How to make your own external hard drive and use it with Time Machine

July 30, 2009 - 1:14 am

This tutorial teaches you how to take an old hard drive laying around your house and make use of it by turning it into an external hard drive. Once your former internal hard drive, you have to get an external enclosure. Ebay sells them pretty cheap.

Once you have your external enclosure, install your the hard drive into the enclosure and plug it into your Mac. From there you can grab all your old files if you like, but in this tutorial, I teach you how to thoroughly erase the hard drive with no detection of what was on it ever.

After you have erased the hard drive, you now can use it as a regular external hard drive. You just saved lots of money.

If you like to use it as a Time Machine drive, go ahead and go to spotlight, and type in time machine or select it from our dock and set up your new external hard drive with Time Machine.

Duration : 0:8:41


[youtube PLrifwTba5Y]

25 Responses to “How to make your own external hard drive and use it with Time Machine”

  1. stevesmacfix Says:

    absolutely
    absolutely

  2. 88OHA Says:

    i have an old …
    i have an old garbage pc sitting around, is it possible to do the same?

  3. stevesmacfix Says:

    Yes because the …
    Yes because the external head contains the head reader for the drive

  4. ISS5731 Says:

    do you HAVE to use …
    do you HAVE to use the external enclosure?

  5. YungGunna322 Says:

    ha.
    ha.

  6. stevesmacfix Says:

    hahhahaha.. hence …
    hahhahaha.. hence the word “time Machine” hahahaha nice!

  7. ShakingAtTheKnees Says:

    I thought this was …
    I thought this was gonna tell me how to go back in time. I wanted to see dinosaurs. Oh well

  8. stevesmacfix Says:

    I am not an …
    I am not an experienced user of Linuz at all. There OS is based on text commands that I’m not familiar with so I dont both using it. Even their installation can get tricky. when I installed Linuz Yellow Dog on my PS3, that was a little challenging. So, to make a long story short, I have no desire to install it on my MacBook and I’m not to keen of linux, so no tutorial my friend. Sorry. I would totally do it if I liked Linux.

  9. macintosh1010 Says:

    yea thats good. Do …
    yea thats good. Do you have tutorial on how to do that or can you make one thanks!

  10. stevesmacfix Says:

    The partician would …
    The partician would handle ubuntu with no probs! I have a good friend of mine with Ubuntu installed. Works awesome!

  11. macintosh1010 Says:

    How would you …
    How would you partition the drive to handle ubuntu? i wanted to run separately on the mac but don’t when to mess it up. Can you help thanks.

  12. technoairplaneman Says:

    oh, ok. thanks!
    oh, ok. thanks!

  13. stevesmacfix Says:

    fat 32 will work …
    fat 32 will work for both though… but if you use it for time machine then partition it.

  14. technoairplaneman Says:

    Hmm… I see. …
    Hmm… I see. Thanks for the advice!

  15. stevesmacfix Says:

    go to spotlight …
    go to spotlight type disk utility, select the drive, and click partition. sorry took a while to respond

  16. stevesmacfix Says:

    thnx!
    thnx!

  17. hewaslikeomaballs Says:

    i like the new intro
    i like the new intro

  18. awak02 Says:

    You are an angle
    i …

    You are an angle
    i was looking for my old HD yesterday to set it up as time machine and your tutorial just make it handy but i get disappointed as you haven’t show us who to make partitions

  19. stevesmacfix Says:

    What I would do …
    What I would do honestly is partition the hard drive into two formats. 1 for Mac and the other for windows. I would do the windows side as fat 32. I would not do the entire hard drive as fat 32 though since some people report that you can’t transfer more than 6gb at a time. NTFS or fat 32 would also be fine since you would only use the windows partition for windows.

  20. technoairplaneman Says:

    wow, great video!- …
    wow, great video!- so I’m getting a 1TB drive for time machine. I have a windows as well as a mac coming soon (my first! :D). FAT32 is the best option for compatability, right? are there any cons to using FAT32? thanks- and the video was more than a little useful, as always :-)

  21. stevesmacfix Says:

    Thanks so much. I …
    Thanks so much. I figured this would be useful for a lot of people, not just Now but in the future too. The way the economy is, not a lot of people can afford expensive hd’s. Thanks for the compliment!

  22. stevesmacfix Says:

    Thanks so much! I’m …
    Thanks so much! I’m glad u do!

  23. pkns0 Says:

    fine video :D
    fine video :D

  24. wiefag Says:

    love your videos!!!
    love your videos!!!

  25. Terraburn Says:

    Actually I was …
    Actually I was wondering; since I got that 1TB drive on the way, I was gonna use it for TM. Am I gonna have problems using it to for Windows based systems and other types of files? Sounds like a dumb question but I just wanted to make sure.

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