My iTunes ext/int drive question a little more clear:

How do you fully restore a back up of itunes? i have one fully saved on an external drive called 'backup' and it was from february, but i have only added some cd's since then, so they can be re-added later. So how do i clear what is in my internal harddrive itunes (which has a double library...half of them have the exclamation point/file not found...some set of itunes is taking up space on my internal but it says its also taking it from the external, hence the 'double library' issure) and fully restore the february back up of itunes that i have saved in the external drive? please help! any ideas are welcome

Thank you for your time and help guys,.... to check the path i use to have, i select a song with the ! mark, and comand I to get hte info and inone of the info tabs, you can see where the file was located at,... and i realice i had a missing space in the folder name where my music was. Made the change, restarted itunes and the problem was fixed.
Thank you !

Similar Messages

Itunes & external hard drive questions "original file could not be found"

I recently got my first apple, a Powerbook G4, and I am trying to figure out how to store and access my music files that are on my external hard drive. I have some music stored on my laptop and the majority of it on the hard drive. I can play the files on my computer's hard drive(itunes finds them), but the files on the external hard drive will not play, unless i seek it out manually. The message says "the song could not be played because the original file couldn't be found. Would u like to locate it" My question is how to get the files in my library to play when they are stored on my external hard drive. Any advice would be appreciated.

There's something missing in your explanation. If you're getting the "original file..." message, that would indicate that you may have had all your music files on your laptop drive at one point and them moved some of them to the external drive without using the proper procedure.
If you don't have a lot of playlists, star ratings, and that sort of information that you're trying to preserve, then Mike's suggestion is an easy way out. If you do have a lot of that kind of information, then you may need to see if you can restore your setup to its former condition, when it was all working, and then use proper procedures to move files to the external drive or whatever it was that you were trying to do.

Moving All Pictures to Ext Hard Drive Question

I'm about to upgrade my mac mini to a SSD and will not have enough room for all my Aperture 3 pictures (approx. 140GB).
I also want to take the opportunity to do a clean install of Lion so I'm doing a thorough spring clean rather than create a clone copy.
I have an external firewire drive where I'd like to place my entire Aperture 3 library and keep it there.
I assume that I simply copy the 'Aperture Library' file found in my Documents folder over to the new drive?
Then I reinstall Aperture and 'point' it to the new library location in the Preferences.
Is that correct - no other files to copy across?

That's what i'd do too.
Just to be dead sure, highlight your library in Aperture and go to Menu >> File >> Locate Reference Files - to m ake sure there are none. If there are such files, then you have some cleaning and reimporting on your hands before you migrate.
CorkyO2 wrote:
If you are running a managed library (the default) where all masters are inside the library package, then yes; copying the library to the new drive is correct.
After reinstalling Aperture, you can then either point to the new library in preferences, or simply double-click the library icon to load it (which also sets it as the default library).
Note - if you have any referenced masters, then the process is a bit more complicated.
I've moved my library due to SSD install as well and had to clean up and reload a few referenced pics.

Moved iTunes library to an ext hard drive to make space on my int drive... Followed steps from apple. Now I cannot access my music... It says: "File could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?"

Moved iTunes library to an ext hard drive to make space on my int drive... Followed steps from apple. Now I cannot access my music... It says: "File could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?"
I moved my iTunes library to my external hard drive some time ago and I followed the directions listed here on the apple support page. It did copy my library and now is on my hard drive... I can open iTunes and use it to sync all of my devices but I would like to play my music... I can see all of my music files but can not play them if I click on an album or song it says the following: "(file name) could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?" I click locate but do not know where to go from there? I need a way to access all files and not to hunt down one at a time on my hard drive... I am pretty sure I deleted the original library to make space on my internal drive which was the reason for moving it. I have tried and tried to fix it and do not have a lot of time to do so with a one and two year old at my house who do not like it whenI sit down at my computer. What to do??? Any help is much appreciated!!!

See Make a split library portable. Move all of the bits of the library together in the the correct shape and it should work. Or undo exactly what you did and then start over.
If you're a former Windows user don't try merging two folders together that have the same name by dropping one into the same folders as the other, as that goes badly on a Mac.
tt2

My MacBook Pro hard drive crashed a little while ago and has been replaced. Is it possible to take tunes from iPod Classic and transfer all of them back to iTunes on computer?

My MacBook Pro hard drive crashed a little while ago and has been replaced. Is it possible to take tunes from iPod Classic and transfer all of them back to iTunes on computer? Is this just for purchased tunes or can I do it for ones that have been burned from CD's as well? Thanks for any help!

[Zevoneer's detailed instructions on getting music off an iPod|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9053179]
[Wired's How To: Get Your Music Off of Your iPod|http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_Your_Music_Off_of_Your_iPod]
[http://www.metaphoriclabs.com/articles/5-ways-to-copy-music-off-your-ipod-window s-mac-os-x/]
[Topic: Get music off iPhone|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11512841]
[Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305465]

ITunes can't "see" music on ext. hard drive....have to manually find

I have had my music/movie library (approx. 50gb) stored on an external hard drive and have been managing the music with iTunes for my iPod.
Now, for some reason, approx. 75% of my library has an exclamation point next to the song name on iTunes indicating that the song cannot be located.
Is there an easier way that manually searching file by file to show iTunes where these songs are located on the ext. hard drive?????
This would take hours and hours.
I am somewhat desperate and am hopeful that anyone with advice can't respond.
Thank you.

I don't know if you've already found a solution to this problem but this tends to happen to me when I forget to plug in the external hard drive before I open iTunes. What happens is that iTunes automatically creates a new iTunes Music folder in the iTunes folder of your Music folder (if you follow my drift). iTunes then looks for your music there;but it's not there because it's on your external drive. It then puts an exclamation mark against any music file that it can't find there. If you go to iTunes-preferences-advanced,click change,and change the iTunes Music folder location back to the folder on your external hard drive,or,if no folder,the hard drive itself,where the physical files are kept then iTunes should update its library and find them. If,of course,you've imported files while the iTunes Music folder is back in it's default position,they will have to be reimported.Make sure 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library' is ticked,drag them out of the default folder to the desktop,double click,iTunes will reimport them to the external hard drive.Trash the files from the desktop when they've been copied over. Of course,there may be a simpler way of doing this but it works for me. Hope this helps.

Using itunes to perm delete files from ext hard drive

hello. the ext hard drives that contain my music crashed some time ago, and most of the files were thankfully restored, but in a slightly messy fashion, so now there's a lot of duplicate files and folders.
the easiest way for me to clean this up would be through itunes, using the show duplicate songs feature, but i cant figure out how to clear a file from itunes and make that permanently delete the file from my external hard drive.
ive read some discussion in other forums about shift-delete vs ctrl-delete, but not enough consistent information to be convinced.
can anyone help me out here?
thanks in advance,
bob

Are you "clearing" songs from a playlist or the Library?
To remove (send to Recycle bin) songs from a playlist and the library, select the song(s) and shift-delete them.
I've had the podcast problem once with a few podcasts a while ago. I 'solved' it by removing the duplicates. Some time later iTunes stopped duplicating.
Never discovered the actual cause. Sorry, can't help you with that one.
M

Importing music files from ext. hard drive to itunes

If I import all my music files (years of collections, unorganized about 90 Ggs some duplication) from ext. hard drive to itunes will itunes organize my music collection and be accessible?
what is the simplest way to transfer these files from ext. hard drive to itunes
Thanks

If I import all my music files (years of collections, unorganized about 90 Ggs some duplication) from ext. hard drive to itunes will itunes organize my music collection and be accessible?
Do you want it to do this?
You can leave it on the external and play it from iTunes. Nothing will be moved or organized. Everything will stay as it is.
Or you can leave it on the external and have iTunes organize it.
Or you can add it to iTunes and copy it to the internal and organize it.
what is the simplest way to transfer these files from ext. hard drive to itunes
This is two differnt things.
You can have these songs in iTunes and leave them on the external.

How do I restore my itunes from a ext hard driver?

I have followed the instuctions I have opened both dirves (PC and ext drive) went to Users/Username/music I did a drag drop the file on the ext hard drive told it to replace the one on my PC. I dont thnk its copying it dose it intantly it shows the correct size but nothing is there. I then helf the shift key as I started itunes and seleted choose but then it dosent show up to select.
What am I doing wrong/

If you connect an external hard drive with music, iTunes won't know the music exists there until you tell it. There are two simple ways to tell the application about the music. 1) Drag the folder(s) that contain music files onto the iTunes icon on the Dock or 2) select Add to Library from the File menu and then use the fileselector to select the drive with the music.

When I tried to backup itunes music folder- 15.1gig- to ext. hrd drive using drag

When I tried to backup itunes music folder - 15.1gig - to ext. hard drive using drag & drop, only 5.9gig transferred to the new folder. Tried again with same result. Any ideas?

Fast backup for iTunes library (Windows)
Grab SyncToy 2.1, a free tool from MS. This can be used to copy your entire iTunes library (& other important data folders) onto another hard drive or network share. You can then use SyncToy periodically to synchronise or echo your library to the backup. A preview will show which files need to be updated giving you a chance to spot unexpected changes and during the run only the new or updated files will be copied saving lots of time.
Unlike Windows copying routine, SyncToy won't need to copy files that have already been copied successfully again and if it has problems reading any specific files these will be listed as failures, but the rest of the files will get backed up rather than the process grinding to a halt.
If your media is all organised below the main iTunes folder then you should also be able to open the backup library on any system running the same version of iTunes, regardless of the drive letter or path it appears on.
tt2

I am considering purchasing a new Mac desktop. I have, at present, a Liteon 851S ext CD/DVD write and a Maxtor 3200 USB ext hard drive. Will these work with a Mac desktop? My local Apple store could not answer my question.Happy New year to all.

I am considering purchasing a new Mac desktop. I have, at present, a Liteon 851S ext CD/DVD write and a Maxtor 3200 USB ext hard drive. Will these work with a Mac desktop? My local Apple store could not answer my question.Happy New year to all.

Yes the Mac can read that drive but you would need to Copy the data off of it to the Mac as apposed to Move, which implies Deleting them from the drive as they were transferred from the external to the Mac. Since the Mac can Not Write to NTFS drives it can't Delete anything as that is really a Write operation, IE Making changes to the NTFS formatted drive.
Once you have that Data on Both your New Mac and you Older Windows PC you can format that drive to work on both system.
If you want to and plan on doing that post back and I'll explane how, it is simple but should be done on a Windows PC.
If you only plan on using it on the Mac from now on that is fairly simple also and is done on the Mac, Once you have the files from it stored on the Mac.
Yes you could burn those photos to DVD but that is just a waste of DVDs, you don't need to.

Followed cnet direct. to move itunes from c drive to ext. drive, worked, deleted off c, still worked, now says AVFoundationCF.dll not found-reinstall, don't want to lose data

I recently followed cnet directions to move itunes from c drive on pc running xp pro, to external drive, for space reasons. Process worked. I tunes ran from e drive, verified data on e drive, deleted all apple applications on c drive so I could remove itunes and recover space. Verified itunes still worked off of new short cut and and that target was e drive. Now itunes won't open and get message "AVFoundationCF.dll not found - reinstall", or "not installed correctly Error 7 (windows error 126) - reinstall." Tried download, install from apple.com for itunes on c drive, but message "library can't be read because it was created by a newer version of itunes." How do I fix this without losing all of our "material" saved on the itunes program?

Thank you for the reply, but so far no go. I tried through control panel and add remove programs with repair option as suggested but got error..."C:\programs......AppleAplicationSupport.msi cannot be found." This was after I have done new download and install of itunes to the c drive. I have not taken any steps to try use that down load or reload any material on it. I changed path to external drive an folder, E:\ itunes and got the "error not valid installation package." Still looking for answers...

I-tunes on ext. hard drive

I would lie to free up space on my hard drive. A friend said his girls have their music on an ext. hard drive. I bought one and was able to copy the I-Tunes folder to the hard drive. Using windows I was able to hold the shift key while pressing start-Itunes-itunes and the window came up to create or choose a library. Here is the question, What do I do from here? Do I have to create a library first and then choose it? If so how do I do that? My ultimate goal being to have I-tunes open it's library on the ext. hard drive and I want to remove the hard drive that is currently on my lap top. Someone please help, and thank you in advance. JAY

hi, i'm having the same issue.
I followed itunes help and moved my entire library (20 gigs worth of stuff) to my lacie external hard drive. I opened up preferences and selected where I want itunes to find all my music, and itunes can't find any of my music. i'm having to manually select each song from my external hard drive right now, and that is taking FOREVER. I tried several different things, like consolidate library, and I tried messing around in itunes preferences, but nothing. any help would be greatly appreciated, as my macbook only has 60gb of space and i'd like to keep it as free as possible.
thank you!

Can't install iTunes on C drive because it crashed on F drive

I have an external hard drive that I added around Christmas time. I am using Windows XP. I made a HUGE mistake a few days ago. I was using iTunes (which I'd switched to my new "F" drive to free up space on my "C" drive) when it froze on me. The external hard drive started to get hot and in my haste to close iTunes I accidentally chose to end the process (NOT the application) using Task Manager. After doing that my computer now no longer seems to recognize my external hard drive at all (except as a USB "mass storage device") and even though I've deleted everything I can find that's related to iTunes and Quicktime on my C-drive I still can't download iTunes! I get the error message: "Invalid Drive: F:\" I have tried everything I can think of, short of taking the stupid ext. hard drive to a professional that I'll have to PAY (which I really HATE to do since I've always been able to figure things out using advice found on the internet). I've tried using the Device Manager, I've tried using Computer Management. I've tried all the unplugging, replugging, and restarting my computer. What I really want is for someone to tell me how to get around this "Invalid Drive: F:\" problem. We have thousands of songs and use iTunes constantly. I need to find a way to bring it back!!! Please help if you can! Thanks

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1926

USBvsFWvsSATA Ext. Drives - The Comprehensive(?) Guide!

Maybe not the most comprehensive, but I see this topic come up over and over again. Hopefully this will answer pretty much everyone's questions. AFAIK everything here is pretty accurate, but I'm not perfect, so do your own research!
OK, before we begin, you must understand that the fastest any drive will work will be the slowest spot in the chain (generally the platters, or the physical interface). If you put a SATAII drive in a USB 1.1 enclosure, not only will the drive simply crawl, but you have wasted a great deal of money! So, let's look at the specs of interfaces, then the drives, and then put it all together.
These numbers are averages, and sometimes educated guesses. So not all here is set in stone. A lot of the numbers are gleaned from www.storagereview.com - a great site for drive benchmarking, etc.
First we need to understand the difference between burst speed and sustained throughput. Burst is just what it sounds like. Just a quick burst of data. Sustained throughput is what really matters in drives. This is actually how fast data can move to and from the drive continuously. Streaming video, copying of large files, etc. all rely on *sustained throughput*. This is the benchmark that matters, not burst.
Most drive speeds are shown as the actual interface speed (the speed with which data can be moved from the controller & cache to the interface on the PC). This speed is fast because it is all electronic transfer. However, the actual drive speed is slower because the platters, etc. all have moving parts, and are slower than the interface speed. Also, this "extrenal transfer rate" has almost NOTHING to do with the capabilities of the drive itself. It is simply the FASTEST link in the chain (pure electronic transfer), & therefore what the marketing folks like to use. The drives internal characteristics are what limits its performance.
Disk Platters --(STR)--> Cache --(ETR)--> IDE interface on your PC mobo.
Lets look at the external transfer rates (ETR) compared to the real world sustained throughput (STR) rates:
- USB 1.1 - so slow, don't even think about it.
- USB 2.0 - 480Mbps = 52MBps. This is BURST ETR. Sustained Throughput is MUCH slower. According to Storage Review once you take away the overhead of converting data from IDE or SATA to USB, the USB protocol, etc. USB gives you an effective sustained throughput of around 26MBps, or 208mbps. A far cry from 480 burst that USB 2.0 claims. And that is the maximum. Now you need to find a drive that performs as close to that maximum as possible...
- FW400 - 400mbps = 50MBps - this speed, however, is sustained throughput. IOW, even though the numbers are smaller than USB 2.0 (400 vs 480) a FW400 drive is going to be a lot faster. How much faster? Well, not as much as you'd expect. IIRC the actual sustained throughput of a FW400 drive (remember there is overhead) is in the neighborhood of 35MBps, not 50MBps. THis is the speed of actual data streaming from the drive to the PC/laptop, after overhead. 35+MBps.
- FW800 - 800mbps - 100MBps - I don't have any actual numbers for this. If FW400 is doing 35MBps, then I would guess that FW800 is somewhere between 70MBps & 80MBps (if your drive is fast enough to pump data out that quickly!). FW800 would be a little more than twice FW400 (well, theoretically at least) because you only have to subtract the overhead once, not twice. Now, IDE drives, no matter what the interface, are not going to give you sustained throughput this fast, but it does have advantages as we will see with SATA over FW400.
-eSATA - 1.5Gbps = 187.5MBps - In the real world, SATA drives (15k and 10krpm ones no less) will give you somewhere close to 80-90MBps sustained throughput. Not the 187 theoretical limit.
- IDE/ATA/33 = 33MBps or 264mbps - In the real world, sustained throughput from these drives is going to run around the 23-26MBps mark.
- IDE/ATA/66 = 66MBps or 528mbps - In the real world there is almost NO difference in speeds between ATA33 and ATA66 drives. Many times a 7200rpm ATA33 drive can outperform a 5400rpm ATA66 drive. Often times when you see benchmarks showing much better ATA66 performance over ATA33 performance the reason is that the ATA33 drive is a 5400rpm drive, and the ATA66 drive is a 7200rpm drive!
- IDE/ATA/100/133 - There is very little throughput advantage to these either. They do come in faster rpms. In fact the difference is so negligible, that at one point IBM called their ATA100 drives "ATA66+"
SO then, what is the point of ATA100 over ATA33 then? Well if the data that you need is *already in the cache* of your drive, then it will move from the cache to your PC mobo at the ETR speed of 100MBps (in the case of ATA100). This situation is such a small percentage of the requests for data made to a disk, that when you average it out, the results are negligible.
All of this being said, at times it can be a waste to put an ATA100 drive into an ATA33 mobo. For one thing, ATA100 drives are more expensive. For another thing, on those rare occassions where the data you want IS in the drives cache, it can't move it to the PC at 100MBps, it can only do 33MBps.
So, what makes a drive faster? The bottleneck is getting data from the platters to the cache. So, a faster rotational speed will get the data there faster. If you have a 5400rpm ata33 drive, lets say it's getting data to the cache at 20MBps. Now get a 7200rpm version of the same drive, and you may get data at an STR of 26MBps. Both drives are ATA33, and both drives are identical sizes. That 7200rpm ata33 drive can easily be faster than a 5400rpm ata100 disk. Of course different drives have different performance specs... Not all 100GB 5400rpm drives are alike, as we will see at the very end of this post!
OK, so a summary at this point:
Interfaces
=======
USB 2.0 = ~26MBps (real world STR)
FW400 = ~35MBps
FW800 = ~80MBps (educated guess)
eSATA = somewhere in the 100MBps I would guess I have not seen any SATA interface benchmarks, though I have seen SATA drive benchmarks
Drive Interfaces
===========
NOTE: with drives there is a range. The higher speeds in the range are generally the 15krpm and the 10krpm drives, at least in my SATA numbers.
ATA33 = 23-26MBps
ATA66 = 23-26MBps
ATA100 & 133 = 23-26MBps
SATA = ~70-90+MBps
So, what drive and what interface to get? USB? FW400? Expresscard-FW800? Expresscard-eSATA? Well, it depends on what you wanna do, really. For streaming video editing, you need 3.6MBps per stream. Remember there will be additional overhead (possibly) on the drive. If you are streaming 2 video streams, each with 2 audio tracks, the drive has got to look that stuff up and stream it from the drive to your application. Hopefully you have a lot of RAM!
Remember that a 5400rpm desktop drive will be slower than a 5400rpm 2.5 laptop drive because the laptop drive is smaller so the same rpms with less physical space to search means faster access times. ALso remember that a 250Gig desktop drive will be slower than an 80Gig laptop drive. Smaller capacity drives are faster which is why you don't see real data warehouse raid servers running multiple 500Gig drives, but rather multiple 120Gig drives. So a 100Gig 7200rpm IDE drive can easily (again depending on the particular drive) smoke a 300Gig 5400rpm desktop drive, and even it's 7200rpm equivalent.
SO (by interface):
If your external hard drive is going to connect via USB (~26MBps) then you want a drive that can take full advantage of that. If you are just transferring data for backups, or copying files back & forth, then any old IDE drive will be just fine. If you are doing video and want to maximize your performance, you want to use as much of that 26MBps bandwidth as possible. Get a 7200rpm IDE drive. A 5400rpm may suffice (again not all 5400rpm drives are equal as I will point out shortly). SO how fast is a 7200rpm drive via USB going to be as compared to a desktop drive? It will be at least on par with any 5400rpm desktop drive, and possibly on par with many 7200rpm desktop drives. See becnhmarks taken from storagereview.com at the end of this post for a limited laptop<->desktop comparison.
Now, if you want to connect via FW400, you want to maximize that 35+MBps bandwidth, right? What are your options? a 7200rpm IDE drive, or a 5400rpmSATA drive (a 7200rpmSATA drive for FW400 is a complete waste of money at this point). So you can get 26MBps from the 7200rpm IDE (wasting only about 9MBps), or MUCH higher from the SATA. The problem is that even if you are getting say 70MBps from a 2.5" external SATA drive (which would likely have to be a 7200rpm drive), you are still limited by the 35+MBps speed of the FW400 connection. You can spend a lot more money and max out that 35MBps w/ SATA, or get slightly lower performance with a 7200rpm IDE drive. THese days, the SATAs are as cheap and in some cases cheaper than the equivalent sized 7200 IDE drives. However, there are caveats (see below) that may make you think twice about getting that SATA over the 7200rpm IDE! Oh, and 7200rpm IDEs are getting faster STRs all the time.
FW800. Basically the same arguements as with FW400. Here's the thing.... why get the FW800 expresscard unless it's REALLY cheap? For about the same price you can get an eSATA expresscard and get better performance (how much is up for debate). Personally I would not even think about FW800. It would be either USB/FW400 on the lower-end, or eSATA on the higher end. FW800 for IDE drives is a waste. Use the internal FW400 port if you can.
eSATA - well, you have no choice. You HAVE to get a SATA hard drive. SImple!
CAVEATS:
Here's the thing. WIth 2.5" drives, IDE drive can operate off of USB bus power. SATA drives often need an external power source. The USB spec only outputs up to 500 or 600 milliamps of power via USB. This is fine for many SATA drives when it comes to reads & writes. However, many require more power for spinup. The Hitachi low power 5k100 SATA drive requires up to 1 amp (1000 milliamps) of power at spinup. The hitachi rep told me that his drive may work on USB power, but running the drive through it's paces would likely need an external (plug into the wall) power source. This is a low power SATA drive too.
Now, if you are going to plug into the wall ANYWAY, then why not just go ahead and get a 3.5" enclosure? For the same price of a 100GB 2.5" SATA drive, you can get a 300GB 3.5" SATA drive! The 3.5" SATA enclosures are a lot cheaper than the 2.5 ones as well.
IDE drives require less power than SATA and can be powered off of the USB port (2.5" drives only - all desktop drives will require AC power!)
CAVEAT #2:
Do you plan to boot windows off of this drive (using the BootCamp windows install hack that allows you to have a small 5Gig windows partition on your Mac for bootstrapping Windows, and where the rest of the windows files are installed to the external drive)? If this is your goal, then Firewire is NOT an option for you!. Windows will NOT boot off of a firewire drive. It will boot off of a USB drive (with the aforementioned hack), or eSATA (w/o the hack).
==========
CONCLUSION
==========
So, I think the best options boil down to the degree of freedom and mobility that you want. If you want a truly portable drive that is not tethered to a wall outlet, then you MUST use an IDE drive, and not SATA. Given the 26MBps real world STR of IDE, and the similar max STR of USB 2.0, this combo makes the most sense. IF you are using your USB ports for other stuff, you can get a FW400 enclosure, or a USB/FW enclosure. FW/USB combo enclosures run around 50% more in price than USB 2.0 only enclosures (iow, about $10 more). And there is not much use in using FW400 unless you have a 7200rpm IDE drive, AND you can't boot from a FW drive if you wanted that option.
If you don't mind being tethered to a wall, I think the best solution for the money is to get a 3.5" SATA enclosure so you can get a much larger drive for your money. It's your choice whether you want to buy a FW800 or eSATA expresscard (I would pick eSATA - no SATA to FW conversion overhead). If you don't want to spend the $100 or whatever on an expresscard, get an external SATA enclosure that is both SATA to eSATA and SATA to FireWire. Again, booting off of Firewire is not an option (at least not for Windows).
====
P.S.
====
One last point: Not all drives are alike!
Quick and simple point... 2 virtually identical 2.5" 7200rpm drives from different manufacturers can perform very differently.
Take a look at the SR High-end DriveMark2006 scores for the following drives (Higher is better):
Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 (100GB, 2.5", 7200rpm, IDE) = 413
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 (100GB, 2.5", 7200rpm, IDE) = 366
Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (100GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 332
Hitachi Travelstar 5k100 (100GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 326
Western Digital Scorpio WD800VE (80GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 287
What this means is that the Seagate 5400rpm is almost as fast as the Seagate 7200rpm drive, with the Hitachi 5k100 neck & neck! The WD 5400rpm drive, however, is noticably slower.
How does this compare to other drives?
The same test performed on high-end desktop drives (these were the ones that scored the lowest - there were some amazingly fast drives - they are also expensive drives)
Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 Desktop Mode (300GB, 3.5", 10000rpm, Ultra320 SCSI) = 412 (that is SLOWER than the Hitachi travelstar 7k100 IDE drive!!!)
Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 Server Mode (300GB, 3.5", 10000rpm, Ultra320 SCSI) = 410
Hitachi Deskstar 7k400 w/ TCQ (400Gb, 3.5", 7200rpm, SATA) = 392 (Hitachi's own notebook drive beats the SATA in these benchmarks!)
Seagate Savvio 10k.1 Server Mode (74GB, 3.5", Ultra320 SCSI) = 375
Hitachi Ultrastar 10k300 (300GB, 3.5", Ultra320 SCSI) = 369
(look at www.storagereview.com for the bench marks and an explanation of this particular benchmark.)
This means that those IDE notebook drives are pretty fast drives, and can even keep up with some SATA and Ultra320 SCSI desktop/server drives! Unfortunately I could not find STR numbers for the laptop drives on storagereview.com or any other location. If anyone knows of another site, I would love to see the results.
-Brain21
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

So, which FW400 portable drive (brand & model) would
you personally recommend?
Regards,
Neither!
Actually, I am going to be booting Windows from a 5Gig internal (bootcamp) partition and the OS files will reside on the external drive. This limits me to SATA & USB.
I am going to get a USB 2.0 enclosure and get one of those 4 drives mentioned at the end of the article (Hitachi TravelStar 5k100 & 7k100 & the Seagate Momentus 5400 and/or 7200rpm drives). That will be my "mobile" solution.
Then, I'm going to find a SATA enclosure (3.5") that does eSATA and FW. I'll clone my mobile drive onto that (well, at least the windows install). I'll run FW400 until prices for the eSATA cards come down to the $50 range (the cards are already there - well one brand is, but there are no mac drivers for it, just windows... so maybe that cheap one will work for me...)
Don't know what brand & size 3.5 drive I'm gonna get.
As for the enclosures, there is something that I don't know that much about. How much of a difference do the chipsets on these things really make a difference? Oxford is the only chipset that I know by name, but I am going to stay away from those. I saw a recording studio lose thousands of dollars worth of recorded time (that they had to refund) because the oxford chipset on their external HDD died and took the drive with it. When I took it to a data recovery specialist friend of mine and told him what happened his first question was "Oxford chipset?" I'm sure that they are much improved now over 2 years ago, but I don't want to take any chances.
Brain21

My iTunes ext/int drive question a little more clear:

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