External Hard Drives -- please set record straight

Are USB external drives good for video or no? Some say that they transfer slower. Some say they dont transfer video at all!!
Please let me know. Thanks.

USB is no good for video. USB sends info in packets, not in a steady stream, which video files demand.

Similar Messages

  • I have macbook pro 13" I want to know how to copy files from my mac to the external Toshiba Hard Drive. I can't even delete files from my external hard drive. please help me my macbook HD is almost full and I have to copy my images to the Toshiba HD

    I have macbook pro 13" I want to know how to copy files from my mac to the external Toshiba Hard Drive. I can't even delete files from my external hard drive. please help me my macbook HD is almost full and I have to copy my images to the Toshiba HD

    To delete files from your external HDD, attach it to your MBP and drag the unwanted files to trash and then empty trash.
    Then you select the files that you want to transfer by 'drag and drop' to the external HDD and trash the files on your MBP.
    Ciao.

  • How do I transfer photos from mac to external hard drive please

    How do I transfer photos to a external hard drive please?

    This answer may need to be expanded a bit. If your photos are in iPhoto and you are moving iPhoto's library to an external drive, once you've dragged the library to the external drive you'll need to let iPhoto know the library has moved. Hold the option key and double-click iPhoto (or click on the iPhoto icon on the Dock). You'll get a fileselector menu to select the library - point it to the external drive. Once you've established that the copied library has copied correctly you may drag the library on your computer to the trash and empty the trash.
    Warning: You do have a backup of your entire computer, right? Just in case something goes awry with the process having a backup is always a good idea.

  • I can't copy files to External Hard Drive : Please help..

    Evening,
    I've just bought a Macbook and am just getting to grips with it. This is my first question on this forum...the first of many no doubt.
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    R
    Macbook   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  
    Macbook   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    How confident are you that MacFuse/ntfs-3g is a reliable option for ordinary humans? It is at version 0.2.2, not long out of beta, the FAQ mentions slow write performance and other rough edges (possibly fixed in the current version), and this is a comment by the author as of 1/11/07:
    "Small disclaimer: Please note that MacFUSE is a complex piece of software, and it is a work in progress. We believe in releasing early and often, so we're releasing it now so that the community can help us to make it more robust."
    I have no need for it whatsoever, but if I did, I would have concerns about using it for a backup drive.

  • External Hard Drive and Audio Recording Application

    Hi, hope everyone is doing well today. I'm new to this forum but I have been occasionally browsing it from time to time and find it very useful. So I figured I would post a couple questions that I have.
    First of all I would like to tell you all excatly what I want to do with my computer. Currently I am trying to optimize my computer for the Audio Recording Application I have *Cubase SX 3* I recently just upgraded my RAM from 512 KB to 1.5 GB. My next purchased is most definitaly going to be an external hard drive, which leads me to my first question.
    1. If someone could recomend me an external hard drive that is abosolutly amazing for audio recording and such around $150. I would ONLY be using the drive to save my audio files. Definitaly needs to be firewire also.
    2. Next question is. I've heard of people booting from their external hard drives which has nothing but there OS and there audio recording application. That way when they boot it up they don't have processes running "Behind the scenes" and taking up some processor power. Is this true? If so, how would you going about doing this and what would I need?
    3. If anybody else that is reading this is like me and does alot of audio editing on their iMac G5 computer if you could give me some tips in optimizing the performance of the computer in order to get the most out of it.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks ahead of time everyone.
    Bard
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    1. If someone could recomend me an external hard
    drive that is abosolutly amazing for audio recording
    and such around $150. I would ONLY be using the
    drive to save my audio files. Definitaly needs to be
    firewire also.
    Hard drives are pretty much the same. 7200 rpm are obviously a bit faster than 5400rpm. Why Firewire? USB 2 is about the same speed as standard Firewire 400, but the drives are cheaper.
    2. Next question is. I've heard of people booting
    from their external hard drives which has nothing but
    there OS and there audio recording application. That
    way when they boot it up they don't have processes
    running "Behind the scenes" and taking up some
    processor power. Is this true? If so, how would you
    going about doing this and what would I need?
    OS processes are going to be running in the background regardless of which disk the OS is on, that's what an OS does! If you don't want more processes simply make sure you don't have any other apps open. I don't know Cubase, but a G5 will handle video editing along with background tasks no problem, and video editing generally involves far more data manipulation than just sound, even if you're doing multiple tracks.
    You can easily install the OS on an external hard drive using your original system install disk. Simply connect the drive and choose that as the destination in the installer. To boot from that you would choose it in System preferences/Startup Disk. You could minimise that system by deleting other applications from that drive's Applications folder, turning off internet connections, disabling all widgets etc, but as long as you only have Cubase open it shouldn't make too much difference.
    3. If anybody else that is reading this is like me
    and does alot of audio editing on their iMac G5
    computer if you could give me some tips in optimizing
    the performance of the computer in order to get the
    most out of it.
    There's not really much else to optimise. Modern Macs are not like computers of old, and OS X is a very modern system, not requiring the type of disk optimisation etc that there used to be.
    See: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

  • Help with iTunes and an external hard drive please

    I have an external hard drive that I like to store my music on since I usually have a good deal of it.
    Anyone know the best way to do this?
    Cause what I have done in the past is set iTunes to monitor the folder on the ext hd where my music is. But it still seems to create an iTunes music library folder on the Mac hd. So then I have double of everything. One on my Mac hd and one on the ext hd.
    Anyone have advice? Or know why it might be doing this or how to fix it...
    Thanks
    MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   I'm new to Mac

    For instructions, see:
    iTunes: Moving Your iTunes Music Folder
    Don't delete the tracks from the old location until you've confirmed that they're working correctly from the external drive. And IMPORTANT: do not delete the iTunes folder or the preference files it contains from your boot hard drive; delete ONLY the tracks themselves (i.e. the contents of the old iTunes Music folder).

  • Help with external hard drive please????

    I am ready to chuck my computer out of the window I am so frustrated!! I really hope someone can help... Fingers crossed, here goes...
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    Now, I want to move a load of music from my iBook to the external hard drive. But when I plug in the hard drive, the iBook says 'MAC OSX CANNOT READ THE VOLUMES INSERTED' and gives me options of initialize, cancel, or eject.
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    Is this the case?
    Why won't the Iomega talk to the iBook? (the Iomega website says macs need no drivers for their products...)
    Can anyone think of any genius ideas for getting the info off the iBook? Bearing in mind that there is no DVD writer, my internet connection is a teeny 2mb/s and the largest alternative storage device I have is a 2 gigabyte photo card (which i have been using, painstakingly, but is causing me massive grief by taking all night to upload from the ibook and then all day to transfer to the hard drive via the macbook, and losing a bunch of files in the process => AAAAAGH!!!!!). I've also tried firewiring the ibook and macbook together but they don't recognise each other. I created a network and accessed the iomega from the ibook via that but the 2mb/s broadband was so slow it would have taken all week, and the machines crashed anyway.
    Thoughts? Ideas? Inspiration? Magic wand????
    THANKS

    Ok, deep breath & relax...
    What format & partition table is the drive in?
    On the macbook with drive installed, Open up Mac HD/Applications/Disk Utility.app
    Select the drive from the list. If the partition scheme is GUID, then 10.3 won't be able to see it.
    & changing requires a reformat of the drive.
    So, what I would do is hold T while booting the macbook until the firewire logo shows on the screen. plug the 2 macs together via firewire 400 cable. your macbook should now show up as a firewire drive on the ibook.
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  • Problem running Itunes from external hard drive- Please Help!

    So, last night I transferred my entire music folder over to an external hard drive. It copied all the files and I then proceeded to tell itunes where my new music folder was located. The problem I ran into was when I actually deleted the music files from my internal hard drive my library won't automatically find the files. When I click on a song it comes up with an error message saying, "original file cannot be found, would you like to locate file?". If I tell it yes, I can then manually tell it where the file is, and it will play. I'm really hoping there is an easier way around this issue because going in and doing this for every song in my library would take years. Should I clear out the library and then drag it from the external hard drive? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.
    Sean

    I am experiencing a similar problem. I already had all my files on an external drive, where I had transfered them a few months back, and everything was working fine. I have now moved them, again, to a larger external drive, did everything the same, but now receive the message "original file cannot be found, would you like to locate file?" I was advised to use the "add to library" button under "FILE" in the menu bar and all the music was finally imported into iTunes, but the problem now is that the new data on the music files is missing all the metadata, and I am still stuck with all the original files with the "!" in front of each file that is going to have to be manually deleted one file at a time, all 30,000 of them. I would like a way to start over and get it right the first time. Anyone have any solutions? I have found a program, "Super Remove Dead Tracks" which should solve the problem of eliminating the "!" tracks, but so too all the metadata. Ideally I'd like to be able to locate the original files with all the attached metadata and get back to where I was 24 hours ago.

  • HT201250 My Time Machine Icon in the Toolbar is dimmed, and I'm unable to connect to my external Hard Drive, please help!

    Time Machine seems to be dead, since I'm unable to reset it. As soon as I try  anything, it goes to back to the "OFF" Position. Would appreciate any Help, to get my external Hard Drive to work. Adolffrom Peachland!
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    There's an apple store in my city but it is about a 20 minute drive and I do not have apple care. Do you think they would still help me?

  • I need help to transfer my movies from I tunes to an external hard drive please

    I need help to transfer my movies from I tunes to an external hard drive please

    Teach a man to fish, feed them for life.
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

  • Missing Files in Finder from External Hard Drive - PLEASE HELP

    Hi everyone, found myself with a bit of a problem and feeling a little stressed out.
    I have an external, Thunderbolt hard drive which seems to be working ok. Suddenly, after a reboot I am unable to see any files on the drive and the finder says 0 files. The disk size however remains the same, indicating the files are still somewhere on the drive. I am running 10.10.1 (14B25).
    Before the reboot I was writing to the drive using Compressor, I cancelled the export and then rebooted. Since then I have attempted the following with no luck:
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    2. Tried accessing the drive on another computer and account. No luck.
    3. Verified the drive with Disk Utility
    4. Repaired system permissions
    5. The external TB drive is a raid, I have checked the raid with the software for error and no errors are present and the Raid looks in good shape. No red lights, flashing, warning sounds etc.
    6. I re-indexed spotlight.
    7. I made all hidden files visible, and couldn't see the files but i found the following hidden files in the attached picture.
    Could someone please give me some advice which could lead to the recovery of the data?
    Many, many thanks in advanced, I look forward to hearing form you.
    Best, Jim.

    A small update:
    I have tried using DiskWarrior - it sees the files and folders are there, confirms there is no physical disk problem but after a rebuild of the directory there are still no files present.
    Is there a preference file or hidden file I could try and remove?
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Jim.

  • I need the unconfusing way to put a password on a external hard drive, please

    it seems the more i look the more confusing things got. basically i have a new hard drive ( g drive mobile usb ) i want to put a password on to it so that if you do not know the password you will not be able to access ANYTHING. it seems like there is either a tutorial on how to put a password on to a 'folder' & when it comes to a 'harddrive' the term 'password' is now 'encrypted' & it just seems like there is a difference in the explanation. also people seem to say "thumb drive" a lot & i know that i am not talking about a thumb drive, i am using a hard drive, maybe it is all the same but nobody is saying so & i don't want to find out that a password on a folder or a thumb drive is totally different when it comes to using a hard drive.
    so, how do i put a password onto a hard drive so that when i plug in the usb cable you will next have to type in the password to see anything on the hard drive??
    just updated to mavericks by the way

    If you want to protect everything on the drive, then you need to encrypt the drive.
    Don't store the password in your keychain as that will automatically decrypt the drive when it is connected.
    Here is an article written for mountain lion, but I think it is the same for mavericks.
    http://m.imore.com/how-easily-encrypt-external-drives-os-x-mountain-lion
    Another here: http://osxdaily.com/2012/09/17/how-to-encrypt-an-external-drive-quickly-in-mac-o s-x/
    I'm not sure if it is stated directly, but the drive must be partitioned as a GUID partition table.
    If just want to encrypt some of the data, http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/11/password-protect-files-folders-in-mac-os-x/

  • Firewire 800 External Hard Drive recomendations for recording

    Ok so I posted a week or so ago about a bad experience I had with a firewire 800 external drive. Anyway, Im sending it back and getting a refund but I wanted to confer with you guys about a good, but cheaper (under $100 please) firewire 800 drive thats good for recording to. This will be my recording HD. Can anyone recommend some for me? and shooting a link to a place that sells it would be appreciated! ..and the more recommendations the better

    Hi Veena, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
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    Have you shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about ten minutes then reconnect and try. Also, it is important to disconnect the AC power to your Mac, this helps to reset the FireWire port(s).
    Do you have TTP or DW, both of which you could use to try to mount it.
    It is also possible that you have a bad cable or a bad port, do other FW devices work?
    -mj
    [email protected]

  • Time capsule with external hard drive

    My wife and I just recently became an all Mac family and I am looking into backing up our files.  We have approximatly 1 TB of Photos and 1 TB of Music/Movies.  We are photographers (well, my wife is, I just take blurry photos) and so we expect the size of our Photos to grow.
    We both have Macbook Pros and a mac mini (1 TB of storage).  Connected to our mini is a an 8 TB external hard drive currently set up as a Raid 10, so I have effectivly 4 TB storage with 4 TB of back up.  My plan was to buy an Air Port Extreme to replace our 4 year old wireless router, and I see some of the Air Port Extreme's have time capsul storage built in.
    My question is, our photos, music and movies will be kept on my EHD, which is mirrored and will make its own back up.  Is it worth buying an Air Port Extreme with time capsule to back up everything?  We will primarly be keeping programs word documents and home school stuff on the Mini and everything on our Macbook Pros will be files we take from the EHD. 
    Also, should I plug the EHD into the Air Port Extreme or the Mini?
    I formated the EHD on the mini, so it is set up as journaled, not FAT32.

    Connected to our mini is a an 8 TB external hard drive currently set up as a Raid 10, so I have effectivly 4 TB storage with 4 TB of back up. 
    I would quibble with you on the use of the word backup.. Mirror yes.. you have a mirror.. but that does not represent a backup. But you also suggest later that you have a separate backup as well .. if so you have not listed what exactly this is.
    The issue is if you delete a file.. it is deleted from the array.. if you manage to corrupt a file.. it is corrupted in the array.. worse yet.. if you corrupt a library.. very real possibility with the way apple stores files.. and I do hope your are storing original RAW versions.. so the library will then be corrupted in both sections of the array.
    How is this connected to the mini? I hope it is a recent mini and using thunderbolt??
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    Now all this might be already part of what you are doing so please take it simply that you didn't list it.
    My question is, our photos, music and movies will be kept on my EHD, which is mirrored and will make its own back up.  Is it worth buying an Air Port Extreme with time capsule to back up everything?  We will primarly be keeping programs word documents and home school stuff on the Mini and everything on our Macbook Pros will be files we take from the EHD. 
    Also, should I plug the EHD into the Air Port Extreme or the Mini?
    I formated the EHD on the mini, so it is set up as journaled, not FAT32.
    You can use Time Machine in the notebooks to do a backup of the current configuration of them. Without needing to do the backup of the EHD which is really too big to do effectively. TM is very good at keeping incremental backups.
    A Time Capsule is good value considering the price of the hard disk now.. so you can buy an Extreme and run it with USB drive.. but the TC with inbuilt drive is a better option in that the drive speed of the internal far superior to the usb2 drive.
    The new AC models are still somewhat buggy.. I think I would wait a bit for Apple to get their act together.. a few months probably. Of course I only see the people with issues here.. but the firmware is still immature.
    I read a review recently by a guy I respect on our local forum.
    http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2125865
    Compared to the Asus N66U model.. the AE wasn't even in the same class. And that is not AC but just 900mbps (so called) N wireless. That the AE was totally outclassed is somewhat of a surprise.. they are basically identical.. the chipset both use is standard broadcom. That means Apple has tried to do funny stuff instead of sticking with the broadcom OEM linux firmware.. they have to rewrite it in NetBSD.. and this is going to take some time to debug.
    For now you can use TM to network drive,, just as easily as to a TC.
    See http://code.stephenmorley.org/articles/time-machine-on-a-network-drive/
    This is plainly opinionated.. and others might be in better position to post.. so go ahead and tear me to shreds.. but I would take great care.. before leaping at new edge technology.. unless you like the bleeding edge.

  • External Hard drive not backed up on Time Machine

    One of my Seagate external hard drives has failed. I thought that the Time Machine was backing up its contents onto my other external hard drive - I set it to back up everything including the external HD. However I've looked into the Time Machine & gone back to before the HD failed, & there is no sign of it. Surely its contents should have been saved on there even if it has now failed? I don't understand the Time Machine anyway; it seems to only show me certain parts of the computer contents; it's really hard to see all of what is on there.
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    Thanks all,
    This is helpful. I am 100% certain I set it to back up everything except the HD it is backing up onto - I remember specifically telling it to back up the other HD -  but strangely, when I open the TM window I cannot see anywhere to specify the folders etc to back up; please see screenshot. All it shows is that the TM back-up drive is excluded. I don't understand where all the preferences have gone? I got this window by clicking 'options'; the only other choice was 'select disk'.
    Anyway, if as you say they are not included even if you expressly tell it to back them up, maybe including them has no effect. I will try the shift-command-C thing & see if that helps.
    Thanks.

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