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General discussion

External Harddrive backup problem

Feb 9, 2008 9:44AM PST

I just bought a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus (external harddrive) for my iBook G4. I'm running OSX 10.4.l0, and the drive mounts fine, and I can drag files on to it and everything.
However, the one-touch feature does not seem to work. Maxtor Manager opens, but when I click "Backup Now", nothing happens.

How can I fix this?

Discussion is locked

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What about contacting Maxtor support?
Feb 9, 2008 9:54AM PST

I don't know if the Backup feature of this drive actually works with OS X, it may do but I did not find anything definitive about it on their website.

As it works with Windows and Mac OS, I have a feeling that this drive is formatted in FAT or FAT32. This allows it to work, out of the box, on almost any machine.
It is, however, a notoriously fickle and unstable format for your data.

You would be well advised to format this drive in HFS+ (Journaled) for your data's security. You can do this via Disk Utility.


P

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If anything, FAT32 is...
Feb 11, 2008 6:59PM PST

... more stable than HFS in everyday use, but it's not a Mac-friendly format with many restrictions in how big files can be, etc. Reformatting as HFS makes sense.

It also depends on how complete a backup you want. If you want to be able to boot off the drive and restore a completely usable backup, I'd suggest going for alternative third party software like Superduper (as opposed to the Retrospect that I believe is shipped with the Maxtor).
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

It's nowhere near as good as some Windows solutions, but it's probably as good as you're going to get on a Mac.

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Firewire and FAT32 equals tears?
Feb 11, 2008 11:26PM PST

After some dozens of drives brought in for recovery with said combo I've seen tears over the losses. There's a free lesson here.

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To anglered
Feb 12, 2008 8:41AM PST

post your problem in a new thread.

Seems like you have more problems going for you than just the hard drive one.

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