IMovie Hangs on startup if my external hard drive is switched on.

Hi guys & girls,
I'm new here and also new to Macs in general so be gentle!
I bought my system back in April and have been running iMovie '08 quite happily, using my external hard drive to store the iMovie events. Anyway, within the last week iMovie started to hang whenever I start it up - it just sits there with no change, even after half an hour so I end up having to 'force quit' it.
I re-installed iMovie from my OS X disks and it didn't make any difference, however I've noticed that if I copy the event I want to use across to my internal hard drive then switch off my external drive before launching iMovie then it works OK.
The only thing I can can think of that I've changed recently is that I installed Skype and also a demo version of 'iStopmotion', which has since expired. Could these have caused this to happen or is it likely to be a co-incidence?
My external hard drive is a 300GB Lacie d2 Quadra, using a USB connection as I wanted to keep the firewire port free for my camcorder. I currently have 106GB available on the external hard drive.
-james

Welcome kultofkylie to the  iMovie boards..
+re-installing is a habitual ritual on inferior systems+ ..
stop doing that on Unix based OS' as MacOsX.. it can 'confuse' the file structure..
there are other procedures to give an app a 'slapp on backhead' ..
to clear the fog..
external harddrive is formatted to MacOs/hfs?
did Skype install any 'codecs'? have a look in your /Library/Quicktime folder.. what plug-isn are listed there...? e.g. older perian.org plug.ins keep iM from working correctly..
did you copy your Event via Finder or within iM08?
did you try to trash the .plist?
sorry for long list of Qs, but you did a lot, you shouldn't..

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Hi
Moving Event's and Project's
Connection - Either connect one Mac in Target mode to the other via FireWire. Or use an external hard disk !
(Target-Mode - Start one Mac e.g. laptop - BUT keep T-key down during full up-start - Now a FW-symbol is jumping around the screen and it will work as an external hard disk when connected to the other Mac)
A. The External Hard Disk - MUST BE - Mac OS Extended (hfs) formatted to work for Video. UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange works for most other things but not for Video whatever program is used (iMovie or FinalCut)
B. Should be a FireWire one as USB/USB2 performs badly to me and especially when filling up
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• iMovie Event's - or -
• iMovie Project's
on DeskTop/Finder - as this will result in iMovie losing connections to them and repair can be anything from hard to impossibly
D. Moving and Copying must be done within iMovie application and Events to Events - and - Project's to Project's.
E. Moving Project's to Event's - Do not work for me - I have to export project as a QuickTime movie then Import this into Events.
Event's window can show two faces
Like this
or like this
from one hard disk Event - You can move it to the other hard disk
You can not (at least not me) move Event to Project or other way around only
Event to Event and Project to Project
Yours Bengt W

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I have iMovie 09, but have followed this procedure: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1026 to move my events to and external hard drive. Couldn't find a similar article specific to iMovie 09... I assume they work the same way...
Well, this COPIED the events folder but left a copy still taking up space on my Mac hard drive. Can I just delete the events folder from my Mac safely? If the whole purpose is to save room on my Mac, why does this procedure "copy" instead of "transfer" the files?
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Thank you all for the tips.
Workflow that worked for me (might help others):
1. Make sure the little "hard drive" icon is active within iMovie (listing all hard drives where your events and projects are, on the left hand side). If you never had any events on the external hard drive you will see in the "tree" there but it will be empty.
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b. move all the events at once from Finder > Movies > iMovie Events >>> to the iMovie Events folder on your external hard drive's iMovie Events folder...
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HTH...

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============================================================
Great question. I think the issue of backup is a important one, and one I always worry about since I have a lot of video footage that is irreplaceable.
For back-up, it is helpful to define the risk you are trying to protect from.
For example,
1) risk of corruption in iMovie --> I use Time Machine
2) risk of hard drive failure --> I use SuperDuper! nightly for bootable backup) and Time Machine all the time
3) Risk of theft or fire --> offsite backup
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IMovie Hangs on startup if my external hard drive is switched on.

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