Itunes ?

OK, i renamed the itunes library, consolidated files. Then went to back up the main Drive, but it said unable to run because memory was full. I then took both drives downstairs to my imac and tried to make a backup using superduper.
When i tried to select the drive to be copied, it didn't show up as an option.
I could see the backup drive, but not the main music disc. They were both mounted ( you like that? see, i learned something,haha) on the desktop,tho.
Just by chance when i looked thru the to be copied to options, there was the main music drive as an option. When i clicked it, it said "music" is not a mac formatted disc. it is formatted in MS DOS .To use it i would need to erase it using disc utility and reformat in mac os extended.
So do i need to copy the main music disc to my internal drive and make the copy from there? Don't know if i have room...there are 4000 songs on there in Apple Losseless. Thanks again for the patience !

No, you don't need to copy first to the internal drive. While I don't know anything about SuperDuper, and I don't know much about Macs in general, it seems clear that it is a disk cloner program that does not want to clone from a disk that is not formatted in HFS+ (Mac OS extended), either because it is not designed to be able to do that, or perhaps because the target disk may be HFS+.

BTW, the reference to "MS DOS" format undoubtedly means in more specific terms FAT32, which Mac OS's can work with, regardless of whether or not SuperDuper is able to.

My suggestion is that instead of bothering with the cloning utility, you simply use the file management provisions that are provided in the Mac OS to copy all of the files from one drive to the other. After doing that, as Toby suggested you should reformat the original drive, probably to HFS+, and then copy the files back to it. That would result in greatly reduced susceptibility to file system corruption, compared to FAT32, with the only downside being that it would no longer be compatible with Windows machines. If Windows compatibility is a consideration, you should reformat the drive anyway, after copying the files from it, but reformat to FAT32.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks,Al. It's starting to make sense.

When you say "file management provisions that are provided in the Mac OS ",

what are you referring to? Is there a easy way to do that?

When you say "file management provisions that are provided in the Mac OS ",

what are you referring to? Is there a easy way to do that?

Herman and Toby can answer that much better than I can. As I said I have little knowledge about Macs. But I'm simply referring to whatever the conventional methods are in OS X for copying files.

Regards,
-- Al

If i can't transfer a non mac formatted disc to another mac formatted disc with the superduper or clone software, where do i go from here?
I can't reformat it without deleting it, correct?

I guess i could transfer the internal hd from my mini to a mac formatted hd, and have most of my music. Then delete the internal memory after i make a couple copies of that. Is this my best option? Or is there still a way to get the info from the non mac formatted disc over to a mac disc? Will re read Toby's post to see if i missed it.