I know a little bit about Windows computers (maybe about 10% of what you guys on this bbs know) but when it comes to Apple I know less than nothing. Really less than nothing because I keep expecting it to do things like Windows would, and of course it doesn't, so to me the whole experience is counter-intuitive.

Anyway... After four years of very careless operation SWMBO has dragged her iMac into almost unusability, downloading each and anything that caught her eye, trying every free application that came along, never, ever deleting anything that found its way onto her hard drive. Up until this week, boot times were running over two minutes and internet access was sometimes so slow that it was unusable.

All that is changed now. I took it to the friendly computer store, told them to Nuke and Repave: Save the photos, then format the hard drive, install the latest OS the old iMac would support, install FireFox and Gmail, put in some version of Microsoft Office, and get her Time Machine working on the external FireWire hard drive.

Apparently all of that was successfully done (haven't actually turned it on and tried it out yet) except the Time Machine.

The external drive seems pretty versatile (FireWire, USB, and apparently eSATA connectors) but the computer shop was unable to get their computers or SWMBO's computer to "see" the drive, and I have had the same results with my Windows computer. Is this because the drive was originally formatted to run under Macintosh OS?

I have several suitably-sized 3.5" hard drives and an external USB dock for them. What do I need to do to make the iMac run Time Machine on that hardware?

tanstaafl.

She may have a better experience with Safari (built in browser) for her needs. If she also uses her iDevices, Safari can sync bookmarks, passwords and such between them securely.


If it's working, it should show up somehow even if it's formatted for a Mac. On your Windows computer with the drive attached, run Disk Management and see if it shows up in the list. Device Manager should also have an entry for it. Or on the Mac, run Disk Utility and System Information, those are the comparable programs to Disk Management and Device Manager.


Plug one in, then when the Mac sees it, it will ask if it should be used for Time Machine. It'll take care of formatting it appropriately if needed, and start the first backup.

If you want to back up to multiple disks, open System Preferences, and then Time Machine. Click Add or Remove Disk to add a new one into the rotation.

To run any of these programs on the Mac, press Command - Space to bring up a search window which can find the programs mentioned above. Or click the magnifying glass icon in the upper right to bring up the same search interface.

Wow, if I'd known it would be so complicated I never would have thought about attempting it. I'll do that later today...

tanstaafl.

My mom uses Firefox on her Mac Mini and it's pretty bad. I'd go with Safari. Chrome isn't great on Macs either.