I'm running Yosemite on my MacMini, can this serve as the primary drive, replacing the internal drive?
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You can install the OS on this drive and boot from it, yes, in essence it can replace (or compliment) your internal drive. Important question: Does your MacMini have USB 3? If so, it should be OK. But be advised that with a USB 2 or Firewire connection, your speeds will be slower and it will not be nearly as responsive as your internal drive. You might want to read this: http://www.macworld.com/article/2039427/how-fast-is-usb-3-0-really-.html
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In theory yes, but it seems Apple is frowning on and making it more and more difficult to use external boxes as primary system drives. I imagine you'll have to use hot keys and regularly go into the system preferences to tell the computer (again) to look at the external drive for the system folder as in my experience every now and then the computer (on reboot) will default to looking at the internal. I imagine one way to get around this would be to just remove the internal drive all together, thus forcing the machine to always look externally for its system folder. Otherwise. I've used GDrives for years and they've been great. In theory yes, but it seems Apple is frowning on and making it more and more difficult to use external boxes as primary system drives. I imagine you'll have to use hot keys and regularly go into the system preferences to tell the computer (again) to look at the external drive for the system folder as in my experience every now and then the computer (on reboot) will default to looking at the internal. I imagine one way to get around this would be to just remove the internal drive all together, thus forcing the machine to always look externally for its system folder. Otherwise. I've used... » Read More In theory yes, but it seems Apple is frowning on and making it more and more difficult to use external boxes as primary system drives. I imagine you'll have to use hot keys and regularly go into the system preferences to tell the computer (again) to look at the external drive for the system folder as in my experience every now and then the computer (on reboot) will default to looking at the internal. I imagine one way to get around this would be to just remove the internal drive all together, thus forcing the machine to always look externally for its system folder. Otherwise. I've used GDrives for years and they've been great. « Show Less
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@TonyI believe you could. You'd have to create two partitions on the drive, one formatted in HFS+ (for Mac) and the other in NTFS (for Windows). I have never done any such thing but it might be worth a try. Of course, as these drives have come so far down in price, why not just buy two, one for Mac and the other for Windows?
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I'm able to use this drive as external drive and internal. You need to install the connector based on your application.
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Just to throw in my 2 cents here, the Disk Utility reformat mentioned above in Andrew's post is spot-on. The drive so far as been great to use. However, I'm running Mac 10.5.6 and it was immediately recognized when I first plugged it in: it mounted and Time Machine asked if I wanted to use it for backups...I did the reformatting anyway as the apps on board are no use to a Mac owner.BTW, the $99 price was unbelievable!Fingers crossed on reliability,Yikesboy
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I have a late 2009 iMac i7 my internal drive for writing isn't functioning like it should. I borrowed a friends external rw dvd/cd drive by Apple and haven't had any difficulties. Writes perfectly fine. I'm not running Yosemite.
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I'm pretty sure that you can. In fact I believe any internal HD with a SATA interface will work. I am using a SanDisk SSD 480GB drive in mine as a startup drive for my iMac.
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Yes. If you have not replaced a drive on a mac before, you may want to take a look at this or other tutorials first to make sure you have the right tools on hand, and how to back up your old HD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiGF_pjqvM
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I don't think you can, at least with the hardware clone feature. According to the docs it clones the partition. I have cloned a smaller drive to a larger one and then had to expand the smaller partition to take advantage of the larger drive. The cloned partition was the exact size of the original partition, not the size of the data on the original drive.But you can mount drives in here in addition to cloning them. So, if you use the device to mount the drive you could use a software based cloning solution such as Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac to do exactly what you are attempting. I've done it many times myself.I hope that helps. I don't think you can, at least with the hardware clone feature. According to the docs it clones the partition. I have cloned a smaller drive to a larger one and then had to expand the smaller partition to take advantage of the larger drive. The cloned partition was the exact size of the original partition, not the size of the data on the original drive.But you can mount drives in here in addition to cloning them. So, if you use the device to mount the drive you could use a software based cloning solution such as Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac to do exactly what you are... » Read More I don't think you can, at least with the hardware clone feature. According to the docs it clones the partition. I have cloned a smaller drive to a larger one and then had to expand the smaller partition to take advantage of the larger drive. The cloned partition was the exact size of the original partition, not the size of the data on the original drive.But you can mount drives in here in addition to cloning them. So, if you use the device to mount the drive you could use a software based cloning solution such as Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac to do exactly what you are attempting. I've done it many times myself.I hope that helps. « Show Less
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i would think no you shouldn't have any issues this thing works as a means of turning an internal drive into an external as long as your mac is capable of seeing externals through usb you shouldn't have any problems.
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Everything is working fine for me with Yosemite OS, very happy with the drive.
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You *should* be able to provided you set it up that way. Format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and, partition is with the GUID Partition Scheme. After that, use CarbonCopyCloner or your other favorite copy SW to clone your entire system to the external drive. You can boot by either choosing the external drive in System Preferences &gt; Startup Disk or simply hit the Option key during boot up as that will show you the bootable disks available - choose the external drive. It may be possible to do a clean install onto the Thunderbolt drive by choosing it during a fresh system install but you'd need to have Mavericks or Mountain Lion on a Thumb drive or something and as you install, choose the Thunderbolt drive as your destination drive during install (bypass the internal Mac drive completely).
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My recommendation would be to get the Windows version and leave it as a single NTFS partition. Just load the included utility on your Mac so that it will read/write to an NTFS disc and use the single large partition for both platforms. Makes it easy to share files cross-platform that way.
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You could and it would work fine. I think that the drive would probably preform better hooked directly up to your iMac
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You do not have to use the pre-loaded software. You can always partition and format the drive yourself. Here is a good article you can share with your customer assuming he is on the MAC. http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-an-external-hard-drive-for-use-with-os-x/ If you did install it and are trying to remove it, we can have tech support assist them. If you use the uninstaller and don't just delete the folder it should be fine.
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Yes you could, what you need to know....... The drive inside is a std length (~2"/50mm) long w/ the M2 interface. If you are going to clone the original drive you will need to get a M2 to SATA adapter to make it easy.
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it all depends on how you use it. This version I bought was the drive formatted for MAC OS
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Hi, I'm not 100% certain but if I remember correctly I did use it as a clone at one point to backup OS10.8.6 before upgrading to 10.9 Mavericks and did boot from this Seagate via Thunderbolt. I hope I'm not misleading you though because there were a lot of other external drives floating around this same time, but quite sure.