Battey life when using as an external drive

I am using my 80gb ipod as external hard drive. I am concerned that I will kill off my battery life by having it plugged into the computer all day long via USB. I am assuming that the ipod is charging while it is plugged in. I know it stops charging when it fully charged but is that the case when it is plugged in and transferring data.
Will an ipod run without a battery? Is there a way to disable the charging function while it's plugged into the computer?
I know this is kind of a weird question but here is my exact scenario. I use my ipod as a mobile media player when my computer is off. When my computer is on I use it as an external hard drive that hold my itunes library.So for my itunes to run I need to have my ipod plugged in.
I guess my question is if there is a way to use my battery when I use the ipod to listen to music and then disable it to use it as an external? I want the best of both worlds. If anyone can answer or have any input that would be greatly appreciated.
thanks

Your battery will be fine but using it in the manner you are is taking a huge risk.
If something happens to your iPod and it is necessary to Restore it you are going to lose all of your music, videos, etc. Same thing if is is stolen, dropped, gets water on it, etc.
External harddrives are cheap now...even cheaper than your iPod and you won't have a battery to worry about. Buy one of those, back up your tunes, and use your iPod as a player.

Similar Messages

Why is my iTunes so slow when used on an external drive

I have an late 2006 iMac Intel 2.0GHz w/ 512mb ram, Model MA200LL. It has a 250GB HD. 13.4GB of used space on the internal HD. The problem has occurred when it had Tiger and has persisted through Leopard 10.5.2.
I have 125GB of music on a Seagate Free Agent 250GB external hard drive. When I try to delete a song it takes 87 seconds to delete. When I scroll through the 22,222 songs I get a spinning wheel for 10 - 15 seconds. Switching songs works very good.
I used the same external drive on my Mac Pro (2.66GHz - 1GB Ram) and when I try the same actions it works instantly.
The same issues arises when I used a 500GB WD World Book external hard drive.
I have run Onyx which reported no problems with the internal hard drive.
Should I expect to delete files quicker on the iMac in iTunes? If there is a problem, what can I do so that I get iTunes to perform better using an external drive?
Thank you.

One thing that you can do in general to help overall performance is upgrade your RAM. The late 2006 iMacs should be able to take up to 3GB of RAM(some people install 4GB anyway) but even going up to 2GB should help your system a lot. Besides RAM is cheap these days: http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=288&type=Memory&TI=3454&shoup grds=Show+Upgrades
The Free Agent drives are USB only so for one thing USB will be slower than your internal drive by at least half, however it still shouldn't take 10-15 seconds to access unless something else is going on. What version of iTunes do you have? Did you try Repairing the Disk Permissions and Verifying your internal drive? Try resetting the SMC and see if that helps: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303446
Should I expect to delete files quicker on the iMac in iTunes? If there is a
problem, what can I do so that I get iTunes to perform better using an external
drive?
Yes. The internal drive inside your iMac has read/write speeds somewhere between 55-65MB/sec while your USB will max out at about 30MB/sec. This may not fix your problem but just as recommendation, next time purchase an external drive that has a Firewire connection. Firewire 400 maxes out at about 40MB/sec but overall performance is usually better than USB 2.0.
George

HT201250 Can I restore photo files from Time Machine without the use of an external drive? I'm trying to restore lost photo files and I see them listed in Time Machine (without use of an external drive), but when I try to restore I get a error code 36.

Can I restore photo files from Time Machine without the use of an external drive? While I was transferring photos back and forth from a thumb drive something went haywire and my IPhoto was wiped clean! When I click on Time Machine I see all the dated pages (without an external storage drive connected), go back to a date where all my photo files are there, click "restore", and I get the message: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in file cant be read or written (error code - 36)"

Thanks so much Terence. I tried some of the fixes from that page, but then discovered the suggestion to compress the Time Machine Back up of the original library and transfer it as a zip back to my computer as detailed here:
http://pondini.org/TM/E9.html
That worked like a charm. I really appreciate it.

Can't connect to LAN when booting MBP from external drive?

In an effort to always work in my computer environment, I backup my Mac Pro main drive to an external firewire drive, plug in to my new Macbook Pro 2.9 and option start off this drive. Result is I'm working off the last backup of my main Mac Pro drive so all my apps, stored mail, etc, is alive and well. I merely track any changes and new files and copy them over or use DropBox to get them on to my Main Mac Pro, my main computer.
Problem is, when booting off my external drive running Lion 10.7.5, my MBP's network won't turn on or recognize my home LAN. Then if I restart off just the MBP drive, it does connet to my LAN automatically.
Could the problem be that since my MBP was set up for Mount Lion, that it won't fully work with a drive with a Lion OS on it? I thought perhaps I had to turn on Airport when on my external Lion drive, since I don't have that turned on on my Mac Pro which uses ethernet. Can't figure this one out. The MBP must have airport as I'm on it now but booted off the internal ML OSX drive.
Thx,
Steven

No not at all. You should have access to your LAN from any version of OS X that is set up correctly. It's still using the same hardware and should be loading the same drivers for that hardware and YES you may have to actually turn on the Airport card.

Using only an External Drive

I bought an iomega external drive to hold my 900CD library on (160GB) so I would not use space on the internal drive. The problem is I keep ripping CD's and they keep going to the internal drive. Can anyone tell me how to use only the external drive for itunes and my ipod(30GB)?

See this link from MacMuse, follow his instructions EXACTLY & you should be good to go. Just think, once you get the EHD up & running, no more worries about losing your music due to a computer crash. The other thing I would recommend is a secondary backup such as burning data CD's or DVD's which is what I do. I only burn about once or twice a month now, but this is just extra insurance in case the EHD takes a hike for some reason.
MacMuse, "Computer Crashed" #4, 11:49pm Feb 7, 2005
EDIT:
I forgot, the one thing that was suggested to me when I put my EHD in is to regularly send backups of the .itl & .xml files which are the database files for your library, playlists, etc. to your EHD. I send copies of these 2 files to the EHD any time I add music, change playlists, etc. DO NOT MOVE the original files off your main HD, that is there "home." If you should happen to have bad luck & have a crash with these 2 files backed up, along with the iTunes music folder, you should be able to get iTunes up & running in a "jiffy".

I have an iPod G2 with a firewire 400 lead. how can I attach it to my new 13 inch Mac book Pro, is there a 400 to 800 firewire converter. USB lead wont work with the Macbook Pro. iPod used as an external drive to archive memory cards on the go.

My G2 iPod that I use as an external drive to archive memory cards on the go cannot link with my new 13" Macbook Pro cause it uses a firewire 400 lead. It will not work with a USB lead. Is there a firewire 800 ipod lead or converter available? Can any one shed some light on this please?

As far as I know, if a harddrive works with a Macpro, it should work with the Macbook: if your Macbook is low on power, plug in the AC adapter
If your Macbook has a firewire port, then it should be fine. BUt i would do somemore research first.

When I connect an external drive I'd like to run a program which is on it. How could I do that?

When I connect an external drive I'd like to run a program which is on it. How could I do that?
I tried automator, but without success.
Thanks

Interesting question. Others have provided the direct answer (no, massive security hole), and a little time with a search engine finds various existing discussions of autorun-related topics (eg: here and here and here), and a link to the Do Something When tool, and there is the DeviceListener example in the Xcode kit and to adding a folder action where the volumes are mounted. See the topics for details. Haven't tried this stuff, though.

The preview option in FCK doesn't work when using trought an external app!

Hello everyone!
I have an issue with the FCK-editor when using in an external application.
We are executing the “WCM_EDIT_DATA_FILE” service to launch the FCK contributor application in a portal (Webcenter) so we can edit datafiles. The preview option (preview butto) does not apply a region template and the content is shown in the same order as defined in the region definition. Viewing the same datafile trough Site Studio I can see that the preview option applies a region template.
I've compared the links but I am not getting anywhere.....
The links for the preview are:
Via the portal:
http://MyServer/vcc/idcplg?IdcService=SS_QD_GET_RENDITION&coreContentOnly=1&dDocName=DF_NEWS_BERLIN_8&dID=765&wcm.contributor.mode=false&IgnoreContributorOnly=true&previewId=1276003853183&WCMPopupId=POPUP09875462424653607178
Via Site Studio:
http://Myserver/VCCPOC/index.htm?wcm.contributor.mode=false&IgnoreContributorOnly=true&previewId=1275983448108&WCMPopupId=POPUP07808631203986127290
I can see that the portal link has the same parameters as the Site Studio link and some more. I even tried adding a region template in the url by adding my template as a parameter like this "&templateDocName=RT_BOUND_DETAIL_VIEW" just to force it but without any luck. The same goes for the "view differences"-button in the FCK editor.
Has anyone had this problem?
Thanks

Hi Stijn,
Here is the link to the SS-services:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/doc.1111/e10615/c11_ss_services.htm#insertedID0
And here is the link to the CS-services:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10316_01/cs/cs_doc_10/documentation/developer/services_reference_10gr3en.pdf
The name of the service that creates new data file is CHECKIN_NEW_FORM.
Saving the file from the FCKEditor makes the browser window "greyed out" so for the time being we are hitting the "go back"-button in the browser to return to the portal... as we open the editor in the same window as the portal. However, there must be another solution as this is fare away from user friendly!
Let me try to answer some of your questions:
- Are you also using the Site Studio publishing functionality (we will not)
No, we are not either.
- where will your site design be done (we'll try to do as much as we can in WebCenter to keep it all in one place; we might even just output XML with our templates from SS, and transform it in WebCenter using different "templates")
We are also planning to have it all in WebCenter. We are using SS for creating region templates and subtempalates used in the portal (Webcenter/ADF) for showing the same data files in different ways. That means that we also have elements, region definitions, placeholders and so on in the SS.
- what are you doing with inline images in the FCKEditor (we want contributors to be able to upload there images easily from the Editor, without the need to browse to UCM)
Well, for the time being the contributor must browse the some images from the CS because the images must have a certain height and width... so that is our way of controlling that the user is choosing from the approved images. When it comes to images in the text the contributors can add as many images as they want that are not from the CS. They can just copy/paste them in the editor from whatever location they want.
- is it correct that the metadata tab cannot be used in combination with profiles defined in UCM (see other thread WebCenter Content
I've heard that before so my guess is that it's true. My question then is how do I do to hide the metadata tab if I do not use it?
- will you be using the ctrl-shift-F5 functionality to edit content, or just create a link to the WCM_EDIT_... service in a popup window?
We create a link to the WCM_EDIT_... service that opens in the same window as the portal.... but as I mentioned earlier that is not the most user friendly solution so we probably must change that....
Now back to my problems:
I know why the preview trough the portal and the site studio differs.
The services that are used when previewing content trought the SS are:
SS_SET_PREVIEW_ELEMENT_DATA
SS_GET_PAGE
LOAD_DOC_ENVIRONMENT
The services that are used when previewing content trought the portal are:
SS_SET_PREVIEW_ELEMENT_DATA
SS_QD_GET_RENDITION
LOAD_DOC_ENVIRONMENT
The SS_GET_PAGE actually shows a page in SS and as soon as there is a region template attached to the page you are able to see the content the way you want. That is not the case then calling the SS_QD_GET_RENDITION service. So my question is if there is a workaround where I can force a region template to be used con conjunction with the SS_QD_GET_RENDITION service?
Anyone? All ideas are really appreciated!

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini (256gbSSD + 2tbHDD)?

Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup what I have on my Mac Mini?
My Mac Mini has one 256 SSD and one 2tb HDD. I want to use Time Machine to do a backup of everything.
Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
Might I suggest as an alternative that you not use Time Machine but a third-party backup utility that simply overwrites older files with new ones such that the backup drive can be the same capacity as the drive backed up.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

I recently purchased a new iMac with an external drive. I want to transfer my files from my old iMac to the external drive, but I'm afraid that doing that will compromise the use of the external drive on my new iMac. Comments? Help?

I recently purchased a new iMac with an 1 Terrabyte external drive. I want to transfer my files from my old iMac to the external drive, but I'm afraid that doing that will compromise the use of the external drive on my new iMac. I have not downloaded the external drive's software onto my old Mac because of this concern. May I simply "drag and drop" the contents I want transferred to the external drive, then set up my new Mac with the drive and download there? or is there a better procedure? Comments? Help?

If your intention is to copy a just documents and data (word processing files and music for example) then yes, you can use drag and drop. If you want to transfer data and applications and permissions, it would actually be easiest to connect the drive to your old computer and turn on TimeMachine. Once TM is finished, connect the drive to your new computer and restart it holding the option key to get into Recovery mode. Then you can use the restore from TM option to transfer your data and programs to the new computer.

I'm a new MAC user and I'm trying to transfer my iTunes music files to my Mac, however when I attach the external drive that contains the music files, they aren't visible on the MAC (but they are visible on my old PC). How do I get my music loaded?

I'm a new MAC user and I'm trying to transfer my iTunes music files to my Mac, however when I attach the external drive that contains the music files, the music files aren't visible on the MAC (but they are visible on my old PC). How do I get my music transferred? I have already exported the purchased music from the iTunes library, but I have thousands of songs from my private CD collection that I had previously loaded through iTunes.

Paragon Software has the most reliable NTFS driver for Mac
tips on importing and organizing, transferring from Windows etc
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes
http://www.ilounge.com

RAID1 Partitions disappeared when one of the mirrored HDD is used as an external drive for data rescue.

Hi, I have mirrored build of two identical 1TB HDD in my Xserve Late 2006 (RAID 1) in Bay 2 and Bay3. When I took one HDD out and connected it as an external drive to my MacBook Pro, only the first partition appeared. That is, for instance, I have RAID partition A1, A2, A3 in Xserve but only A1 appears when the drive is connected to MacBook Pro as an external drive. Is there any way to let partition A2, A3 appear too? Thanks.

Oh, I didn't realise you were using the hardware RAID card for this. In that case, yes, that makes sense, you won't see the other partitions because they're handled by the RAID card. I admit I'd never tried it with a RAID 1 mirror where you might expect to - I've only used RAID 5 on the hardware cards where there's no expectation, of course, to pull a drive to relocate the data.
So you may ask why not just use a single partition for my RAID1 design. The reason is that I prefer to partition HDD because it is good for HDD lifespan. I don't like to design my parition schema to be just a single big parition with 1T Hard Drive since all data are going to be stored scattered and hence, taking longer for spindle reading.
I don't agree with most of this statement. I've not seen anything that indicates partitioning improves lifespan - for any given data, the disk spins the exact same number of times, and the heads move the same number of times, regardless of the partitioning - partitioning is only a logical, not a physical, construct.
As for the data being scattered and spindle latency, that's nowhere near the problem it used to be in the past thanks to faster spindles and larger caches. In addition, Mac OS X uses a dynamic reallocation/fragmentation system that automatically (re)allocates files as they're used, meaning you don't have the level of fragmentation that you used to have.
The primary benefit of partitioning is to restrict file system sizes so that you don't get a runaway proceess filling up the entire disk. Even that is less of a problem - when an 8GB drive was large it didn't take much to fill it, but you'd have to have a pretty rampant process to fill up a 1TB drive before alarms started ringing.

When I open iTunes on my new computer using the .itl file, and using the same external drive holding the songs, all of the songs I added to iTunes up to a certain date have broken links, while none of the songs have broken links on the old computer.

I want to open the iTunes library on my new laptop with all the playlists and stuff I built on the old computer. I have all my music on an external drive. I have copied the .itl file from the old computer and opened it on the laptop, and it has all the playlists, but all of the songs that were added to iTunes up to a certain date have broken links. What am I doing wrong?

Moving library files around while leaving the data in the same place usually presents no problems. Moving the data around independently from the library usually breaks things. With Windows machines all you should need to do is make sure that the same drive letter is being used on the new system as with the old. If that is not possible you need to get your library into a portable layout before moving it between systems.
Typical layout of iTunes folders:
When the media folder is inside the main iTunes folder as shown above then the library is portable. Typically with a split library the iTunes Music or iTunes Media folder (everything inside the red outline) is moved to a different drive by choosing a new locaton for it and then consolidating.
To make the library portable again you need to copy the library files and album artwork folder into the parent folder of the media folder so that the nested relationship is recreated. (BTW If your media isn't already inside your designated media folder then you will also need to consolidate the files that are outside of it, before you copy the library files.) You can then use the hold-down-shift-when-starting-iTunes method to open the library file in that parent folder. Once the library has been opened, tested and closed you are most of the way there.
The iTunes window inherits its title from the folder holding the library files so, unless you created a folder called iTunes to hold the media folder, iTunes may now have an unexpected title when you run it. The parent folder can be renamed as iTunes, and the library opened again. Alternatively, if the parent folder is at the root of the drive, or has other data which you wish to leave in place, you can create a new top level folder called iTunes and move the library files, album artwork and media folders into it before opening and testing the library again.
If the library doesn't work after any step simply reverse it by undoing a move or rename or opening the previous set iTunes Library.itl file.
If all has gone well then the library is now portable. Once you've migrated the data to a new system you can copy the library files back to their usual internal location if you find that having them on the external drive affects performance...
tt2

Using a seagate external drive with multiple macs

i got a 1TB seagate external hard drive for backup and transfer purposes... it had a little program to help set it up and i set it up for use with mac and pc ( only onther option was stricty this computer.) it works on my computer and a pc but when i tried transfering files from another older mac i have it showed that i could only read on that computer...
how can i get it to work with multiple macs...?

I have the oldest macbook (1.83. 2 gigs ram, 60 gig internal hard drive)
I have all my logic content on my external maxtor firewire 400 drive (usb 2.0 is actually faster than firewire 400) and everything is fine. the good thing is if your external drive has 7200rpm, but the ones with 5600rpm should do as well.
Once you drag your apple loops to logic from your external drive, logic will remember for the next visit. And when you are opening a project which is on the external drive , just find it with logic finder and all should be fine.

I am having trouble keeping the quality of my video when exporting to my external drive. I change the kind to "original" but when I view the video from the external drive once exported, the sound and picture are distorted.

I am having trouble keeping the quality of my video when exporting to my external hard drive. I have tried to export from iphoto with changing kind to "original" but when I open the video from the external drive the quality is effected. I have also tried copying the video to my desktop and then dragging and dropping onto the drive...same problem. Any suggestions? I would like to save everything to my external drive so that I can delete all of iphoto library and then reimport to correct a few things.

The file sizes are identical. In the finder I did a search for all .mov files. Then when they came up, I went through them and named each one so that they would be easier to find. I am a new mac user and am used to windows. I realized later that I should not have done this....with a mac files should be named within iphoto app...not finder....When I went to open the videos in iphoto, it wouldn't allow me. I had to go into finder, copy to desktop and reimport into iphoto. Then the videos worked again. However, I had the problem with the poor video quality when copied to external drive before that. Actually the first problem I had was when I copied to ext drive...videos were copying as an image...so I learned that you have to change "kind" to original before exporting....then that problem was solved...now they are videos, not images but not of a great quality. Skips, sound and images are not in sync...etc...

Battey life when using as an external drive

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