Techline 4 Teens

Does your computer constantly fail at copping large files to your new hardrive that you bought. Well, that’s supposed to happen. YAY! right…

THE PROBLEM: Most hardrives are formated fat32 or fat16, both of these formats have a limitation. The issue is that each of these formats cannot hold files over 2gb. If the file that you NEED to copy over is greater than 2gb, then it WILL NOT COPY OVER.

WARNING: Backup the contents of the drive, because both methods will ERASE EVERYTHING ON THE DRIVE.

SOLUTION 1 (the mac way): You can use this meathod if and only if you ONLY WISH TO USE THE HARDRIVE ON APPLE COMPUTERS (not PCs)

Step 1) Unplug all other drives from computer, leave only THE drive that you are trying to fix.

Step 2) Open Finder, and go to /Applications/Utillities/

Step 3) Open the application DiskUtillity.app

Step 4) Find your hardrive in the list at the left of the window.

Step 5) Click on the hardrive, not the name of the HD but the thing above it, it brobably says something stupid like “500 GB WD MyBook”. But it could be anything.

Step 6) Check the bottom to make sure it is the wright size, don’t want to partition the wrong drive. (even thoug you unplugged them all.)

Step 7) Look at the tabs near the top of the window, one should say either “Partitions” or “Partition Editor” or “Partition” (depending on your version of MAC OSX)

Step Where it says current, click and change to “1 Partition”.

Step 9) Hit options, and change the drive from “Master Boot Reccord” to “Apple Partition Map”

Step 10) Make sure that the drive’s partition type is “Mac OSX Extended Journaled”

Step 11) Click the “apply” button and wait.

SOLUTION 2: The PC Method, requires access to a pc.

Step 1) Plug drive into a PC

Step 2) Click on “My Computer” from the start menu.

Step 3) Find the drive, right click on it and click on “Format…”

Step 4) Change Fat32 or Fat16 to NTFS.

Step 5) Hit ENTER and wait.

Step 6) To write to this drive on a Mac, you will need NTFS-3G If this driver becomes unavailable, I will build it myself.

That’s it, now you can copy large files to your drive!

Well, Mac OSX is sadly the least free UNIX based OS in the entire world, but Macs still have a lot of free, open source applications. Although I can’t list all of them (list would be too long) I can give you a list of some of the best.

OpenOffice.org Open Office is the complete linux office suite, it is open source and rivals Microsoft Office for features.
HandBrake Handbrake is an excellent open source conversion tool for Mac OSX, it even rips DVDs.
GIMP Oh, you want Photoshop, but it’s a bit too pricy, get equivalent power with GIMP.
Blender I suppose you think this is some cooking app, no, even better. It’s a 3D graphics tool, the equivalent of the overpriced 3D Studio Max. Although the interface is way harder to understand.
Firefox Although, most of you probably know about this one, I think it still needs to be up athere for reference purposes.
VLC VLC is a great, cross-platform media player. It has never failed to play media files for me.
Inkscape A tool similar to Adobe Illustrator for making vector graphics.
Transmission In my opinion, the best Bit Torrent application for UNIX. Torrenting is a process of downloading files.
Darwine An application that allows you to run Windows .exe files in mac OSX.
Q (kju) Sort of like Parallels, it allows you to run windows ITSELF on a mac. It is better than Parallels because it can emulate windows on a PPC, but it doesn’t come with anti-virus software like Parallels does.
Burn Burn is like Roxio Toast Titanium, it burns disks with all the features that a regular person could need, it only lacks DVD menus and encryption.

Well that’s all you really need to have a great Open-Source Suite running on your mac. Happy Downloading!

Search for google for the application “Pacifist”, download and install it.

Put in your mac OSX install disk (use tiger, its smaller) and open Pacifist.

On the bottom of the pacifist window you should see a button that says “Open Apple Install Discs”, click on it.

Two Packages will appear, click on either one. Pacifist will load the disc, this can take a while.

Once it loads, you should have a window, open up the package called “Essential System Software” Then open “Essential System Software Group”.

Select the packages called “Base System” and “Essentials”

Go up to File –> Install Packages To Other Disk…

Select the drive that you want to install it to, and wait a verry verrry long time.

When that is done, Go to /System/Library/CoreServices/ You should find two files called “boot.efi” and “BootX”

Copy thease files to the same folder on the external drive.

Have Fun…

For small drives (under 20GB) Refer to “Installing Mac OSV On A Flash Drive”

Plug in your HD and format it to “Mac OSX Extended (Journaled)” using Disk Utility in /Applications/Utilities/

Insert your Mac OSX install disc, and boot off of it by pressing “C” while booting

Choose your language and continue through the install untill you see the area where it asks you where you want to install OSX. Choose your Hardrive. Now you should be able to boot off it by holding “OPTION” durring start up.

Find the application Terminal.app, it is loacated in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app. Open Terminal and type in the script:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Hit enter to submit, then type:

killall Finder

Finder should now restart, you should now see invisible folders, to hide a folder add a “.” before the name, so the folder “my seceret stuff” becomes “.my seceret stuff”.

To access the folders go to finder and hit SHIFT + COMMAND (the apple key) + G, then type in the path of the hidden folder.