My external hard drive seems to have a problem ?

movies played from my my external hard drive lag or either very slow, almost anything i open from my external lags, what does this mean ???but if i transfer them to my laptop and open them they work perfectly ! i tried to repair it but this happened .....

Streaming content from an external HD is always going to be slower than if the content is local on the SSD. Especially if you're using USB2 with hi-def content, it'll be even worse. For example, I had a 176GB copy of a 1080p movie that I tried to stream over USB2 and the movie was unplayable on my machine. It'd show 5-10 seconds of video, buffer, skip 8-10 seconds and then repeat the cycle.
Moving to FireWire 800, Thunderbolt of USB3 will definitely improve (if not completely eliminate) these problems. Otherwise for media that requires constant disk read access, you'll want to run it locally.

Similar Messages

I just need to know how you get an iTunes library off the original hard drive of a mac and onto an external hard drive and still have it work normally?

I just need to know how you get an iTunes library off the original hard drive of an imac and onto an external hard drive and still have it work as it normally would?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

I have an external hard drive that I have been using for years. All of a sudden my mac will not recognize the external as a "save as" device location. But the external does show up on my desktop and I can open it to drag and drop items. Help.

I have an external hard drive that I have been using for years. All of a sudden my mac will not recognize the external as a "save as" device location. But the external does show up on my desktop and I can open it to drag and drop items. What happened and how do I get my mac to rerecognize the device?!?!?

Hi,
Check Finder>Preferences>Sidebar, is it checked there to show external drives?

So i just got an 3T external hard drive and i have moved my itunes over to it successfully and have started using Time Capsule but is there a way to make things i download go directly to my external hard drive and not to my internal one?

i just got a 3T external hard drive and i have moved my iTunes over to it and i have started using time capsule but when i download things can i make the downloads go directly to my external hard drive? Or make my mac ask me where it should download it to?

just change the preferecnes for whatever app you're using to download the files to the external drive

If I've downloaded my music to an itunes library from an external hard drive and I have several duplicate songs, is there an easy way to delete the duplicate songs? Or, do I have to go through my entire library song by song to delete duplicates?

If I've downloaded my music to an itunes library from an external hard drive and I have several duplicate songs, is there an easy way to delete the duplicate songs? Or, do I have to go through my entire library song by song to delete duplicates?

In iTunes, File>Display Duplicates

I have a new computer and have all my music is on an external hard drive. I have the external hard drive connected to my computer. How do I get my music that is on my ipod to go to the itunes on the new computer.

I have a new computer and have all my music is on an external hard drive. I have the external hard drive connected to my computer. How do I get my music that is on my ipod to go to the itunes on the new computer.

What error message are you getting when you try to launch iTunes? (Precise text, please.)

HT3275 Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough

Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups. I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer. How can I erase old backups and complete this one?

Walter Goodman wrote:
Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't clear it up, how much data is on your Mac? If TM is only trying to back-up 34 GB, it should be able to delete old backups to do that (assuming you're running Lion).
It sounds like your backups may be corrupted. Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer.
If that's all you did, no.
How can I erase old backups and complete this one?
Just erase the drive per #1 or #2 of Using Disk Utility.

How can I move photos from pictures to my Iomega external hard drive? I have copied all photos, however it won't allow me to paste them. The paste button is grayed out.

How can I move photos from pictures to my external hard drive? I have copied all photos, however it won't allow me to paste the photos. The paste button is grayed out.

Do you want to copy some pictures to the external drive, or do you want to move your whole iPhoto library? The latter will free up hard drive space on your start up disk; the procedure is explained here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506
Note this is not the same as a Time Machine backup.
If on the other hand you want to copy some photos from one drive to another, you can just drag and drop them from one location to another. This is a true copy, the originals will remain intact.

Can I and if so, how do I move the whole of iTunes from my computer to my external hard drive? I have absolutely no space left on my computer and desperately need to free up space! Many thanks for help:)

How do I move iTunes completely off my computer and onto my external hard drive? I have no more space on my computer and need to free up space quickly! will iTunes work from external hard drive only? many thanks :)

With iTunes closed, copy (safer if you don't yet have a backup) or move the entire iTunes folder from <User's Music> to X:\ as X:\iTunes (where X is the drive letter of the external). Press and hold down shift as you click the icon to start iTunes, keep holding shift until asked to choose or create a library, click choose, then browse to and open X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl.
Note that changing the advanced preference for the media folder location doesn't change where iTunes expects to find existing content. Moving the library in the way outlined above however will work.
You should think about backing up your library to another external drive or network share.
tt2

How can i transfer a movie from mac to external hard drive? I have tried dragging but it is like my hard drive has a block on it?

How can i transfer a movie from mac book pro to external hard drive? I have tried dragging but it is like my hard drive has a block on it? Please help

brogand wrote:
Thanks for that, it was really helpful.
Glad to hear that worked for you. While formatting an external drive with a Mac format is best if it will be used only with a Mac, if the files on the drive have to be accessible to a PC also, it's possible to format it in an exFAT format, which both the Mac and a PC can read from and write to. However, if you do that, do the actual formatting while the external is connected to the PC.

My external hard drives seem to be mixed up in lr4 and I don't know how to fix them

My external hard drives seem to be mixed up in lr4 and I don't know how to fix them! Help!

The file opened and cropped in photoshop was a camera raw file?
In File>Save for Web pick Jpeg from the drop-down

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all. Can someone help?

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all, including the one in question. Can someone help?

Okay, I've sussed it. I saw a link to another discussion that hadn't turned up in any of my searches before I posted the question above.
My Tosh HDD was formatted to FAT 32 and therefore would not be backed up by Time Machine. I removed all data from it - nightmare as I hadn't enough space to put it on the macbook HDD, but, after trawling through numerous photos and deleting rubbish for hours, I finally made enough space and copied all data across. Then, after clearing the data from the Tosh HDD, I used disk utilitity to reformat it to Mackintosh OS Extended. Chose the option without kournalling because I'm not baking up onto this disk and so don't need it - according to some other discussions I found.
When it was done I check on time machine in system prefs and once I selected options, I was able to remove it from the excluded from backups list. Hey presto. Now I'm moving my photo library and my music library onto the Tosh HDD and my macbook should start to breath again. Hurray.

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.

My external hard drives seem to slow down my iMac

Hello,
I've encountered an odd situation in that the external hard drives I use to hold all of my files seem to slow down the performance of my iMac. I have two Lacie 1 tb externals plugged into my 2006 2.0 Ghz iMac with 2 gig of ram. I've had these two externals for about two months and for the same amount of time, any other item (ipod, card reader, thumb drive) I'd plug in would take several min to mount onto my computer. From there, the data transfer from my external or internal hard drive is slightly delayed and slower as well.
I unmounted these externals today and plugged in a thumb drive to test and it immediately mounted to my computer! I never thought an external could effect the mounting of other, smaller, externals!
I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this problem? My itunes music files are stored on my externals and I'm a photographer, so I'd need regular access to my externals to get to my pictures.
Thanks for all your help. I can usually find the answer to my problem by browsing around in discussions, but I find this situation to be a bit of a unique one!

kromedomio wrote:
Sorry, It's connected to my iMac via Firewire 400. I have the externals connected to each other via Firewire 800.
In regards to types of files, I have my itunes library, photo (Raw Canon 50d files), Adobe (photoshop, indesign, illustrator) and Word files all on the external. I basically moved everything off my internal and store it all on my external now, so I'm accessing it a lot through the day.
I'm wondering just why you did that. Surely you know that F/W 400 is much slower than your internal HD?
I'd be inclined to move things that involve heavy I/O during editing (photos and videos, especially) back to the internal. I suspect you'll see a large improvement.

How do I install Lion on external hard drive? I have purchased and downloaded through App Store but do not know where the download is located so I can install.

I want to install Lion on an external hard drive. The OS was purchased and downloaded through the App Store but I do not know where the file is.

If you downloaded the installer it will be in your applications folder. Failing that use spotlight start typing Install and it should show up.
This is assuming you downloaded the installer from the app store, and didn't just install it onto your mac. If all you have done is install it on your mac. Go to your purchases Lion should show up. Then click download.
Here is the Support page for installing osx on an external drive.
OS X: Installing OS X on an external volume - Apple Support
Hope this helps.
PJRS

My external hard drive seems to have a problem ?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for