HELP - External Hard Drive (WD My Passport)

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Level 1

8 points

HELP - External Hard Drive (WD My Passport)

I have a 'WD My Passport Ultra' connected to my iMac set up as a Time Machine that automatically backs up. However, recently I've been getting messages on the iMac that my hard drive was getting full so I bought a 'WD My Passport for Mac' to use as an external hard drive. It's a 'plug and play' drive, so I just connected it to the iMac and hoped I would be able to drag and drop photos etc from my hard drive to free up some space. However, the 'WD My Passport for Mac' seems to be working as a replica of my hard drive and is automatically copying what's on the hard drive (e.g. if I add or delete a file one the hard drive or WD Passport it does the same thing on the other). I've contacted WD customer support but they say there's nothing on the WD Passport that would do that and it must be a software issue with the iMac.

Can anyone help?

M

Posted on Sep 23, 2016 5:02 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,522 points

Sep 23, 2016 7:16 AM in response to MPP35

First, if your TM drive is getting full that isn't really a worry because TM will automatically delete older backups. However if you want to get a larger capacity TM drive and move the content of the old TM drive to it, the proper method is discussed in Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support

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Answer 2

MPP35 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 23, 2016 7:22 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Hi. Thanks for your response.

The issue isn't that my TM is full (it's not). I wanted an additional external hard drive that I could use to selectively store large files to free up space on my iMac's Hard Drive to run alongside the TM. The problem is that the external hard drive seems to be synchronising automatically with my iMac Hard Drive; it's not designed to and there apparently isn't any software on it that would make it do this.

M

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,522 points

Sep 23, 2016 7:33 AM in response to MPP35

I have no idea what you did. My suggestion is to start over and first erase the new EHD. How you would do that is open Disk Utility, select the EHD and then format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then you can manually move data to it. My suggestion would be to start by moving large libraries such as your photos, music and movie libraries. All you need to do is locate the library files (not individual photos, music tracks etc..) and copy the file to the EHD. Once the libraries have been moved double click them from the new location and then the App (iTunes for example) will "know" where the library is now located. Once you have done that you can Trash the file from the original location and empty your Trash.

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Answer 4

MPP35 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 23, 2016 9:36 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Many thanks. I will give that a try.

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Answer 5

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,522 points

Sep 23, 2016 10:42 AM in response to MPP35

Your welcome.

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