Specifications

www.ausom.net.au AUSOM News April 2009 v 33
Fred Jago [e-mail]
Installing an External Hard Drive on an iMac
Last Friday the 6/3/09 I went to Spectrade
and told Mike that I wanted to purchase an
external hard drive to back up everything on
my iMac.
He informed me that he had run out of cases
but would have one for me tomorrow. I said
that it would have to wait until Tuesday as the
AUSOM meeting was on all day Saturday and
I would not be able to pick it up until Tuesday
as Monday was a holiday, he said O.K.
Tuesday I had a phone call —Mike needed
another day.
Wednesday after the R&O meeting I went to
the shop only to find that it was not ready. I
waited while Mike put it together, paid for it
and headed home.
Now I’m ready to go. After the priming up
from a talk on the installation and setting up
I understand it is a soda. I unpack the new
toy and plug everything in, and after turning
everything on it works — sort of! I am not very
confident with what I find in disk utilities and
ring Mike Manger.
I am on the phone explaining to him that disk
utility has come up with a duplicate of both
drives, Mike says ring Geoff Wallace, but just
as I am about to do that the external drive
disappears, Mike says ring him now — he will
know a way.
So I ring Geoff and explain to him what
has gone wrong and he talks me through a
sequence of events, turn everything off, turn
on the external drive, turn on the computer,
did the drive mount, no, are the lights on for
the drive, yes, go to the black apple>About
This Mac>More Info… Scroll down to USB and
read out what it says, the last entry says “USB
to IDE” this tells Geoff that the computer
knows that the drive is connected but is not
working.
Geoff says “Pick up the drive, hold it to
your ear and listen, can you hear the drive
spinning?” NO, OK then it is not working,
take it back to Mike let him check it on one of
the Mac’s he has there in the shop.
So I pack everything back into the box and go
back to Spectrade and give Mike the bad news.
He connects it up to his Mac, same result,
takes it apart, tries it again, no go, so he gets
on the phone to his supplier for a replacement
drive. One is available so Mike will ring me
when the job is finished.
Late Monday I received a phone call from Mike
to say that my drive was working and ready
to be picked up. So Tuesday I picked up the
drive from Mike who informed me that it was
the power supply case that was not working
and that it had been replaced. He connected
it up to a G5 Mac tower that he has there and
showed me the unit working advising me that
it had been checked and formatted by Geoff
Wallace and was given the big tick.
Home I went and set it up again, shut down
the iMac and connected everything, turned
everything on and lo and behold there it was
in all its glory — working!
A little software tweaking (thanks Susan) and
all’s well. At the time of writing Time Machine
was backing up my hard drive.
So many thanks to Mike Manger, and Geoff
Wallace I now have a backup drive working.
z
Installing an
external hard
drive and
adding your
valuable data
regularly is
the first
step.
EVERYTHING
lost in fires
or floods
remind us
that where
we KEEP
our ‘back-up’
needs prior
thought and
planning
YOUR Help
AUSOM’s AGM will be held in May and
ALL current members of Committee will
stand down. There is no better or easier
way for you to be involved.
Ask two AUSOM Members to nominate
you — form on page 13 — or speak to a
current Member of Committee.
The rewards for YOU are
HUGE — ask Fred, your
newest Committee Member