data transfer to external hard drive

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vandyke1977 Author

Level 1

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data transfer to external hard drive

I have an iMac running OS X 10.9.2. The problem I'm having is that my hard drive is full - mostly due to HD home videos that I have saved to iMovie. I need to move them to an external hard drive in order to free up some room. I really would like to put them (2 copies of the same videos) on 2 separate hard drives, so that I will have a back-up in case one fails. I am not really that mac savvy - so I was wondering if someone could tell me the best/easiest way to go about doing this. Where I get hung up is if I move it to one drive, then it's no longer on the mac - so how do I put a copy on a second drive?

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Apr 18, 2015 9:37 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Apr 18, 2015 9:46 AM in response to vandyke1977

You are copying a file from one drive to another, not moving it. The file will still be on the Mac from which you copied it.

Select all the movies you wish to copy. Then drag your selection to a folder on one of the backup drives. Now drag that same selection to the second backup drive. When the copying is completed you will have two backups. You can now delete the selection from the startup drive.

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive

1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.

2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.

3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.

4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.

5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.

6. See The Storage Display.

You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.

You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.

Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

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