Hello friends! today i’m going to tell you the most important thing because some of the newbies don’t know how to enable subscriptions and socialize their blog on feedburner.
After google webmaster, ping and yahoo, FeedBurner is good for driving traffic to your
blog or any where you wanted but you need
subscribers to do it, well let me tell you what is needed and how it can be done.
• How to enable email subscription
So guys, much awaited moment has arrived going to tell you about enable feed burner
subscriptions. So know them from below:
• Go to http://feedburner.google.com
• Login to feed burner
• Now click on your feed in which you want to
enable subscriptions i.e your blog name.
• Now see navigation in upper part of the
page, click on Publicize.
• In the left side corner you’ll see Email
Subscriptions, just click on it
• Now you’ll see the active button on it click
on it.
Now a message will come and this will show
that you have successfully activated the email subscription.
How to add subscription widget to you blog
So now you have successfully know how to
enable the subscription but no subscribers
because no widget on your blog that’s why I’m
going to tell you how you can add widget
to your blog for subscribers.
When you clicked the active button in this
section you’ll see this code.
• Click 3 times on it and then press ctrl + c
• Now Go To Blogger >> Layout >> Add a
Gadget, Choose “HTML/JavaScript” Paste
the Code which you copied from feed
burners website.
Congratulations!!! You done and that is all
How to share your blog automatically on all social media will be publish in my next post.
Don't forget to like our page on facebook, follow us on twitter for our latest updates. Happy blogging pals!
Blog traffic is a serious and popular matter in the field of blogging. For someone to become a successful blogger then you must have a great blog with lots of traffic. But getting huge amount of traffic to your blog is not an easy task.
These days there are millions of blogs related to every niche are available on the internet so it is extremely difficult to survive between these blogs and get good traffic. In this post I will explain you the 5 extremely powerful methods for getting good traffic to your blog in a small amount of time.
• Social media
Social networking sites are very important source of internet traffic. Try to increase your fans and followers especially on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+,LinkedIn and Pinterest . If you have large number of followers and you are active, then you can easily drive good amount of traffic to your blog from them. Share your blog posts on these social networking websites to gain traffic benefit.
Important tips regarding social media:
• Submit content to your social
networks manually. Do not use any
softwares for submitting the content.
This will increase your engagement
with your social connections.
• Use Share buttons on your blog so
that your blog visitors can directly
share content from your blog to their
social networks. This will give you
huge traffic bonus.
• Always remain active on your social
networks. Set up events on your
social networks so that your followers
enjoy your presence.
• Respond to the queries and
comments of your followers or fans
on your social networks.
Guest posting is also very powerful way of
increasing your blog traffic in a short period of
time. You must publish guest posts on well
established blogs of similar niche. Another
benefit of guest posting is that your blog will
also get one or two do-follow backlinks which
results in increasing Google page rank of your
blog. Guest posting will give you lots of exposure and helps increasing your social networking followers as well.
Important tips regarding guest posting:
• Only publish guest posts on good
blogs. Do not waste your time on
small blogs. because a single guest
post on well established blog will
give
• you more traffic and exposure
than 5 guest posts on small blogs.
• You must publish your guest
post on the blogs of similar niche
This will send targeted traffic to
your blog.
• Publish at least two guest posts per
week.
• Only publish original article which
are written by you from scratch.
• Add widgets to your blog
Have it mind that not all widgets drive traffic to your blog but there are some specific widgets (like share buttons, facebook like box, twiiter follower button) which helps in driving traffic to your blog directly or indirectly.
These are some of the widget you need:
• Post Share button - While reading
your blog posts visitors can share
your posts to their own social
networks and if anybody among
their friends likes your post then
they also share that post to their
own social network. In this way they
start a chain reaction of sharing the
posts and it results increasing your
blog traffic.
• Facebook like box – By using
facebook like box your blog visitor
can like your facebook fanpage page
from your blog without leaving your
blog.
In this way this widget helps in
increasing your facebook fans. These
fans will help you gaining traffic in
future when you publish new posts
to your blog and your fan page.
• Twitter follower button – Twitter
follower button helps in increasing
your twitter followers directly from
your blog. More the twitter
followers your have more traffic
you will receive.
• Google+ badge – Google plus
network is another good source of
traffic.
Adding a Google+ badge to your
blog helps in increasing your
Google+ followers.
• Email subscription widget – Email
subscription widget helps in
increasing readership of your blog
through email. As the number of
your subscribers increases it will
increase your overall blog traffic.
One last but not least tip for increasing traffic is high posting frequency. You must publish posts daily or at least with the gap of one day between posting. This will increase indexing rate of your blog. Search engines spiders will start crawling your blog at much faster rates and your latest posts will appear fast in search results.
If you follow these tips then your blog is going to rock in blogosphere. You will see huge changes in traffic graph of your blog.
Before we start listing the top ten SEO tools any blogger must use, here are three reasons why you need them:
• Considering only the latest Panda update
Google made, we can expect Search
engine optimization to be even more
challenging in the future.
• If you use the right SEO tools for your
blog, it’s like you have 10, 30, or even
more people working on your side.
• These tools will save you lots of time
and effort when researching keywords
and optimizing your website.
As a blogger, you need some intelligent software to help you conquer the daily SEO challenges you are faced with. Much of your success depends on how well you organize and
streamline your digital workflow. So be clever
about choosing the SEO tools that can make your job easier, more efficient and even enjoyable.
Here are the tools:
• Adwords keyword tool
There’s no need to say that any successful
post must begin with a keyword research.
And since Google is the world’s most
popular search engine, and most of your
organic traffic will come from their.
searches, the best place to start the keyword
research would be the Google Keyword Tool.
It’s not that this is ‘the king’ among all
keyword tools, but it is definitely an
important SEO weapon that shouldn’t be
underestimated.
• The google trinity
Aside from the Keyword Tool there are
other three Google services that are
of major importance for SEO, and
these include:
• Google Analytics, for
tracking and analyzing
the traffic coming to
your blog.
• Webmaster Tools, to get
all the latest techniques
and advices when it comes
to optimizing your blog for
Google.
• Google Trends, to get a
head-up to what’s latest on
the Web that might apply to
your niche.
• Ubersuggest
Many SEO experts suggest bloggers to
also use the Ubersuggest tool, because
it can inspire their creativity and help
them think of new keyword combinations
and phrases when creating their blog posts
that will really stand out in the search
results.
Because of this feature the software may
be even more powerful than Google’s
Keyword Tool within AdWords.
• Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoas
WordPress is the CMS most bloggers
prefer. If you are one of them, the
SEO plugin made for this platform by
Yoast is the tool you most definitely
should have, since it will help you
handle every back-end SEO need to
easier fine-tune your blog for peak
performance.
• Xenu's link sleuth
You can’t allow broken links on your
website if you aim to get higher in
the search result pages. Xenu’s Link
Sleuth is free software that can help
you locate the broken links for images,
Java applets, HTML files, CSS style sheets
and ensure your blog is well optimized
when this element is considered.
• SEO Book Rank Checker
As a result of the interconnected
digital world we live in we are
constantly overloaded with all sorts of
information and finding exactly what
we want becomes more complicated.
In such situations, the simple single-
purpose tools like SEO Book Rank Checker have proven much more
useful. This tool allows you to easily
see how your blog ranks for specific
keywords and phrases as well as
export that data if necessary.
All these tools are no doubt useful, but they are just web applications to make your job easier. To hit the top of the search result pages you’ll have to mostly rely on your creativity (though there are apps that can help you with inspiration also). Your success in blogging depends mostly on you, but having software you can trust working by your side never hurts.
Hope this is helful?. Any contribution should be drop via comment.
Don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Merry xmas and happy new year in advance....
Hello fellow bloggers, how are you doing
and hope are you are going to enjoy what I
want to explain to us today. Oya kets get
started.
Since Blogger introduced the new template HTML editor, we get many comments from readers saying that they can't find the codes requested in our tutorials. Almost 99% of the time the code is there in the template, but they are having trouble finding it because Blogger new template HTML editor has made code-finding to be more difficult or less straightforward.
Finding a code or tag the old way is virtually
impossible since the expanded template codes
are now hidden inside folds, and to make
matters worse your browser's search function
doesn't search inside the new HTML editor
window.
That said you can still search and find them
codes. We just need to follow the simple steps below.
1.
Go to Template, click on Edit HTML botton and click anywhere inside the HTML editor.
Press Ctrl+F or press Cmd+F in Mac, and a search box should appear in the upper right corner of the editor.
2.
Paste the code you are looking for in the
search box. Say if want to find , enter the whole tag or just the main keyword "data:post.body"in the box.
3.
Then press the Enter key on your PC. All results will be highlighted and the content of the HTML window will jump up to reveal the first match.
4.
Hit the Enter key again to jump to the next result and so on.
That's all. Hope this helps? Any contribution should be drop via comment.
In this post i'd like to share with us how our blog can be crawl and index automatically by search engine.
It is very mandatory that you submit an xml
sitemap to google so as to get your site content
indexed by the search engine crawlers. If
you’re using Blogger platform for blogging, you
must have noticed that Blogger blogs has an
xml sitemap that is automatically created once
your blog has been fully setup, which in-turn
keep updating your new blog posts as soon as
they’re published. It’s easy to submit your
blogs xml sitemap to either Blogger or Google Webmasters Tools. Preferably xml sitemap
should be submitted to Blogger, though manual configuration is needed to make it start working.
Now follow the bellow steps to manually configure your xml Blogger blogs sitemap.
1. Click here to generate your xml Blogger blogs sitemap.
2. Once you’ve entered your blog url address in (Step 1.) Hit the “Generate Sitemap” button to generate your unique xml Blogger sitemap. Now copy the generated sitemap text from the text field-box. NB: don't copy the date.
3. After you have completed the steps (Step 1 And 2). Now, login to your Blogger blog,
navigate to Blogger Dashboard and click on
“Settings” >> “Search Preferences” and click on it. A warning text will open, just click on edit
4. Now in search preferences you’ll see Enable custom Rebots.txt content? Select Yes
and a text field-box will appear just below the
command. Now paste the Blogger xml sitemap
contents you generated in (Step 1). After pasting the Blogger xml sitemap contents click
on the Save changes.
My brother just go and sleep, u're done! It’s as easy as that.
NB: when you paste the xml sitemap in the box make sure you arrange it so that I will not look scarter in the box.
If all the (5 Steps) are taken correctly. Google
bots will crawl and indexed all your published
contents, so you don’t need to bother going to
webmasters tools to submit your blog again, all
your blog contents would now be indexed and
crawled automatically. All you have to do is,
write and publish your contents and google
search bots will do the rest.
Hey! How are you doing friend, I need a cup of coffee to shake it..feeling cold mood..lolz.
Okay let's go the main topic I have for us this morning.
I was surprised to see that some people didn't know you could set up a custom domain name on your Blogger account to make your blog your own. You don't have to be stuck with a "yourblogname.blogspot.com" website address, so for those of you that don't know how to set this up, I am going to show you how! Step by step.
Having your own custom domain name is one of the main things I always recommend a blogger do for various reasons:
• You own it which means you can move it
anywhere with you. If you decide to move
off of Blogger or decide that maybe one
day you'd like to change your brand/blog
to something a little different, you can do
that easily.
• It looks much more professional and shows
that you take your blog seriously.
• It's easier for others to remember.
• You can set up your own email addresses
using the domain name to stay consistent.
Before you do this, you will need to register a
domain name. You can use any registrar you
like, but I prefer GoDaddy and in this example I am going to show you how to do this using GoDaddy
Another domain name u can register with is Namecheap.
Okay, now that you've got your domain registered, it's time to put it to use. I've
outlined this the best I can so follow along with
me...
As I said above, this example uses GoDaddy. If
you don't have your domain registered with GoDaddy, you can view steps for editing your
DNS info here
Before you update your Blogger settings with
your new custom domain, you must wait for your DNS settings to activate. You know if it has been activated when you see " Google error " displayed whenever you visit your new custom domain. If you attempt to change the Blogger publishing settings before the DNS changes activate, your blog will not be accessible but Blogger will let you know with a warning message.
How To Get Started
==> Login to your Blogger dashboard
==> Go to Settings and click on the Basic tab.
Find the area for " Publishing " as seen in the
picture below:
==> Click the "Add a custom domain" link and
you should see something similar to the picture below:
==> Click on the "Switch to advanced settings"
==> Enter in the URL for your custom domain in the text box provided, and click Save.
That's all Your blogspot.com address will soon redirect to your new custom domain -- be patient, as it might take up to 24 hours for the redirect to start working.
When the time comes to view that hot new
YouTube video everyone's talking about, which would you rather do: gather around a laptop, tablet, or, horrors, smartphone, or kick back and enjoy it on your big-screen TV?
Although YouTube was built for Web browsers, it can easily find a home in your living room. All you need is the right gear. If you don't have a so-called smart TV that already has a YouTube channel, here's an overview of the various ways to watch all your favorite cat videos from the comfort of your couch.
Apple TV
Apple's set-top box has a built-in YouTube
channel, and if you pair it with the Apple TV
Remote app, you can enter search words and
phrases much more easily using your iDevice's onscreen keyboard.
Gold subscriber
PlayStation 3 owners can stream all you the
YouTube they want free of charge, bucuriously there's no YouTube channel on the PS4 yet, anyway. However, there's an easy workaround: open the PS4's Web browser and head to www.youtube.com/tv.
On the Wii and Wii U, you simply fire up the
YouTube app. No subscription or extra fees
required.
Google Chromecast
Given that Google owns YouTube, it should
come as no surprise that the $35 Chromecast
video dongle allows for YouTube streaming.
Just keep in mind you'll need a compatible
smartphone or tablet to make it happen.
Roku box
It's a mystery for the ages: Roku's media-streaming boxes, which offer pretty much
every streaming service known to man, don't
support YouTube.
Fortunately, there are a couple easy ways
around this vexing limitation. The easiest is to use the newly reborn MyVideoBuzz (formerly VideoBuzz, which was yanked as a Roku channel earlier this year).
First, venture into your Roku's settings and
find its IP address. Next, using either Chrome
or Firefox, download and run the MyVideoBuzz installer. You may encounter an error message, but continue on until you see the pop-up box with instructions. These include entering your box's IP address and then activating its developer mode. The whole process is a little convoluted, but it works.
You can also use PlayOn, a service that streams a wealth of TV content, including
YouTube. To its Roku channel. Click here, log
in to your Roku account, and add the private
channel code MYPLAYON.
Laptop/Tablet
If you're not interested in buying extra gear,
consider using what you already have. Any
laptop with an HDMI output can easily be
connected to an HDTV (via an inexpensive
cable) for a "traditional" YouTube viewing
experience via Web browser.
Alas, that keeps you tethered to your TV,
which isn't exactly convenient for video-
surfing. Some Ultrabooks incorporate Intel's
WiDi technology for wireless screen mirroring
to your TV, but in most cases you'll need
something connected to the TV that acts as
the receiver. (A handful of TVs already have
the technology baked in.)
Finally, don't forget your tablet: Many
Android models (including some previous-
generation Kindle Fires) have Micro-HDMI
outputs that allow for connectivity to a TV's
HDMI input. That keeps you tethered like
with a laptop, but at least you don't have to
futz with a touch pad or mouse just to
navigate YouTube.
Fleksy just came out of private beta, and now
it's available on the Google Play store for
everyone to try it out. It has its own classic-
style keyboard layout, a compact mode, and
better yet -- invisible mode. You're probably
wondering why you might want to use a
keyboard you can't actually see.
Well, three reasons come to mind:
• Extra screen real estate -- Whether you're
using a device with a small screen, or
something the size of a Galaxy Note, you'll
see more of your apps when using this
keyboard.
• Impressive auto-correction -- This keyboard
offers some pretty solid auto-correction, as it
should, since you can't really see the letters
you're tapping. Additionally, the gestures for
choosing or rejecting suggestions are top-
notch.
• Novelty -- Remember how cool Swype's
tracing method was when you first saw it?
Typing on a screen that shows no keyboard
is a pretty neat trick to share with your
friends and family.
Ready to give it a try? Let's get started:
Download and install Flesky on your Android 4.0+ device. The app is free for 30 days ($3.99
after), so if you decide it isn't for you, there's not much to lose.
After installing, you'll need to enable the
keyboard and set it as the default choice.
You can do this through the Settings >
Language & input menu, or just open the
app and it will guide you through the process.
When your keyboard is configured, the
tutorial will start. You'll learn the gestures
used for auto-correction, spacing, punctuation, and other tips
After you finish learning how it works, you
can make some other adjustments in the
app menu, such as color theme, typing sounds (toggle and volume adjustment), and haptic feedback. Then, just head into any app and start using the new keyboard. To switch layouts, swipe down with two fingers to use the small version, and then again to use the invisible mode. When you need to type a password, it's very likely you'll need to switch back to a visible layout.
The Dock in OS X serves as a launcher for
commonly-accessed programs, as well as
folders and documents that you drag there,
and as an indicator of running programs. In
addition, it holds the trash and the smiling
Finder icon since this program as the default
file browser is not usually quit.
Since the Dock is regularly accessed, it is
always present in some form on the edge of
the screen; however, while Apple by default
places it at the bottom of your display, there
are several options available to you for its
position.
The first options are those Apple gives you
by default, which are available in the Dock's
system preferences pane, and are to position
at the left, right, or bottom of your display.
However, while these are present in System
Preferences, there are two alternative ways of
accessing these settings.
The first alternative is to right-click the
separator bar on the Dock (between the
applications and the documents and folders
areas), and choose the position from the
contextual menu that appears. The second is
to simply shift-drag the Dock to the desired
location on screen. To do this, simply hold
the Shift key, and then click and drag the
Dock by its separator bar to the right, left, or
bottom of the display.
Beyond the adjustments that Apple allows
through its settings interfaces, the Dock does
support other features which may help you
further customize the Dock's position, and
place it not only at the bottom or to either side of your display, but also to the respective corners of any side.
These options can be set by using the "defaults" Terminal command, in the following manner:
defaults write com.apple.Dock
orientation -string POSITION
In this command, replacing POSITION with
either "left,""right," or "bottom" will place it
on the respective edge of the display. This
option is fairly redundant with the built-in
options for setting the Dock's position, so it
may not be all too useful; however, a second
defaults command will allow you to pin the
Dock to the various corners of the display, by
specifying it be pinned to the start, middle,
or end of the display edge. To set this, you
will need to run the "defaults" command in
the following manner:
defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning -
string POSITION
In this command, replace POSITION with
"start" to nest the Dock to the left of the
bottom edge, or to the top of either side of
the display; replace it with "end" to reverse
this and place to the right of the bottom
edge, or to the bottom corner of either side.
To undo these modifications, simply use
"middle" as the pinning location.
When finished with running either of these
commands, you will need to re-launch the
Dock in order for them to take effect, which
can be done by restarting your system, logging out and back into your account, using Activity Monitor to force-quit the Dock process for your account, or by running the following command in the Terminal:
killall Dock
If you lock your iPhone or switch apps while
playing a video, both the audio and video
cut out immediately. It's a huge annoyance
if you're one of the many people who uses
YouTube for music, listening to long interviews, or even guided workouts.
According to some reports, Google might be
adding the option to multitask while streaming audio. Other reports suggest YouTube is launching a dedicated "Music Pass" subscription service.
Until then, there's an easy hack that'll let
you listen to just the audio of a video while
your phone is locked, thanks to Reddit user Erjobi.
•• The workaround:
Play a video, wait for the ad to finish, then tap the share button (not the plus sign). Tap "Message," lock your phone, and the audio will continue playing.
Another option is to use Jasmine, a free YouTube app for iOS . In Jasmine, play a
video, then, lock your phone and click the
home button. You should see audio controls
at the top of the lock screen. Tap play, and
the audio will stream.
If the reports are true, audio-only
multitasking could come to the YouTube app
soon. Until then, these workarounds should
hold you over.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 will feature a metal
unibody design when it debuts in 2014,
according to Japanese Web site EMSOne.
Rumors have been swirling for months
regarding the form factor of the upcoming
Samsung Galaxy S5. The most recent dish
suggests that the device might be offered in
two versions: the traditional plastic design,
and a metal body.
According to newly discovered details,
Samsung may go strictly premium for the
next-generation Galaxy S. Reportedly, Samsung has tapped Taiwanese parts
supplier Catcher with the task of creating
between 10 million and 30 million unibody
metal cases. China's BYD and Taiwan's Ju
Teng are also said to be in the mix, and
should pick up the slack for additional
devices.
Early rumors about the Samsung Galaxy S5
indicate we could be in for quite the
interstellar smartphone in 2014.
Specifications scattered over the last few
months suggest we might look for Samsung's
new 64-bit eight-core Exynos processor, a 16-
megapixel camera , 3GB RAM, and a
4,000mAh battery. Presumably running
Android 4.4 KitKat, the Galaxy S5 will likely
feature Samsung's latest custom UI.
Apple's Safari browser for OS X offers a well-integrated and easy option for viewing Web content on a Mac. However, there are some default settings in Safari that, with a few tweaks, can offer some enhancements to your browsing experience.
1. Set homepage options
The first options are those you will see
whenever you create a new Safari window
or tab, and these are located in the
General section of the Safari preferences.
In here, you can choose to open new
windows and tabs with an empty page,
Safari's Top Sites view, the same page
that was loaded on the last active tab or
window, or a custom home page you
specify in the Homepage field. In
addition, you can choose to load an
organized folder of tabs when you open a
new window, which can be set up in
Safari's bookmarks organization interface.
If you use the Top Sites feature, you can
also set the number of previews to show
in the same preferences pane. By default
it shows 12, but you can select either six
or 24, depending on your needs.
2. Block pop-up windows
Older versions of Safari had an option to
block pop-up windows in the program
menu. Apple has removed this option
from the menu, but the feature is still
available. Now you need to enable it by
checking the appropriate box in the
Security pane of Safari's preferences.
With it enabled, Web sites will be
prevented from launching new browser
windows, which on some spam sites can
result in many windows opening at once
and cluttering your display.
3. Clear site-specific data
Web sites you visit often store site-
specific settings in cookies and caches. If
this data is corrupted, then sites may not
load properly, or show odd behavior like
not accepting log-in credentials. Often
when Web sites have such problems you
can try clearing cookies and other site-
specific data, but using the Reset Safari
option will clear data from all of your
Web sites, which may not be preferable.
Instead, go to the Privacy section of
Safari's preferences and click "Details,"
under the option to remove all Web site
data. In the panel that appears, you can
search for a site you've visited to remove
data for that site only.
4. Manage site-specific plug-in options
Similar to the management of site-specific
data, the plug-ins that Web sites use to
display content can be managed on a
per-site basis. While Safari has an option
in its Security preferences to allow or
block plug-ins, next to this option is a
"Manage Website Settings" button that
will allow you to specify not only how
Safari handles each plug-in globally, but
also how Safari will do so for specific Web
sites.
To do this, after clicking the button, you
can select a plug-in and choose the
restriction level to use for other Web
sites. This will bring up the global
settings for the plug-in, as well as
individual options for sites listed.
5. Enable the Develop menu
When troubleshooting Web sites in Safari,
it may help to clear your browser's cache,
or disable caches altogether. This way,
content is always loaded directly from
remote servers instead of from a local
temporary store. This option is not
available in Safari by default, but is
supported if you enable the Develop
menu. This menu can be activated by
checking the corresponding box at the
bottom of the Advanced section of
Safari's preferences. In this menu, you
will not only have options for managing
Safari's cache, but also ones to enable
WebGL, change user agent identifiers,
and use developer tools such as
JavaScript debugging panels, and HTML
source code viewers and editors.
6. Tab through all items on a page
The last option is to be able to tab
through all items on a page with which
you can interact. By default, the Tab key
will shift focus through various text fields
and buttons, but if you hold the Option
key while pressing Tab, Safari will
highlight links and other objects, and
pressing Enter will activate that link.
While this is the default setup, you can
reverse this behavior in the Advanced
section of Safari's preferences by
enabling "Press Tab to highlight each
item on a webpage."
When you first attach a new external hard drive to your Mac, it should mount and be
ready to use; however, before relying on it,
consider first taking a couple of precautionary steps to ensure that the drive continues to work as expected.
One of the first things to take into account is
that the drive is likely preformatted to FAT32
instead of a more OS-specific format. Since
FAT32 is readable and writable on both
Windows and OS X systems, this is quickest
way for a drive to work on each platform;
however, it does have some limitations,
including the lack of journaling support that
would help prevent data corruption, and lack
of support for filesystem permissions. In
addition, FAT32 drives usually come with the
Master Boot Record partition scheme, which
does not work with Apple's CoreStorage
routines, and therefore will not allow OS-
supported encryption of the drive (among
other customizations).
Sometimes drives will come with special
drive management software on them that will
give you options for partitioning the drive
and backing up your files to it. While these
may be convenient, they are not the most
recommended approach to managing the
drive. For one, unless the drive uses a
special multidisk RAID setup, OS X already
comes with all the necessary tools for
managing the drive. Additional tools from
third-party manufacturers may lead to
compatibility problems, as was recently seen
when incompatible drive management
software resulted in data loss for a number
of people who had upgraded to OS X
Mavericks.
Because of this, if the drive you have
purchased is a special RAID array, then you
may have to use the manufacturer's setup;
however, if it is a single-drive device, then
before using it be sure to format it using
Disk Utility in OS X. If the drive is going to
be used only with your Mac and with other
Macs, then consider using Apple's Mac OS X
Extended (Journaled) format, and only use
FAT32 if you intend to use the drive with a
Windows system.
To format the drive, attach it to your system
and open Disk Utility, and then perform the
following steps:
1. Select the drive device in the list of
devices, which is the item above any
storage volumes on the drive, and which
may show the manufacturer name, media
size, and so on.
2. Choose the "Partition" tab that appears.
3. Select "1 Partition" from the drop-down
menu (or more, if you have specific need
for more than one volume).
When you select a new partition layout from the drop-down menu, each new partition will be formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) by default, but be sure to double-check this by selecting each in the partition diagram and then choosing the format for it.
4. Click the Options button and ensure "GUID" is selected as the partition scheme.
5. Click Apply to save the changes.
When this is done, the disk should unmount
and then remount with the new formatting
settings, and now be ready for use. Generally
a format of the drive in this manner is all
that is needed; however, some people may
wish to test drives further to make sure the
media does not contain any bad blocks or
other errors beyond the scope of the drive's
formatting.
For most in-depth testing of drives, a third-
party tool like Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro
can be used, but Disk Utility does support
one option, which is to use the Secure Erase
option to write zeros to the disk surface. To
do this, select the volume, then click Secure
Erase in the Erase tab, and drag the Secure
Erase slider to the second position before
clicking OK. This will cause each available data block to be accessed and written to, and if one is bad then the disk will allocate a spare block in its place and ensure that the logically writable storage space is available for use. Secure Erase and other similar options that test each storage block of a device may take a number of hours to complete, but it reduces the number of potential problems with the drive.
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