External Hard Drive + 2 Pc's ( home & office)

It would really be great to be able to change the location where the library files are saved (for example in ITunes music directory). The lack of this option is very inconvinient for people who are using mobile hard drives and 2 or more pc's (I have a notebook and my office PC and I would like to be able to use my library on both of them). This is also very inconvinient because I can only synchronize my IPod with only one PC/Library (for example only at home or only at work).
Thanks in advance for your help.
Emir

If I read right, Emir is talking about the actual song files, not the actual music library file. I would let each instantiation of iTunes maintain its own library file where it wants, but that still allows you to put music files (the real space eater) whereever you want. For example, your laptop could have a small "best of" collection, with everything else on a portable drive. You could have iTunes on the laptop find everything, its just that you wouldn't be able to play the portable drive songs unless it was connected.

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I have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

i have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

Troubleshooting Home Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972

HT1364 I used these instructions to move my i-tunes library to the external hard drive that two different home pc's access. My playlists do not show on both Is it possible to have one i-pod synch amid two different computers that use the same library?

I have a sole i-pod and two pc's, used the instructions for "iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder" in the hope that I could synch my one i-pod between two different computers that are sharing the same library. Is it possible to have two seperate computers that only share an external hard drive (one wireless, one not) ? When I am looking at a shared library should it appear the same on both machines (ie: playlists/ purchased list etc)?

If it is moved correctly, playlists will display on both computers and it should be possible.
Close iTunes.
Hold <SHIFT> and launch iTunes.
When prompted to create a new or open an existing iTunes library point iTunes to the iTunesLibrary.itl file on the external drive.
The entire library should now show up with all playlists and playcounts.
Do this on both computers.
Keep in mind that only one computer can access iTunes at a time, otherwise errors will occur when each computer attempts to write to or update the iTunesLibrary.itl file.
Syncing may work seemlessly with both computers, but honestly syncing is designed to work with one and only one computer.

Formatting External Hard Drive for Backup

Please advise: how should I set up an external hard drive (WD 500GB MyBook Home Edition) with a view to using it to backup my MacBook with Time Machine and have partitions to be accessed by Windows: 1) through BootCamp, running Windows Vista (Business) on the MacBook and 2) an external PC running Windows XP? I intend to set up partitions for: 1) Time Machine (GUID); 2) a 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows Vista (on the MacBook); 3) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows XP (to back up the old desktop); 4) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition to back up photos and video clips; 5) yet another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition (The last one, at last!) to back up music and leave some spare room. That should leave me about 350GB for incremental Time Machine backups. (The hard drive on this MacBook is 150GB, 88GB of which is currently dedicated to OSX, with the other 60GB used by Windows.)
I don't use virtual machines or any other software to access operating systems - just reboot through BootCamp. Eventually, I intend to phase out Windows as all my old stuff - more than twenty years' worth of it - gets made redundant by the MacBook. I've had the MacBook for nearly a year now, so feel confident that it will replace the PC's. As you may imagine, however, making twenty-odd years' worth of stuff redundant is not an overnight process. I don't think I have any files of more than 4GB, nor do I expect to acquire any on the PC's, so can't foresee problems with FAT-32's limitations. I understand external PC's can have trouble seeing FAT-32 partitons on hard drives sharing partitions formatted in GUID.
What's the best way to go about doing this? Comments/suggestions/tips, please. Is the plan outlined above a stupid idea? Be honest, please!

Your computer has USB 1.1 ports; using an external USB hard drive for any purpose other than as a bootable Mac OS X backup will work, but you should choose a FireWire drive if possible, as transmission speeds are much faster. A drive does not need to be bootable if you're only going to back up documents, such as your photos, to it; it only needs to be bootable if you intend to use it to help troubleshoot future issues with the internal drive.
You should use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to reformat the drive in the Mac OS Extended format prior to backing up items to it, and this is required for a bootable backup.
(21126)

A different laptop to external hard drive question

hey folks - I am hoping someone can help me (or clarify things for me)
My question is about shootig remotely, downloading files onto lightroom in the field, then transferring the whole lot to my external hard drive when I get home (so there is NOTHING left on my laptop except the lightroom application and an empty catalog when I am done)
I see people asking a similar question all the time on blogs and FAQs, but the answers do not actually answer my problem/question. The answers I see all the time are about exporting and importing catalogs... maybe this is the solution, but I can't see how it answers my parameters above.
Here is the equipment I am using:
- MacBook Pro
- Lightroom 2.1
- External Western Digital hard drive/firewire
- Nikon DSLRs
- Card reader
Here is the situation:
I have the lightroom application loaded onto my laptop. I have a massive repository of my "negatives" on my external drive. I have one big "catalog" on the external drive in the same folders with my "negatives". (so, to view those photos, I open that external drive catalog and view/edit the massive group of photos).
However, when I am on the road, I shoot and download the nagatives onto my laptop hard drive and add the files to a catalog that I have on my laptop -- so, based on my understanding of how lightroom works, these new imports (on the road) have 1) the actual negatives, 2) the metadata/lightroom files thumbnails and details of my edits, and 3) these are included in the "catalog" on my laptop hard drive. So, then, while still on the road, I edit the new photos, crop, color correct etc.
Then, when I get home, I would like to completely transfer/migrate EVERYTHING I just wrote above (except the actual lightroom application and the "catalog" that sits on my laptop) into the existing catalog and negative folders on my external drive... I would like it all to blend into my main system run off my external drive as if I had originally imported the files into my main catalog on my external drive... and I would like my laptop to be like it never had anything to do with the import/edits on the road (no files whatsoever in terms of originals, lightroom files, etc.)
All of the instructions/answers I can find on line tell me how to "export" my catalog to my external hard drive (essentially creating a duplicate version on my external hard drive - showing how you can do this to take images to clients, etc.).
Can anyone point me to an explanation of the process to completely TRANSFER (not copy) all related files from my laptop to my exiting catalog and negative file folders on my external when I come back from the field?
sorry if this is confusing - I may not be interpreting the instructions I am seeing correctly.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
steve
www.holleyimage.com

I ended up creating a folder within LR on the ext drive-then moved my folders from the internal and another ext drive. I intend to delete those exported (fr LR) files I mentioned in my last post. each one of them had an additional file under it (X something) that said it contained metadata. I fear that by exporting those files, I've now lost the metadata in the files in the catalog. If that's the case, obviously, I'd like to get it back if I can. also, is there a way to make sure I have everything in my new external drive that was on the other two drives? (they were pretty disorganized and I'm not sure all the image files were imported to this catalog. can I import the files I'm not sure I have to the top level folder on my new drive and tell it not to import suspected duplicates and then move any imported files (within LR) to the proper folders?
and one final question: when I exported all the image files into the new drive, LR said it couldn't export about 1000. they are in a separate folder and when I look inside, I see question marks on them. I suspect I already have them in the catalog and these are duplicates because when I didn't know what I was doing, I ended up with a lot of duplicate previews. do you think I should remove that folder with the previews in it and will that take them out of the catalog as well?
thanks in advance for your help
debby (virginiaDeb)

Storing movies on external hard drive with password preotection?

After having an external hard drive stolen from our home last summer I'm now obsessive about all of my media being password protected. At the same time our Movies folder is now 276GB in size and I am running out of space on our iMac. Is there any way to store the videos on a password protected external hard drive (and is there a recommendation on a specific model)? The only thing I have seen out there for password protecting an external drive for a mac is truecrypt, and that doesn't seem to allow for accessing files from iMovie. Any suggestions are appreciated.

telebump wrote:
... Is there any way to store the videos on a password protected external hard drive ...
• use Apps/Disk Utility/ to create a .dmg of huge size ...
• you are asked to use a pw
• 'mount' that dmg and use it as your ext. folder/hardrive
for using iM, you have to mount und unlock that dmg first ...
no need for special hardware

How do you use home sharing if Itunes library is on external hard drive?

How do you set up home sharing if IPhoto and Itunes libraries are on external hard drive?

You might want to start with a new instandce of iTunes - instructions on how to do this is on the web depending on whether you're running Windows or Appls Software. The below URL is one site you can use.
http://ipod.about.com/od/advanceditunesuse/ss/Multiple-Itunes-Libraries-One-Comp uter.htm
Set up your iTunes to utilize the music files on your external Hard Drive.
On iTunes pull down menu select Preferences.
Click on the advanced tab and set the iTunes Media Folder location to your External HD
Click on the File pull down menu and import the folder containing your music into iTunes.
Turn on Home Sharing on your computer - Click on the File pull down menu and click on Home Sharing.
Turn on Home Sharing on your other device(s)
On Music on iPad or iPhone, tap on the More tab and if you set things up right, you will see your Library name. Click on this and if things go as they should, it will connect to your library and you will see your albums, artists, playlists, sogs etc.
Good luck.

2 computers at home working with the same files i keep on an external hard drive to free up space the internal drives. I have an airport extreme time capsule to back up both computers. how can i get it to back up the hard drive plugged into time capsual?

I want to run both my macbook pro and imac from a single external hard drive.
i bought a time capsual and set it us as my network and plugged my external hard drive into it. so now both my computers can access it and work on the same image and film files. the time capsual does a lovely job of backing up both my computers and my wifes. but i cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
I did the upgrade to maverics on my imac which has caused me a major headache as now all my apature albums have been updated to 3.5.1 but my macbook pro can no longer open them because im unable to upgade it to maverics, but thats another story.
If anyone can help me with my time machine issue i would be very greatful.
many thanks

i cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
The TC for whatever it is promoted as,, is still a simple hard disk in a router. It was designed for laptops to use as a backup. A desktop can use a USB drive, faster cheaper and more reliable than a network drive but the laptops need a network wireless storage. Hence the TC. It is NOT nor was it ever designed to do the job you are trying to use it for.. it is not a NAS.. it has no internal backup.
What is more Time Machine has no ability to backup network drives no matter what their format.
So the solution is to either use a real backup software.. eg Carbon Copy Cloner which can do far more than TM can or ever will. It is around $40 so hardly expensive. But since the TC was never designed for it, this will be slow.. and the next question is where are you going to back to. Using the TC as backup location for your files is less than great. Primarily because all your files are still on the same device albeit on different disk. It is also because mixing data and TM backups is not so great. The TC cannot be partitioned although you can alleviate some of the issues..
See this info.
Q3 here http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Let me go back to the question.
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
Fundamentally the TC is the wrong place to do this.
The right place is to plug the USB drive into the iMac.. since it is a desktop machine and you are probably not lugging it around. Simply share the USB drive to the network.
The MBP can then access the USB drive, and it will be around twice the speed of networking to the same drive on the TC. TM on the iMac can then also backup the USB drive to the TC as part of the normal TM backups.
The only thing is the iMac needs to be turned on to allow MBP access.

Home network and Externeal hard drives

I've recently set up a home network to allow me to share my files across my two iMac's. My older iMac I've setup with my external hard drives almost as a media center to allow my new Sonos speakers to use my itunes libary, all but one of these are formatted as MS-DOS FAT-32 to allow my read / write from Windows as well as my Mac (My main iMac runs Windows 8.1 on bootcamp and I flip between the two).
My question is this is there anyway for me to get Mac to Mac sharing to read /write to and from the MS-DOS FAT-32 formatted drives they all display fine when i view them Mac to Widows or is this a bug where a mac can read / write when connected directly or via the screen sharing just not the file sharing. Any help would be great or if anyone has a workaround please let me know.
Cheers
Nick

It sounds like you are logged in as Guest (which only has access to each users home directory and drop box). If your navigating to the server via Shared in the sidebar, it should say the name of the user you are logged into that server as. It defaults to Guest. If it is Guest, click the Connect As button and log in as the desired user. You should then be able to see the share points (hard drives etc) you expected.
{quote:title=frankmlinar wrote:}My definition of persistent for use below is: When logged on as a registered user, the computer remains logged on and does not revert to Guest when clicking on various computers or drives in the finder and then returning to the logged on computer in the finder.{quote}
So this is the behavior you want. Correct? You want to only log in once and not have it revert back to being logged in as Guest if you navigate somewhere else and then back again? Correct
So, what you are seeing is this:
Step 1) Click on the server in the sidebar. It automatically, by default, logs you in as Guest.
Step 2) Click on the Connect As button and an Authentication dialog will appear. Login as another user (say Bob).
Note: You should be able to see the share points with no problem.
Step 3) Click on the "Desktop" entry in the sidebar
Step 4) Click on the same server as in Step 1 in the sidebar
Expected results: It will log you in as Bob.
Actual results: It will log you in as Guest.
This is behaving correctly (and is how AFP works). If you want it to remain logged in as Bob after Step 4, either create a keychain via the authentication dialog in Step 2 or before Step 3 you double clicked one of the hard drives listed for that server (or single clicked if your in Column View) to mount it.
Just logging in to an AFP server creates a temporary/soft connection with the server, you have to mount something to make it a solid connection.

Tried to use home sharing to transfer itunes library from old pc to new -- however it only brings over the music, did not bring audiobooks- My question is do I need to delete itunes from my new pc when I redo using external hard drive

Trying to transfer iTunes library from old windows 7 pc to new windows 8.1. Used home sharing, but not what I wanted, I want everything on the new so I can discard the old pc - so now all I have is my music library on new pc thru the cloud none of my Audible audiobooks came over - My question is do I need to delete iTunes off my new pc before I load it in from a external hard drive?

You might need to make sure neither is going to sleep (System Prefs > Energy Saver)
Also check your settings under System Prefs > Security. My sisters new laptop kept logging off due to some setting there.
HTH

External Hard Drive Error -- alias "Home Hard Drive" can't be opened be

I've got an iMac and an external hard drive I've been using for about three years. Recently, every time I try to open the external hard drive I get the following error, "The alias “Home Hard Drive” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found." The three options it gives me are, Delete Alias, Fix Alias or just ok. I've got my iTunes library on the EHD so I'm very skeptical about pressing fix alias b/c obviously I don't want to lose any of my data. Has anyone experienced this or have a solution?
Thanks!

We have the same exact problem on multiple machines and with multiple hard drives since upgrading to OS 10.6. It is a known issue at Apple. The suggestion to me from Apple support staff was to use a third party application called "Path Finder", which allows you to correct the problem by turning off an "alias bit" after selecting "show info" on the hard drive.
The problem with this solution is 1) it costs $40 which I think is unfair... apple should provide a free solution, and 2) the problems can reoccur spontaneously, requiring periodic resetting of the alias bit.
I'm hoping Apple can solve this problem... but I am still out the $40.

HT3275 Time machine at home and it will not allow me to remove the listing of my external hard drive from the excluded files list.

Please help guys, I have a Time machine at home and it will not allow me to remove the listing of my external hard drive from the excluded files list.
I am trying to use time machine to back up the hard drive. For backing up from Macbooik pro and Imac, there is no problem. It seems to not want to allow the external drive to be removed from the Excluded list and as such will not back up from it.
Is there a way to be able to transfer files (music, movies etc) to time machine, format the external drive then put the files back to hard drive?
Sorry it is a long winded question but it is driving me nuts that I cant sort this out.
The <Macbook and Imac are both running mountain lion.
Thanks Guys

As for the hard drive to which you have never been able to write, is it by any chance in NTFS format? OS X can read NTFS for importing files, but it does not contain code for writing on an NTFS volume. That's a choice, not a bug.
There is third-party software available to install NTFS-writing capability into OS X. An example is Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X. Another alternative would be to use a disk format that both Macs and Windows systems can use for both reading and writing; this would require either a new drive or erase the existing data.
If by "the new system software" you mean OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you may want to repost that portion of your query in the Mavericks forum at https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mavericks . I haven't made the leap yet.
I don't know what other problems you have been having, so I cannot comment on them. You don't seem to have any other recent postings on these forums.

My external hard drive does not show when I am trying to open a document in Office Org??

My external hard drive does not show when I am trying to open a document in Office Org?? When looking in the about IMAC system support it shows as being connected. Any ideas??

Does the drive show up under 'Devices' in Finder?

55HT1U LCD TV - how to play home videos from external hard drive

Hey guys, I'm connecting my external hard drive to my 55HT1U LCD TV via HDMI to watch home movies. The TV is able to recognize the external drive, I'm able to browse folders and see pictures, but the movie files are not recognized! Does anyone know what formats the TV recognizes, or if there is anything I can do to play movies straight from my external? Thanks.

have been trying this too , the manual says FAT32 files, just my two cents for ya

Accessing music files on external hard drives with Home Sharing

I use my iMac as a computer and music server. I have it connected via USB and SPDIF to my audio system, and access my music files with the Remote app on my iPhone. It works fine except when the Remote app occasionally wants to take a brief break. The problem is that I have a LOT of high-res music files, and my IMac's hard drive is filling up and slowing the processor down. Is there a way to access music files located on external hard drives (I have two) AND the files located on my iMac using Home Sharing and the Remote app on my iPhone. I'd like to move some of the files off of the iMac's HD to free up space. Thanks.

The best thing to do is to get an external drive that is large enough
and has sufficient room for growth and move your entire iTunes
folder to it.
Then start iTunes holding down the option key and when the dialog
box comes up, select choose library and navigate to the new iTunes
folder location.
This way, nothing will be lost, confused, or otherwise messed up since
the entire library will be intact.

External Hard Drive + 2 Pc's ( home & office)

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