all. Today it hangs up. I thought it was my computer but my friends and even my ISP are having problems with it.

The FTM server was having issues yesterday. It started out with UBB being unable to contact the database server and it was downhill from there.

I hope it's nothing that can't be taken care of. Do they need donations?

Thanks for the kind offer but we don't own or operate the server we just rent hosting services from them. So repairs are their responsibility. FTM is a really really low (more like no) budget operation.

Are you having problems getting into FTM? It started yesterday when I couldn't get in at all. Today it hangs up. I thought it was my computer but my friends and even my ISP are having problems with it.

Also, as far as wonkie, I can hardly ever send mail out of my outbox without shutting down mail and reopening it first. I have rebuilt my mailboxes but that doesn't do much, maybe temporarily. Hopefully, that will change with Sierra.

Yes, I really want to fix what's wrong with my MBP here. Thanks for being willing to help, even though I don't always get what you're saying. If that happens, I will ask you to clarify a step I don't understand. I looked for you on other forums yesterday just to tell you I couldn't get on FTM but no luck.

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