External Hard drives dissa[earing and becoming inactive.

External hard drives are dissapearing (since I had the mainboard in my mac book pro replaced). I have three external drives that are no longer accessible on my mac book pro since taking it in for a new mainboard. All different brands. The latest drive is two days old. A 500 Gig Acer (the last two were Seagate and WD) Firewire and USB makes no difference. When I plugged it in the mac found it and I immediately did a time machine back up. A day later I plug it in and nothing.
Disc utility on all these drives can sometimes find the drives but; repair, verify and erase all 'FAIL' when attempted.
I am to the point now where only the ACER shows up in disc utility and all tests fail so there's nothing left to do really. The hardest part of this is that I am at an orphanage in the hilss of western Thailand and there is no place to take it in. I just spent two days going to Kanchanaburi to get the new Acer drive and now I am at a loss.
I really feel it has something to do with this new mainboard the shop put in.

No we just booted up before I left the shop and made sure the computer was working. At least a few weeks passed when the first ext drive (firewire) stopped working and then a week later the usb drive made some loud clicks and gave out. the minute i posted my problem on this forum the acer got reved up by time machine and made itself a back up. Arrrgh. I mean YAY! so far it has been recognizing the new Acer again but the old drives still nothing. No response yet from the mac dealer in Bangkok on email. Thanks. Just plugged in the Acer and it's working again. I guess things could be worse. Thanks.

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External hard drive gone wrong and copied everything to Imac HDD filling it completely

I have had my iMac backed up to an external hard drive for years and randomly the External hard drive is now not readable and it has seemed to copy everything to my imac hard drive filling it completely.
any ideas how to firstly fix the external drive without losing everything on there and second why it would have copied everything to the Imac?
I cant even do a restore from a back up as its all backed up to external drive and its saying its not readable.

If they're still in two folders (iTunes app and Music) on your external, can you not just copy those two back to the internal drive and expect it to work properly again? It's my understanding that music you wish to be active in iTunes must be on your internal drive.

I use only two channels, have plenty of memory in my hard disk, and external hard drive, no effects, and still having problems with Garage band. Giving messages as you have too many live channels

I'm frustrated, I am doing everything you recommend, I use only two channels, have plenty of memory in my hard disk, and external hard drive, no effects, and still having problems with Garage band. Giving messages as you ave too many live channels, the disk is slow prepare...can you help?

Quote from: Richard on 15-November-07, 20:33:05
tornado2003,
What you need to do is boot into Safe Mode. Then delete the VGA Drivers.
After that boot normally and install the latest nVidia ForceWare Drivers
Take Care,
Richard
i guess you missed that:
Quote from: tornado2003 on 15-November-07, 17:26:52
ive tryed booting xp in safe mode but it just freezes after it loads up a couple of needed files .
ive even formatted my hard drive and tryed installing a fresh xp on it but it just keeps locking up when it gets to the "starting windows setup" .(this is just after it loads all the drivers from the xp cd)

Can I use an external hard drive to download and store my iTunes library?

Can I use an external hard drive to download and store my iTunes library?

Yes - in most cases you can just copy your entire library (by default C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes) to your external drive, with the result being a iTunes folder in the root of that drive with a structure like this:
Then hold down SHIFT when you start iTunes, and when you see this prompt:
click on Choose Library..., navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive, and click Open. See turingtest2's user tip on Make a split library portable for more information, including steps you may need to take to align your library structure before moving it to an external drive - this applies if you currently have some/all of the media in your library stored outside the standard iTunes Media folders.

My laptop and external hard drive both failed and got corrupter.

My laptop and external hard drive both failed and got corrupter. I've lost my quick time pro 7 and all my music, I still have my Ipod with the music on, How can I get it back on to Itunes and quick time pro back on to my PC? Many thanks.

Since your current editing workflow is based around Virtual Copies there are no actual files containing the edit data. Therefore, you'll need to use the 'Import from another catalog' option ( see File menu).

Switching external hard drive between pc and mac

I'm planning on buying about a 160-200g external hard drive. I have a pc with windows xp that I use, and I also have an iBook G4. It's becoming an annoyance moving files that I want on both computers, not to mention I am running out of hard drive space on my iBook. So I figured the best solution was an external drive...however I've been reading some posts and it seems as though you can only format them for a mac or a pc, not both. Can I use an external drive on both my computers with out having to partition the drive? Any other info on this would be appreciated. Also, if I can use it on both, can I hook them up simultaneously? Thanks!

yeah the auotplay search on the windows machine on a
large external can take ages but it only did this the
first time with me, but it still does take a lot
longer for it to recognise the drive.
just hit "cancel" button when autoplay starts up - once autoplay starts mean windows has recognized it anyways - it just is doing that to see if it should start up like windows media player or whatever :-P

Very slow transfer speeds with external hard drives through Firewire and US

Hi All,
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little. Apple support suggested I post my issue here. Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
Thanks in advance.

Hi Kappy, thanks for the information.
So I rejigged my setup a tad. My RAID 0 is still FW800, the second drive is back on FW400 on the back port, and the third is USB 2.0 on the back as well.
It's interesting to note that I saw the FW800 taking a bandwidth hit if the FW400 drives was being read/written to. For example, if I was averaging 50-60MB/sec on the FW800 drives and copy something large to the FW400 drive, each drive averages out to about 30/MB second, roughly half the FW800 speed I was getting. The USB while the slowest didn't cause any slowness on the FW drives.
Here are my Xbench results. These results are from each drive being benchmarked individually with no other drives being tested at the same time.
*MyBook 2TB in a RAID 0 configuration: Firewire 800*
Results 75.42
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 75.42
Sequential 80.92
Uncached Write 69.16 42.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.79 62.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 53.66 15.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.76 68.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.62
Uncached Write 36.38 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.55 45.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.26 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.38 16.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 1TB on Firewire 400*
Results 47.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 47.73
Sequential 52.47
Uncached Write 48.45 29.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.76 30.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.69 12.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.91 35.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.78
Uncached Write 17.29 1.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 98.83 31.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.33 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.01 18.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 500GB on USB 2.0*
Results 40.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD 5000AA External
Disk Test 40.60
Sequential 35.99
Uncached Write 37.31 22.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.22 21.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 26.62 7.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.27 25.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 46.55
Uncached Write 20.37 2.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.44 21.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.55 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.71 16.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So Kappy are you saying that those speeds look normal?
Thanks

Tiger randomly stopped allowing my External Hard drive to mount and...

Hello, I have been using an External Hard Drive (1 terabyte Seagate, new) for a couple months if not a year by now for saving movies, and all of my iTunes on it. Its been working wonderfully. However it recently stopped being able to mount citing invalid hard drive and gives me the options of either eject, ignore, or initialize. Im not sure what to do. And also my computer has been acting funny every since the day it started. I will walk you through it step by step.
July 6th I was surfing the web and unfortunetly clicked on a link that aparently contained a trojan. Or atleast thats what my Antivirus notified me of. I had downloaded the trojan some how without a pop up or anything telling me I was downloading anything. (using safari) So i ran a virus scan and saw one virus was in my system and that it couldnt be deleted or repaired by my antivirus program, Im working on getting rid of that but at the time I had my Seagate 1 terabyte external hard drive attached via fire wire to my Macbook. It was working then.
Later that day I unplugged my hard drive and took my laptop around a little bit, nothing unusual. Then when i came back later that night I tried plugging in my hard drive and a pop up stated that the hard drive was unable to mount and I could either eject, ignore, or initilize. I tried may different routes, restarting, letting it all rest, etc. And in Disk Utility i try to verify the disc and it says its unable to and needs repairs. So I try repairing the disc and it says unable to due to an error.
Then yesterday I went to my applications and noticed none of my applications are there anymore. These applications were saved on the internal hard drive so it was very odd to me. However i can still use spotlight to find and open my apps.
My question is, What can I do to allow my external hard drive to mount? I dont figure it is the trojan on my system but could it be? If so how would I fix it? Im mostly worried about getting the data off the external hard drive then I can reformat it. Or if theres a way to just get it back to normal without reformatting Id love to hear it. As for the applications missing and the trojan on my internal hard drive I can fix that, at the very least Ill just reboot my system with my original OS Disc and just start fresh, its about time anyways.
But please. If anyone has ever had their external hard drive just stop mounting and figured out what to do I would be ever so grateful to hear how you did so. The hard drive itself isnt damaged, its not making any unusual sounds. Whenever i plug it into the computer it acts like normal (turning on and what not) until the computer tells me it cannot mount then nothing happens. Ive looked online and it seems to be a software issue.
If its any help I was downloading a torrent (.avi, no viruses) at the time. I know sometimes if one file on the hard drive becomes corrupt the whole thing becomes unusable. Regardless I would appreciate it if anyone knows a way to at the very least retreive the files on the drive, but preferably know how to just get it back to normal. If i could get it to force mount (via terminal or something) I know which file would possibly be the corrupt one or something so I could work with it.

Bejan:
Thanks for posting back with the pics of the messages from your computer. Disk Utility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing a volume is a directory error which cannot be repaired by Disk Utility. Unfortunately, Disk Warrior may not be able to replace the rebuilt directory, either. Tech Tool Pro has a better chance of repairing it, although this particular directory issue can be stubborn, and is often rooted in a hardware issue. Your surest bet is to backup/clone the information on the HDD using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, completely reformat and erase the HDD (directions below), then restore data from backup.
Formatting, Partitioning Erasing an External HDD
• Connect external HDD to computer
• Turn on external HDD
• Start up computer and log in
• Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and launch DU.
• Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
• Select Partition tab in main panel.
• Click on Options button
• Select Apple Partition Map (PPC Macs) or GUID Partition Table (Intel Macs)
• Click OK
• Select number of partitions in pull-down menu above Volume diagram.
For more partitions than one, after you have selected the number of partitions adjust the size of the partition by selecting the top partition and typing in the size; then move down if more adjustments need to be made.
(See Dr. Smoke’s FAQ Backup and Recovery for tips on partitioning external HDD)
• Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
• Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
• Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
• Select Erase tab
• Select the sub-volume (indented) under Manufacturer ID
• Check to be sure your Volume Name and Volume Format are correct.
• Click Erase button
• Repeat above procedure to erase each partition
• Quit Disk Utility.
cornelius

PSE 8 - Archive on external hard drive including captions and tags

I started my above discussion some time ago with Mark and due to the lateness in my responding the case appears to have been closed. However I am hoping that someone can comment on my intended course of action, see below, based on his suggestions?
Just recapping having successfully migrated my Photoshop Album 2 catalog including captions across to PSE 8 and now my objective is to move my entire PSE 8 catalog to an external hard drive leaving only thumbnail view to remain. Obviously I am anxious to avoid any catastrophe and therefore would appreciate comment on the correctness of the steps involved. I have arrived at these by simply modifying Mark's original steps. Please correct where necessary.
1) Connect my external hard drive where I want to copy the files too. Make sure I can 'see' it in Explorer
2) Open Photoshop Elements 8; click the Organize button on the Welcome screen
3) Displayed in my welcome screen is my entire catalog with each album matching in title and file (photo) content to the folder title and file (photo) content in the folder location displayed to the left of screen.
4) Go to the File menu, and select 'Write Keyboard Tag and Propertise Info to Photo'. In my case most but not all files (photos only) will have tag and caption data. Rather than attempting to select the files that I wish to embed tag and caption metadata does Organiser have a global 'search and embed instruction' so that when it gets a 'match' on .jpg number it will embed automatically?
5) After completion, I go to the File menu, and select 'Copy/Move to Removable Disk...' click the MOVE button to move the files from their current location to my nominated external hard drive.
6) Click the Next button, and select the external drive in order to copy the files to the drive.
Can you confirm?
* On completion of the above steps my external hard drive will allow access to full resolution versions of the file from Photoshop Elements including any existing caption or tag data organised identically to my PSE 8 catalog (only one catalog)?
* Am I correct in assuming that also all original photos from my laptop will be removed and if not can be deleted given their existence on my external hard drive?
* Is the data which now resides on the external hard drive capable of being read on any other PC which may not have Elements software?
Neil

I have 2 laptops an aging Dell and new HP. I have successfully followed your
instruction and deleted 1 & 2 below on both.
The Dell PSE 8 now has:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PSE 8 (240Mb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Elements Organizer 8.0 (502Mb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PhotoshopElements_8_WWEFDJ.EXE (1.17Gb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\ PhotoshopElements_8_WWEFDJ.7Z (1.06Gb)
Giving a total of 2,972Gb
The HP PSE 8 has:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PSE 8 (240Mb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Elements Organizer 8.0 (502Mb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PhotoshopElements_8_WWEFDJ.EXE (1.17Gb)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\ PhotoshopElements_8_WWEFDJ.7Z (1.06Gb)
But a total of 3,894 and I am unable to identify where the additional 1Gb
resides. In Documents & Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Elements
Organizer is 120Mb. I have attempted to delete this but lost the catalog in
the process so had to restore from the Recycle bin and it now appears to
have reconnected correctly. Frankly I can live with these large file sizes
but would like an opinion on their potential adverse impact at sometime in
the future.
I am not sure whether I need to start a new thread for "Are there any known
bugs in PSE 8 surrounding the burning of discs" I have attempted to burn
onto a new CD-RW my slideshow. The process of burning appeared to work but
the written to CD does not play on the DVD. I have also saved the slideshow
as a PDF. I can't recall exactly how but in selecting an incorrect option I
no longer have visibility of projects in 'Folder View'. The projects are a
single slideshow and PDF copy of the same. How do I regain visibility?
Neil

Cannot Find Photos on External Hard Drive Using iPhoto and Time Machine

Hi everyone,
This is my first time posting on this forum and am really hoping for some help! I have a 2006 PowerBook G4 that is running iPhoto and Time Machine, and I've used an external hard drive to backup everything on the computer via Time Machine. When I plug the external hard drive into my newer 2010 MacBook Pro, I follow this path to try to access the photos:
     External Hard Drive > Backups.backupd > PowerBook G4 12" > Latest > Macintosh HD > Users > Me > Pictures > iPhoto Library
When I click "iPhoto Library", I get the following message:
     "The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library."
So, I do as the error message says and I hold down the "option" key and iPhoto launches and says:
     What Photo Library do you want iPhoto to use?
In this case, I choose "Other Library..." and again follow this path:
     External Hard Drive > Backups.backupd > PowerBook G4 12" > Latest > Macintosh HD > Users > Me > Pictures > iPhoto Library
When I choose this, I again get the following message:
     The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library.
So as you can see, I'm feeling a bit like I'm chasing my tail in trying to open these photos. I did follow another user's advice and confirm that all photos are infact on the hard drive by using the "control" button and clicking "iPhoto Library" under the pictures folder, and choosing "Show Package Contents". All looks to be in tact in the "originals" folder when showing package contents, however, I just can't find a way to actually view the photos in iPhoto. I really don't want to import all the photos to my current MacBook Pro, because I'd like them to live on the external hard drive (which is formatted for Macs) so that I can browse the photos on the external drive, rather than housing it on my computer.
One other thing I tried was opening iPhoto on my MacBook Pro and going to File > Browse Backups... which essentially opens Time Machine and shows me the photos on my MacBook Pro but gives me no option to view them from my External Hard Drive.
Any super users out there willing to lend me some help?
Thanks!

The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another   library.
You can have an iPhoto library on an external drive and use it from different machines
and you can have a Time Machine backup
The two can not be on the same volume - and iPhoto can not access the TM backup - it must be restored to use it
LN

How can I partition my external hard drive into NTFC and Mac OS Extended Journaled?

I brought a 1tb external hard drive from Western Digital. It currently have one partition which is Mac OS X (Journaled). I want to have two partition, one Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and one NTFC for Windows. When I try to choose 2 partition and choose a partition type, I only get the following choices:
1. Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
2. Mac OS X Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled)
3. MS-DOS (FAT)
4. ExFAT
5. Free Space
I don't want to use MS-DOS (FAT) because I am limited to only 32gb of space and I need plenty of space for Windows files.

Assuming that entire drive is GUID and you keep the existing journaled partition.
Make a second partition that is exFAT (more storage ability than FAT) using DU.
Then mount the drive on a Windows 7 and reformat that exFAT as NTFS. But remember that Mac can read and write exFAT natively, but cannot write NTFS without special software. Perhaps exFAT is what you want.
But more the the point: is the journaled partition used as a backup device? If it is, I would leave that drive alone as a backup drive and use a second device for "data only" sharing between types.

From External Hard Drive to Itunes and back...

Hello I have a external hard drive with 2 main folders Music 1 Music 2, each folder has about 6-8 sub-folders labeled with the genres am in to , and those sub-folders have the artist I believe correspond to that genres, to many artist with genres was a mess on my PC so I figured this was the easiest solution for me.
Still with me? Ok, Great Here is part one of my first question, How can I guide Itunes to my E.H.D music folders and telling it; here is my music, Fix it with albums and correct file name just don’t copy in to my Mac Hard Drive and take the 90 GB space your taking on my E.H.D. Second part do I need to prepare the music folders in any way, meaning can I leave it the way I have it set up or do I just put all the music, no labels just as is on main Folder and let Itunes label it and set it up the way I tell it to on ITunes.
Second question, since this has taken nearly a day and a half trying to find the answer, till I finally decided to ask. Should I just put all the music with out sub-folders on my E.H.D. on one main folder and transfer the 90 GB to my IMac H.D. and Itunes, correct everything on ITunes and let it label it the way ITunes, ipod, and Ipad, can read it with no problems of missing files or artwork. Then when that is done I can transfer it back to the E.H.D. and save it again, the ITunes way. If this is the best way then, I still need to figure out how to tell ITunes the music is here and perfectly labels and in its corresponding Sub-folders use it but dont take it to the IMac H.D(or something is getting back handed real quick). Hope this explains my frustration or am just over thinking it to much and making it harder for my self . again thanks for all the help.

Have a look at these 2 Videos...
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-library.html
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html

I want to format a Seagate Expansion External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

I ordered a Seagate Expansion 2 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive to use with my new Mac and my old PC (or at least get my photos off of both and put them on the drive). I thought all HDs could be formatted to use by both, I was able to get a Mac HD to work with my PC in 2008 (but it died). I am reading that this drive is PC only. I have Parallels and Windows 8 on my Mac if worse comes to worse but I would like all of my computers, real, virtual old and new to be able to access the external drive. Has anyone encountered this issue before? What should I format it in? FAT32? If yes, how would I go about that on a Mac. Or should I just return it?
I'm kind of Mac clueless. I spent my childhood through college on a Mac but I graduated right when OSX came around and I don't know how to work with the Mac "under the hood" like I did with OS9 and with Windows. So please talk to me like I am an an adult idiot.
Thanks!!!!

The optimum choice is to format it ExFAT, but do so on the PC, not the Mac. Alternatively, you can make two partitions - one for the Mac; one for the PC. Partition the drive using GUID when you make the two partitions. Format one using Mac OS Extended, Journaled. Format the other on your PC using NTFS if you won't need to write to it from the OS X side or use ExFAT if you do.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to two. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) you will use for Windows from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to MSDOS.
6. Click on the Erase button.
When you connect the drive to your PC reformat the PC volume to either NTFS or ExFAT.

Using external hard drive to MacBook and using iTunes

As my MacBook hard drive is approaching fullness I'm going go direct iTunes to save all my Music to the WD external hard drive which I have partitioned to have Time Machine in its own space and other files in a separate partition.
With that the case, when I'm not connected to the external drive I can't access my Library, however...also if I"m not connected to the external drive and acquire new music...how does iTunes store the new sound files if the Library is not connected??? Does iTunes create a second Library???....and if so how do I then import the new sounds to the main library??
Thank You...Bob

If iTunes can not find the iTunes folder on the external drive as you set in the preferences, it will default back to the iTunes folder on your internal drive and it will do it silently, so you may not realize for a while that it is storing your stuff on the internal drive even though the external was later hooked back up.
Patrick

ITunes Library to External Hard Drive...and iTunes Match???

So, my iTunes library is getting too large for my computer's storage capacity. I'm thinking of moving some of my library to an external, USB hard drive. However, I've never done iTunes through an external hard drive before and I have some questions.
Can I copy new discs (import) straight onto the external hard drive? Or do they need to go onto my computer first then get transferred to the hard drive?
Can I still use iTunes Match and pull songs from the library on my hard drive and from the main computer?
To partition a library between a computer and an external hard drive, do I need to activate sharing or anything special? Or will the computer/main iTunes library just consider the external drive to be a different location for some of the tracks?
How would I backup the external hard drive? Would Time Machine (running off a separate hard drive) back up another external hard drive if they were both plugged in?
Can you burn the entire library to data discs anymore? Or do you need to make a playlist of your entire library? If the latter, is there a way to turn off the message about iTunes in the Cloud playlists only accepting songs matched or uploaded? I have some songs that erroneously did not get matched or uploaded. If I try to put them in a playlist and burn it to a data disc for backup, iTunes won't do it.
Please help!

I recommend you keep everything inside the iTunes folder.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from internal to external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
This is all you need to do. Everything will work normally.
You can delete now /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal.

External Hard drives dissa[earing and becoming inactive.

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