External Hard Drive - Movie Transfer

I have an Intel iMac and wish to move the movies and music I have in ITunes to a WD 2TB MyBook Studio External Hard Drive, free up my hard drive and still use iTunes.
I have read a couple links to instructions but it really does not compute in my head. Moving, deleting, finding... blah blah blah. What is the easiest way to move movies (for a simple minded person) to the external drive and then wipe them off my computer to free up space without making it such a nightmare as it seems.

Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library.
Select the iTunes folder you moved to the external
That is all you need to do.
iTunes will use the external for everything from now on.
You can now safely delete /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal (Macintosh HD).

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Can I create a "new" iTunes library on an external hard drive and transfer my iTune library to save space on my laptop

Can I create a "new" iTunes library on an external hard drive and transfer my iTune library to save space on my laptop hard drive

Yes. Just copy all your music to a folder on your external. Then delete the music on your computers hard drive.
It is not quite that simple. If you do that you will end up with many broken links and will have to re-create your library from scratch . iTunes does not like it when you move or rename files or folders and doing so between drives is guaranteed to result in exclamation marks indicating you have broken the links to all your media files.
If you are content with moving the whole library to an external drive (usually the best thing for most people), try:
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.

External hard drive file transfer

How do I transfer video files from one external hard drive to another external hard drive? OS X 10.9.5. I opened up each device in a finder window and tried to drag and drop from one device to the other. No luck. Next, I R-clicked on the file and requested to copy it, then R-clicked on the Finder of the destination drive, hoping to paste but that option did not present. I am able to paste a file onto the desktop from the original location but I cannot move it from there onto the destination drive. Full disclosure: I began this operation using a Windows laptop with no difficulties. Both drives are dual formatted. The destination drive is 2 Tb and has 1.5 Tb remaining space.

Most drive companies have a free NTFS driver.
Seagate -> http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/
If I remove the files from the destination hard drive currently formatted to NTFS
You cannot remove them until you install NTFS driver software.
You can copy them elsewhere but you will not be able to delete them as this requires writing to the drive.
Formatting the drive will remove them (and everything else on that drive).
I assumed that dual-formatted meant dual compatibility but apparently it means one-or-the-other (?)
Where do you see "dual-formatted"?

HT201250 Using time machine/ external hard drive to transfer data to new iMac?

I just purchased a new iMac and do not want to use migration assistant to transfer all the data from my old iMac to the new iMac. Does anyone know if I can just connect my external hard drive that was used as a Time Machine to the new computer to be able to access all my old data?

Yes, you should be able to do that. Visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ should you need help.

External hard drive movies won't play on apple tv

I recently purchased an Apple TV unit. Plugged it into the sony TV HDMI input. It sensed the existing wifi I wanted to use. Set up home sharing. Etc.
I recently started copying some old digital video tapes via my iMac to an external hard drive. After reading a few blogs, I imported into iTunes what I thought were the digital home movies from my external hard drive. I then went back to my living room and chose "computers" and then "movies" and low and behold they were there with the correct running times etc. When I chose the home movie I wanted to watch it won't play. Is there some setting that I am over looking?
Sort of weird that I can see the movie selection with a picture (basically the first frame of the video) but can't play it.
Any suggestions would be very helpful. I've tried to figure it out myself, but not knowledgeable about how this mac works I suppose. Any help would be appreciated.
Monte

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Which Apple TV do you have.

Transfer internal DVR to external hard drive?

Guys,
Is it possible to transfer the recordings from my DVR to my new external Western Digital esata hard drive? I'm needing to replace my existing Motorola 7232 DVR with a new 7232 DVR and the Verizon rep on the phone told me to get one of these external hard drives and transfer all my stuff to it. I have the external hard drive connected to the receiver and working properly, but I don't see how to transfer my existing recordings onto it. Please tell me this is possible and Verizon didn't just cause me to waste another $80.

At present the short ugly answer is NO. Anything on the old internal DVR drive will be lost. Verizon has yet to implement a way for locking content to an account as opposed to hardware.
If a forum member gives an answer you like, give them the Kudos they deserve. If a member gives you the answer to your question, mark the answer as Accepted Solution so others can see the solution to the problem.

How can i transfer photos to external hard drive

I have tried everything I can think of but it's not letting me copy photos overt to external hard drive.

to transfer the photos select them in iPhoto and export to a folder on the external drive - to transfer teh iPhoto librtary
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Which external hard drive should I use to save my iTunes library?

Hi,
So I have collected so much music and movies in iTunes that my internal HD is practically full. (Library is over 500GB of 1TB and the rest is taken up with my apps and programs.) It's time to purchase an external hard drive to transfer my library to. Furthermore, I currently have a 2TB WD My Book for Mac that I am currently using for backup. The My Book is also full and Time Machine is deleting the oldest backups to make room for the current ones.
Here is where I need everyones advice. I am planning on purchasing a 3TB WD My Book for Mac. I am planning on purchasing more movies for iTunes. Which external hard drive should I use for what? Option A or B
Option A: Put my iTunes library on the 2TB external hard drive and use the 3TB for backup
Option B: Put my iTunes library on the 3TB external hard drive and continue to use the 2TB for backup
Also please give me your reasoning.
Thanks everyone for your responses!

Limnos,
So, let's go one step further with this. I read your reply to moving iTunes library to an external hard drive: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4594518?tstart=0 However, if I move the iTunes library, will this include all the movies and apps that I have purchased?
Thanks!!!!

Suddenly can't write to an external hard drive that I have been using consistently

I have been using a WD 1 terabyte external hard drive to transfer movie files between 2 MBP's and suddenly I cannot write any files to the HD. The error message is that the external hard "cannot be modified" if I try to add any files. I have tried the same hard drive on another MBP and it works fine and I can write to the hard drive (with the aid of Paragon NTFS for Mac OS). I have Paragon NTFS on my computer as well and have been able to write to the hard drive previously. I spoke to Western Digital phone support and told them the problem and noted that the icon for the hard drive is grey with a clock on my computer and is orange on the other MBP. They explained that the icon change was due to Time Machine on my computer. I currently have Time Machine turned off.
Of note, I recently upgraded my internal hard drive on my computer to a WD 500 GB internal drive. Not sure if this will make a difference. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,

Found the issue. When I changed the internal hard drive, most softward transferred over, but not all. I had to reinstall the Paragon NTFS and I was then able to write to the external hard drive. That seemed to solve the problem.

Downloading to a external hard drive

i recently bought a toshiba 1tb external hard drive, to transfer all my video downloads (vuze) fom my old pc to my new imac, i can watch all these on my imac no problems, but when i try and download straight to my hdd from vuze it doesnt work it comes up with 'THE DESTINATION' / VOLUMES/TOSHIBA EXT DOES NOT EXIST OR IS INVALID. if i down load straight to my vuze folder on my imac that works but i then cant copy it to my external hdd, it wont copy over i cant dra and drop it, i've tried saving it to a different folder and doing it that way, just no luck.
when i right click the toshiba hdd it says format: windows nt file system (ntfs)
when i go onto disc format it says format ms-dos (fat) i read somewhere aout tryig to rformat it and changing it to MS OS EXTENDED and erasing that to reformat it, but that doesnt work either
if someone could help me out i can use a computer but i'm not tech savvy lol that would be great thanks in advance

I suspect the EHD is currently formated as a NTFS drive which OS X can read but cannot write to. I'd suggest temporarily moving all the data from the EHD to the internal HD on the iMac. Then use Disk Utility to reformat the EHD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition. Then move all the data you copied onto the internal HD back onto the reformated EHD.
I'd also recommend strongly against attempting to share and EHD with a PC. Due to the low cost of EHDs there isn't any reason to do this, if you want to share files, then simply use the file sharing in OS X and MS Windows to do so.

Partitioning External Hard Drive- questions about software & filing system

I just got my macbook and I want to use my older external hard drive to transfer data between the macbook and my PC desktop. I have a Maxtor OneTouch II 300gb with only one partition. I have about 80gb of data already on the Maxtor. So my two questions are . .
1. What is the best software (prefer freeware) to partition my Maxtor and keep the data I already have on it? Or is there a better way?
2. What is the best setup for the filing system for the partitions? NTFS for one and FAT32 for the other or something else? I want to be able to both read & write to the Maxtor from both the PC and Mac. Appreciate any help anyone can throw my way.
Macbook- Black model Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I'm not quite sure of what you mean by:
I would like to avoid
moving all the stuff from the external drive to the
mac, and then having to move it all back onto the
external drive.
But most external drive was formated using fat 32 which theoretically limit to 2 TB and file size limit to 4 GB. Just put a useless file from your pc, and connect your external to your MacBook ,and see if you can copy and or delete that file from your Mac.
You can also check your HD format on PC side by: go to my computer, right click the external HD icon and select properties, and it will shows you the hd was formatted with,...
If you mean you want to format to mac format "on the fly", they might be some utilities for that on Mac side, but I'm not aware of, but why you want to re-format it if the external work for both sides without getting new format, since format that using MAc extended journaled wight result unreadable on your PC side.
Good Luck

External Hard drive won't read on iMac

I recently got a new pc and I was using an external hard drive to transfer the files that I wanted from my mac to my pc. I put all the files on that I needed and when I went to copy them to my pc, apparently I did something I shouldn't have? I need to format the drive to use it on my PC, but now when I reattach the Hard Drive to my mac, it is now unable to be read. I would just format it and erase everything but all of my brother's files are stored in it. Is there any way I can view these files on my mac again?

If the hard drive needs to be +read and write+ on both a Mac and Windows PC, it needs to be formatted as FAT32, aka +MS-DOS (FAT)+ in Disk Utility.
If the drive was formatted for Mac, you may have caused data corruption in some way when you connected it to the Windows PC. You said
apparently I did something I shouldn't have?
so it depends on what that "something" you did was.
When you connect it to the Mac now, the drive's volume does not show up in Finder, correct? But if you run Disk Utility, does the drive appear in the Disk Utility sidebar? If so, is there a volume indented under the drive (in the sidebar)? If so, can you select the volume (which may be grayed out) and click the Mount button to mount it? If so, the volume may become accessible through Finder.
If the drive appears, but there is no volume that you can mount, select the drive and go to the +First Aid+ tab. Click on the +Repair Disk+ button. Note if any errors are reported, and if there are errors, if Disk Utility was able to repair them.

External hard drive mac to pc?

My computer is running slow so I purchased an external hard drive to transfer my photos to. Is it possible to open these photos on an PC?

Windows does not acknowledge that there are any other Operating Systems. So using a Mac OS Extended drive requires third-party software on the Windows machine. MacDrive comes to mind.
You can format that drive using Windows Ex-FAT, and then both Mac OS X and Windows machines can read and write it.
Windows New Technolgy File System (NTFS) can be read on a Mac, but not written without third-party software. Paragon NTFS for the Mac comes to mind.

Copying iTunes to external hard drive

Hi All,
I am trying to copy my iTunes folder to an external hard drive to transfer to a new laptop.
I have followed the instruction online, consolidate in iTunes, close iTunes, drag and drop to external hard drive etc. However, it get to about 3/4 of the way through then comes up with an error stating that a particular song is corrupt. So I go into iTunes and delete the entire Album which that song is on. I also search within Explorer within the iTunes folder and the search results keep coming up with the XML file only. Its like the corrupt song only exists within this file.......strange?? It's driving me insane!
Can anyone help?
Thanks!
Susan

Your hard drive is probably getting flakey. See this User Tip for a backup strategy. Unlike Windows Explorer when SyncToy finds a file that it just can't copy it records it as an error and then proceeds to carry on with the next operation. For things that matter it is worth trying another couple of runs when the machine/drive has had a chance to cool down, but first make sure you try to copy off everything that matters to you while you still can...
tt2

External Hard Drive Is "Read Only"

Hi,
I'm currently running OSx Lion on my MacBook Pro and I recently wanted to use my external hard drive to transfer some files from my Mac to my PC. The problem is, after plugging my exxternal into my Mac, I noticed I only have the ability to "read" the files on the external. The external hard drive is a Maxtor OneTouch 4 and it is a Windows NT File System (NTFS).
When I do "command+I" and go to "Sharing & Permisions" it just says "you can only read". There are no other options, no padlock icons... Nothing.
Is there any way I can fix this? If so, can it be put simply (I am still struggling to use a Mac, as you can see, haha).
Thanks in advance!

Mac will not write to a NTFS volume. There are third-party apps out there which can fix that, but I've no idea if they'll work with Lion.
If you need to transfer files between Mac and PC regularly, re-format the drive as FAT32 (or exFAT, aka FAT64, if the windows version supports it).
exFAT would be preferable if it's available as FAT32 has a file size limitation of 4GB.

External Hard Drive - Movie Transfer

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