HELP!! Problems using external hard drive

I have moved my iTunes music library from my internal hard drive on my laptop to a new external hard drive in order to free up space on my laptop. The problem I now experience is that when my external hard drive is conected and turned on, my computer will not recognize my iPod. When I turn the external hard drive off, my computer will then recognize my iPod. I can use one or the other but I can't use both at the same time. Because of this problem I can't access my iTunes music library with my iPod in order to update my iPod with new music that has been added to the music library on the external hard drive.
Is it that I need a Firewire conection possibly? If so, is there any way around that? Any help would be appreciated!
MY COMPUTER (purchased new in 2006)
Gateway Laptop running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
70 gig hard drive
1.83GHz - 480 MB Ram
MY IPOD (purchased new in 2006)
80 gig - video enabled
MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE (purchased new in 2007)
Western Digital "My Book" Essential Edition (USB)
250 gig (NTFS)

Change the drive letter for the external drive.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93499

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Help with using external hard drive to boot windows on PC

Hi,
I'm not sure if this is in the right place, so apologies in advance if not. I've looked around the internet for a good while now, and I haven't found anyone in my exact position.
My PC's hard drive (running Windows 7) recently died; long story short, I am attempting to reinstall windows. The only other computer I have is this MacBook Pro, on which I have an .iso file of Windows 7. So I want to use my external hard drive (WD 500GB "MyBook") as a boot device so that I can install Windows onto my new internal hard drive.
The problem I am having is that, well, nothing seems to be working. Every time I try to load the .iso onto my external hard drive and boot my PC with it, either a blank screen appears or it says "missing operating system".
I have made sure that the BIOS is running the external hard drive as its boot priority.
I have tried using Disk Utility to partition the external drive, then using 'Restore' to load the .iso onto the partition, to no avail.
I have tried simply dropping the extracted .iso files onto the hard drive, this doesn't work.
I have also tried changing the file system of the external hard drive using the 'Erase' feature (NTFS-3G (using an addon), FAT32, exFAT, all of the others), but I notice that whenever I use Restore after doing this, the file system seems to return to Mac OS Extended, which might be why it isn't booting up on my PC. Is there any way I can succesfully partition the external hard drive in a format that will allow Windows 7 to boot (such as NTFS?), and is Disk Utility even the right program to do this?
If you want any more information from me, please let me know and I'll do my best to provide it - I'm not the most advanced mac user in the world, but I've spent days trying to fix this problem and nothing, no combination of anything, seems to work at all. So any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

Here is a quick suggestion for you:
Download Virtual Box (free PC Emulator for Mac) and install Windows 7 on your Mac (don't worry about activating it yet, as you don't need to keep it more than a few hours). You can tell Virtual Box to use the ISO file as the DVD drive for your virtual Windows computer, so no need to burn a disk.
Search Google for creating a bootable USB installer for Windows 7. I found a link that gave good instructions on how to do this using DiskPart.
Follow the instructions to make the bootable USB stick for installing Windows 7 using your virtual machine you created above.
Use the USB stick to install Windows on your new PC.
Remove the virtual Windows machine from your Mac.
Remove Virtual Box from your Mac.
I found a set of instructions and built an installable USB stick last night that worked great for installing Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) onto my older ThinkPad I had sitting at home. The USB installer also installs in about half the time as a DVD install. The only reason I have you create the virtual Windows PC is that all of the instructions for makeing the Windows install USB stick are written assuming that you already have access to a running Windows PC. By doing this install, you have up to 3 days before you would need to activate it and you can build the installer USB stick and remove teh virtual computer long before that.

HELP with using external hard drive

Can anyone please help? I have been using Windows based PCs for a majority of my life. I recently purchased a Macbook. I have thousands of songs saved on a Maxtor external hard drive. I recently connected the HD to my Macbook and was able to successfully copy over all of the photos I have saved and only few of the audio files but not all. I checked the audio files are saved in itunes format. Why can I not copy all of my music over? Please help! When I connect HD to PC I see the missing files that cannot been seen when I connect my HD to my Macbook. Bizare, don't you think?

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My final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help

my final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help me. I have a 13 inch mac book pro 10.6.8 8gb 2.3 gfz intel core i5

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USB2 is glacial, as I/O interconnects go. And USB2 disks have been known to fail, or sometimes to drop back to USB1 speeds, too. FireWire 800 is substantially faster than USB2, but still not as fast as the internal drive connections can provide.
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Yes I did get to that part.... I went trough external to retrive itunes folder... When I selected the folder, it said that it was locked, choose another folder... I then went to my external again to my itunes folder and and used command I to see if folder was locked and it wasn't.... it was suggested on another forum to reboot.. which I did and still same problem... All I want to do is link my external hard drive that has my itunes playlist from another Mac to my new one.. and to also use the external as the main source for adding new songs to my playlist...

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I recently updated to Mountain lion 10.8 . I backuped using external hard drive using time machine . I used Lacie drive. I had to format it MAC OSX " extended journaled" before I could back up my dat and after that I backed it up.

1) I cant seem to restore my data back from Time machine as many files seem Locked. I cant use the Migration app since it doesnt show me my external hard drive when I try to use it. Plus Ive heard that Migration app copies whole drives rather than selecting and copying some folders/data.
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Ok, here's the situation and what we're wanting to do. I'm so confused by all of the iTunes file manipulation, copies of music, libraries, playlists, etcetera.
We have a home computer (Win. XP) that has a slave drive in it. We use the slave drive for image, video and of course, our iPod music storage.
I have a work computer (Win XP Pro) that also has a slave drive in it, and I use it for image and video storage.
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My wife and I have different music tastes, but both of us do mutually like about 70% of the music on our home computer. It's that other 30% that we can't stand of the other person's music. Since iTunes makes it near impossible for us to use multiple iPods on one copy of iTunes (without jumping through hoops (such as computer user accounts, manual vs. automatic management, using Playlists, etc.) and confusing us to no end), I'd like to simply copy all of our music onto my external hard drive, carry it to work, put a fresh copy of iTunes 7 on the work computer, copy the music off my hard drive and onto my work computer's slave drive. Then do a fresh setup of my iPod again (since it's been loaded with some of her junk by accident).
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BTW, I've decided my next computer will be a macbook. It will be my first Mac and I'm really looking forward to seeing what all the Apple/Mac fuss is about. But GESH, I'd thought Apple was a little better than all of this non-sense. I hope it's just that I'm really confused by iTunes and not yet up to the Apple/Mac way.
Oh, and THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP!
Message was edited by: JJCoke

Thanks ed2345!
I was thinking maybe I could just use the "Moving your iTunes Music Folder" instructions all the way down to, BUT NOT INCLUDING steps 11 & 12. Instead, once the consolidation and copy to the external drive was done, I'd just need to go back up and point to the original iTunes Music folder, right?
I have no problem manually adding to the work PC during the week as we add new stuff to the house. Is just copying the new music out of home iTunes Music and onto a USB zip drive to carry to work and then drop in the work iTunes Music folder the way to do it? If so, that's easy enough for me!
As far as playlists, I thought had a pretty good understanding of what they were, but your use of the words "points to songs" better cemented my understanding of what they were. I thought they were duplicating songs into miniature libraries. I would have no problem doing as you suggest (creating a JJ Playlist) and then pick-n-choosing through the library. However, is there a not problem with two different iPods (both are Nanos, but hers is a 4GB and mine is an 8GB) plugging into iTunes (at different times of course) under the same computer user? Will it recognize that my 8GB Nano is connected and not her 4GB and then let me manage my iPod manually or by only updating "JJ Playlist"? And then 5 minutes later after I've unplugged she could go in and it would do her automatic full sync?

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It sounds to me like your iMac is on it's last legs....at least the internal hard drive. If you can't make a new Time Machine backup I would advise you replace your iMac as soon as possible.
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I don't think you need the Genius Desk for Setup Assistant. You only have to power up the new iMac, answer a few questions....select "....From Another Disk..." When it asks how you want to move everything over....connect up your Iomega external drive...and wait for it to finish. (Could take several hours depending on the amount of data you're moving).
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1. If your Iomega is a Firewire drive you'll need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter to connect it to your new iMac.
2. If you need to load CDs or DVDs remember the new iMacs don't contain an optical drive. You would need to get an Apple SuperDrive or third part external burner if you need that functionality.
I'm puzzled by the comment made in Seventy One's post questioning the reliability of the new iMacs. I upgraded from a 24" early 2008 model to a 27" model and everything works flawlessly. I hardly ever see the beachball anymore.

HELP!! Problems using external hard drive

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