Poor performance with External Drive

I am using FCE with a 1TB external drive (FW 800) as the scratch and file disk. I have been having some erratic transfer rates to/from the drive during editing sessions, playback within FCE, as well as play back of QT movies generated by FCE.
I have searched through the forum and really didn't find any thoughts on specific firewire problems of this nature. The drive seems to do fine during some standardized tests and can get up to 50 MB/sec. However, during editing and playback in FCE, sometimes it's that high for bursts, and sometime no transfer for a minute or so. Plays havoc with workflow!
Do the brilliant minds here have any thoughts/suggestions?! (I've contacted OWC and their recommendation was a new cable; tried and no better performance)
TIA.

The problem is you are using the same drive for Time Machine and active storage.
You should be using a dedicated drive for Time Machine and a separate drive for active uses such as editing with FCE. Even then, you should turn Time Machine OFF while you are working in FCE or iDVD.
In addition, your system HD is at the point where you need to free up space. According to you it's a 160GB drive and you have about 40GB left. That's about as full as you want to let it get. As it fills up even more your overall system performance will degrade further, esp. if you are doing video.

Similar Messages

Poor Performance with Fairpoint DSL

I started using Verizon DSL for my internet connection and had no problems. When Fairpoint Communications purchased Verizon (this is in Vermont), they took over the DSL (about May 2009). Since then, I have had very poor performance with all applications as soon as I start a browser. The performance problems occur regardless of the browser - I've tried Firefox (3.5.4), Safari (4.0.3) and Opera (10.0). I've been around and around with Fairpoint for 6 months with no resolution. I have not changed any software or hardware on my Mac during that time, except for updating the browsers and Apple updates to the OS, iTunes, etc. The performance problems continued right through these updates. I've run tests to check my internet speed and get times of 2.76Mbps (download) and 0.58Mbps (upload) which are within the specified limits for the DSL service. My Mac is a 2GHz PowerPC G5 runnning OSX 10.4.11. It has 512MB DDR SDRAM. I use a Westell Model 6100 modem for the DSL provided by Verizon.
Some of the specific problems I see are:
1. very long waits of more than a minute after a click on an item in the menu bar
2. very long waits of more than two minutes after a click on an item on a browser page
3. frequent pinwheels in response to a click on a menu item/browser page item
4. frequent pinwheels if I just move the mouse without a click
5. frequent messages for stopped/unresponsive scripts
6. videos (like YouTube) stop frequently for no reason; after several minutes, I'll get a little audio but no new video; eventually after several more minutes it will get going again (both video and audio)
7. response in non-browser applications is also very slow
8. sometimes will get no response at all to a mouse click
9. trying to run more than one browser at a time will bring the Mac to its knees
10. browser pages frequently take several minutes to load
These are just some of the problems I have.
These problems all go away and everything runs fine as soon as I stop the browser. If I start the browser, they immediately surface again. I've trying clearing the cache, etc with no improvements.
What I would like to do is find a way to determine if the problem is in my Mac or with the Fairpoint service. Since I had no problems with Verizon and have made no changes to my Mac, I really suspect the problem lies with Fairpoint. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.

1) Another thing that you could try it is deleting the preference files for networking. Mac OS will regenerate these files. You would then need to reconfigure your network settings.
The list of files comes from Mac OS X 10.4.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8185915#8185915
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10718694#10718694
2) I think it is time to do a clean install of your system.
3) It's either the software or an intermittent hardware problem.
If money isn't an issue, I suggest an external harddrive for re-installing Mac OS.
You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer.
I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.
I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.
The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.
Has everything interface:
FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'
save a little money interface:
FireWire 400 + USB 2.0
This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATAFW800_FW400USB
Here is an external hd enclosure.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/
Here is what one contributor recommended:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10452917#10452917
Folks in these Mac forums recommend LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Here is a list of recommended drives:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5564509#5564509
FireWire compared to USB. You will find that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 when used for a external harddrive connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniversalSerial_Bus#USB_compared_toFireWire
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storageexternal.html

Non jdriver poor performance with oracle cluster

Hi,
we decided to implement batch input and went from Weblogic Jdriver to Oracle Thin 9.2.0.6.
Our system are a Weblogic 6.1 cluster and an Oracle 8.1.7 cluster.
Problem is .. with the new Oracle drivers our actions on the webapp takes twice as long as with Jdriver. We also tried OCI .. same problem. We switched to a single Oracle 8.1.7 database .. and it worked again with all thick or thin drivers.
So .. new Oracle drivers with oracle cluster result in bad performance, but with Jdriver it works perfectly. Does sb. see some connection?
I mean .. it works with Jdriver .. so it cant be the database, huh? But we really tried with every JDBC possibility! In fact .. we need batch input. Advise is very appreciated =].
Thanx for help!!
Message was edited by mindchild at Jan 27, 2005 10:50 AM
Message was edited by mindchild at Jan 27, 2005 10:51 AM

Thx for quick replys. I forget to mention .. we also tried 10g v10.1.0.3 from instantclient yesterday.
I have to agree with Joe. It was really fast on the single machine database .. but we had same poor performance with cluster-db. It is frustrating. Specially if u consider that the Jdriver (which works perfectly in every combination) is 4 years old!
Ok .. we got this scenario, with our appPage CustomerOverview (intensiv db-loading) (sorry.. no real profiling, time is taken with pc watch) (Oracle is 8.1.7 OPS patch level1) ...
WL6.1_Cluster + Jdriver6.1 + DB_cluster => 4sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Jdriver6.1 + DB_single => 4sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora8.1.7 OCI + DB_single => 4sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora8.1.7 OCI + DB_cluster => 8-10sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora9.2.0.5/6 thin + DB_single => 4sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora9.2.0.5/6 thin + DB_cluster => 8sec
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora10.1.0.3 thin + DB_single => 2-4sec (awesome fast!!)
WL6.1_Cluster + Ora10.1.0.3 thin + DB_cluster => 6-8sec
Customers rough us up, because they cannot mass order via batch input. Any suggestions how to solve this issue is very appreciated.
TIA
>
>
Markus Schaeffer wrote:
Hi,
we decided to implement batch input and went fromWeblogic Jdriver to Oracle Thin 9.2.0.6.
Our system are an Weblogic 6.1 cluster and a Oracle8.1.7 cluster.
Problem is .. with the new Oracle drivers ouractions on the webapp takes twice as long
as with Jdriver. We also tried OCI .. same problem.We switched to a single Oracle 8.1.7
database .. and it worked again with all thick orthin drivers.
So .. new Oracle drivers with oracle cluster
result in bad performance, but with
Jdriver it works perfectly. Does sb. see someconnection?Odd. The jDriver is OCI-based, so it's something
else. I would try the latest
10g driver if it will work with your DBMS version.
It's much faster than any 9.X
thin driver.
Joe
I mean .. it works with Jdriver .. so it cant bethe database, huh? But we really
tried with every JDBC possibility!
Thanx for help!!

Finder crashes with External Drive on Sleep Mode

I purchased my new iMac 21,5" less than a week ago, and I haven't had a problem with it except for one that it's been bugging me a lot.
I have a LaCie 1TB Quadra d2 external drive that I use to store footage (since it's HD, the filesize won't fit in my 500TB internal hard drive), but I noticed that sometimes when LaCie external drive enters in Sleep Mode, the Finder freezes and the only two ways around this, is to force reboot, because the Finder won't answer and won't open again, or unplugging the external drive without ejecting him first, which it's not safe for me to do, because I'm afraid of hurting the device, and the files in it are pretty important.
This happens almost everytime, especially after a long time on sleep mode. I usually leave Final Cut Pro transferring files all night (since it takes a long time) so I kinda need the sleep mode, but when I wake up, Finder and Final Cut Pro won't answer.
I updated to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on day one. Is there a way to fix this? Is it normal? I read somewhere that some users were having trouble with external drives on Sleep Mode, but I can't seem to find any further information about this problem.
Thanks!

I've got a MacBook Pro 13.3" that's a little over a month old, with a LaCie 1TB LaCie d2 Quadra with USB 3.0, #301542U and I'm suffering the same problems and a few others with it. I've got a partition on it set up as my Time Machine backup drive. I've turned off the Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in the Energy Saver preferences but I'm still having the sleep problem with it. According to the LaCie Manual:
By default, your drive will enter Eco Mode after 30 minutes of inactivity in order to conserve energy. To exit Eco Mode, simply access data on the drive and the disk will automatically restart. You can manage this feature using LaCie Desktop Manager. Click the Eco tab.
The LaCie Desktop Manager (in my case) only takes me to the Energy Saver Preferences in OS X to adjust the time there. Turning off Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible doesn't seem to make any difference, the drive still goes to sleep after 30 minutes. However, after 15 minutes the drive seems to wake back up, but then during the next 15 minutes goes comatose (no power light). Sometimes it will go through multiples of these sleep wake cycles without going into a coma, but eventually it does go into a coma. This happens in between hourly Time Machine backups.
After locking up Finder, Disk Utility and Time Machine multiple times trying to access the drive in this state I figured out that I could cycle the power switch to regain use of it (with a Finder warning of course) but this will only lead to file corruption eventually and I shouldn't have to resort to this. I've also dismounted it, expecting it to turn off and instead it goes into an extended spin down cycle (rapidly flashing light) and never turns off (or goes to sleep or what ever it's supposed to do) and once again requires turning the power switch off.
This is just too unpredictible and unrelable for me and as soon as I get the opportunity to do a 7 pass erase I'll be returning to the place of purchase. Based on the reviews of other external hard drives a drive from another company doesn't look to be much better of a prospect so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Serious problems after Mavericks installation with External Drive Lacie P9220.

Experiencing serious problems after Mavericks installation with External Drive Lacie P9220 1TB. Mac Finder totally locked!
I had to format the External hard drive with a Windows PC (fat32), then format again with my IMac (mac Journal.) and hopefully restored data from time machine backup.
So far so good but system looks unstable. Some software were not able to write on the hard drive.Some strange things happens. With Mountain Lion never had an even minor issue.
I read many discussion regarding problems with WD, just wondering if anyone had the same problems with Lacie and if there is any tip to solve the
problem.
Many thanks.
Marco

Thanks very much for your reply.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a solution because the article refers to whom have configured the drive with included software and drivers that came with the drive.
This is not my case, I never used any third party soft ...only OS X disk utility ...
best
marco

IMac won't boot with external drives attached

I am using iMac 27" Late 2013 model upgraded to mavericks 10.9.4. Two external drives are always attached with it, one is segate 3.5" 2TB USB 3.0 drive and another one is 2.5" usb 2.0 drive.
when i start my imac with external drives attached it won't boot up. Stuck at plain white screen after a startup chime, not even any apple logo or any progress circle appears. And i have to detach all of my drives to make it boot.
This problem arises after upgrading to mavericks. Already tried resetting PRAM, SMC and checked Startup disk and verify disk with disk utility.

Raja,
Do a SMC reset perhaps even a couple of times and see if that helps. Also in System Preferences + Startup Disk make sure the internal HD is selected.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.
Roger

Issues with external drive on Mac Mini / Lion

I'm using an external SATA drive in a Newer Technologies Voyager dock (which I like to call the "toaster") with a brand new Mac Mini i5 2.3G via FW800.
The drive was formatted using Disk Utility on a G4 running Tiger (10.4.11)
With the drive mounted, the Mini's performance seems to slow down, and it randomly dismounts the drive, with the usual warning, "you disconnected your drive without dismounting it first, bla bla...)
I think I remember when Leopard was new, there was a firmware issue that had to be dealt with, and when moving drives from OS 9 to X and back to 9, I lost access to the data on the drive.
I'm also aware of the partitioning scheme difference when formatting drives for use on the Intel machines.
Could either of the above have anything to do with the problem I'm having here?

I'm not an expert in this, but as far as I know, GUID only comes into play if you want to boot from it, but...... you never know, it could - here is an excerpt from Disk Utility:
If you’ll be using the disk only with Mac computers, choose GUID Partition Table.
Another thought is: how old is that drive? All hard drives fail sooner or later - have you tried to check it with Disk Utility or something like Disk Warrior?

10.9.4 iMac hangs at desktop with external drive connected, thunderbolt or USB3.

When I boot my late 2012 27" iMac (fusion drive, 16GB) with an external drive either USB or Thunderbolt the machine hangs at the desktop, I have to disconnect the external drive and then it boots fine and seemingly works fine.
It was happening with the USB 3 drive so I thought it might be failing so I bought a new Thunderbolt G-Drive and it hangs with that too.
Any ideas greatly appreciated

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.
Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a Fusion Drive or a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Does "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible) work with external drive

I have an external backup drive which I use for doing daily backups. I have set an iCal alarm daily to remind me to turn the hdd on at the right time.
When Time Machine comes along in a couple weeks, I am going to be leaving this drive on all the time while I'm working on my computer but was wondering if the energy savings mode of putting the hard drive to sleep applies to external USB drives as well? Would be nice to know that when I put my computer to sleep at the end of the day that my external drive also goes to sleep. I'm not sure if this has to be a function of the external box or if OS X can shut off the drive.
Any wisdom?

You can test this very easily:
The "Put the hard disk(S) to sleep when possible" default time is 10 minutes of inactivity.
Just leave your Mac alone for 10 minutes: you should hear both drives spinning down. If the external noise was not clear enough, you can then "wake it up" by double-clicking its icon on the desktop:
If it was spun down, you'll have to wait a couple of seconds or so, with the spinning colored beachball, while it is spinning up again.
Note that if you're performing a task that uses only you Mac's internal HD, the external should spin down while you're using your Mac. Then if double-clicking its icon shows the colored spinning beachball stalling, it's very clear it goes to sleep as intended.
Most of the external hard drives should be able to spin down, at least all my LaCie do it with no problem.

Performance with external display

Hello,
when I'm connecting my 19'' TFT to the MacBook the performance (with the same applications runnig) is realy bad. It tooks longer to switch between apps and if I don't use an app for some time, it can took up to 30 sec to "reactivate" the app.
Because the HD is working when I switch apps, it looks like the OS is swapping. My question: Would it help to upgrade the MacBook to 2GB ram? AFAIC the intel card uses shared memory.
Thanks for your help
Till
MacBook 1.83 GHz/1GB Mac OS X (10.4.8)

How much RAM do you have? Remember that the MB does not have dedicated VRAM like some computers do and that it uses the system RAM to drive the graphics chipset.
I use my MB with the mini-DVI to DVI adapter to drive a 20" widescreen monitor without any of the problems that you describe, but I have 2GB of RAM. If you only have the stock 512MB of RAM, that may be part of what you are seeing.

Poor performance with WebI and BW hierarchy drill-down...

Hi
We are currently implementing a large HR solution with BW as backend
and WebI and Xcelcius as frontend. As part of this we are experiencing
very poor performance when doing drill-down in WebI on a BW hierarchy.
In general we are experiencing ok performance during selection of data
and traditional WebI filtering - however when using the BW hierarchy
for navigation within WebI, response times are significantly increasing.
The general solution setup are as follows:
1) Business Content version of the personnel administration
infoprovider - 0PA_C01. The Infoprovider contains 30.000 records
2) Multiprovider to act as semantic Data Mart layer in BW.
3) Bex Query to act as Data Mart Query and metadata exchange for BOE.
All key figure restrictions and calculations are done in this Data Mart
Query.
4) Traditionel BO OLAP universe 1:1 mapped to Bex Data Mart query. No
calculations etc. are done in the universe.
5) WebI report with limited objects included in the WebI query.
As we are aware that performance is an very subjective issues we have
created several case scenarios with different dataset sizes, various
filter criteria's and modeling techniques in BW.
Furthermore we have tried to apply various traditional BW performance
tuning techniques including aggregates, physical partitioning and pre-
calculation - all without any luck (pre-calculation doesn't seem to
work at all as WebI apparently isn't using the BW OLAP cache).
In general the best result we can get is with a completely stripped WebI report without any variables etc.
and a total dataset of 1000 records transferred to WebI. Even in this scenario we can't get
each navigational step (when using drill-down on Organizational Unit
hierarchy - 0ORGUNIT) to perform faster than minimum 15-20 seconds per.
navigational step.
That is each navigational step takes 15-20 seconds
with only 1000 records in the WebI cache when using drill-down on org.
unit hierachy !!.
Running the same Bex query from Bex Analyzer with a full dataset of
30.000 records on lowest level of detail returns a threshold of 1-2
seconds pr. navigational step thus eliminating that this should be a BW
modeling issue.
As our productive scenario obviously involves a far larger dataset as
well as separate data from CATS and PT infoproviders we are very
worried if we will ever be able to utilize hierarchy drill-down from
WebI ?.
The question is as such if there are any known performance issues
related to the use of BW hierarchy drill-down from WebI and if so are
there any ways to get around them ?.
As an alternative we are currently considering changing our reporting
strategy by creating several higher aggregated reports to avoid
hierarchy navigation at all. However we still need to support specific
division and their need to navigate the WebI dataset without
limitations which makes this issue critical.
Hope that you are able to help.
Thanks in advance
/Frank
Edited by: Mads Frank on Feb 1, 2010 9:41 PM

Hi Henry, thank you for your suggestions although i´m not agree with you that 20 seconds is pretty good for that navigation step. The same query executed with BEx Analyzer takes only 1-2 seconds to do the drill down.
Actions
suppress unassigned nodes in RSH1: Magic!! This was the main problem!!
tick use structure elements in RSRT: Done it.
enable query stripping in WebI: Done it.
upgrade your BW to SP09: Has the SP09 some inprovements in relation to this point ?
use more runtime query filters. : Not possible. Very simple query.
Others:
RSRT combination H-1-3-3-1 (Expand nodes/Permanent Cache BLOB)
Uncheck prelimirary Hierarchy presentation in Query. only selected.
Check "Use query drill" in webi properties.
Sorry for this mixed message but when i was answering i tryied what you suggest in relation with supress unassigned nodes and it works perfectly. This is what is cusing the bottleneck!! incredible...
Thanks a lot
J.Casas

Best practices with external drives connected to Time Capsule?

I'm enjoying my new MBP but the storage limitations are a challenge with twenty+ years of data. I know it's not technically sanctioned by Apple but in another forum I found a discussion about successfully connecting an external drive to the Time Capsule. I tried this for a few months and had some problems, so I wonder if anyone here might have some insight into which of my drives would be best to use in this way and what, if anything, I must do to bless it for the task.
The drive most highly recommended in the forums at the time is the WD My Book. After buying it I learned that is Windows users install a package and update the driver for use with Time Machine, which Mac users are not able to do. The driver is available on the web but it's said to cause problems with Mountain Lion, which I can confirm. It's USB 3.0 and powered, though, which my two alternatives are not. It's also 2 TB and presently in two partitions. I also have a Seagate Free Agent GoFlex 500 which gets extremely hot with any use and an Iomega eGo Helium 500 I've been using for backups. Both are USB 2.0.
My goal is to put my iTunes Library and Time Capsule on the net (running 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz, averages 50Mbs). When I did this for a few months with the WD both its shares frequently dropped off my Desktop, as if powered down or something. Also there were the issues with Time Machine many others are having. Right now our video collection sits on the Time Capsule. Would it make sense to move our video to the WD and run iTunes and Time Machine on it? If so, do you have any tips for formatting, petitioning, or drivers (or anything else) to help this run smoothly? The WD works fine when hard-wired and the TC, too is fine without the WD at the party.
With apologies for the tome.

kevlee64 wrote:
Thanks, but the drive is connected directly to the back of the Time Capsule by an ethernet cable.
Ah, that's a different colored horse.
You have a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive, not a USB external drive connected to the USB port.
Many of those need software/firmware updates to work with Lion. Check with Iomega.

Windows XP Pro on MacBook Pro with 'external drive'!?

I don't want to load Windows XP Pro on the MBP ... it will take up too much space - I'm running Final Cut Studio and Logic Audio.
Can I put Windows XP Pro on a SEPARATE DRIVE, along with the few apps I want to use in Windows ... and then BOOT from that drive when I want to work in Windows?
And would there be something specific I have to watch out for?
Is there a good article somewhere about running Windows on the Mac Intel? That would help my technical guy create the bootable Windows\Mac Intel version external drive?
Thank you,
Ben

Thank you Blue,
I'm awaiting my new Final Cut Pro Studio Universal disks, and then my Logic Audio 'Universal' disk ... I don't think I'm going to have a lot of room to play with.
I'm already eyeing the 120 gig drive.
But, actually, I'm not sure I want to have Windows in any way connected to this computer. The idea makes me nervous.
All the best,
Ben

Can I edit one project on two computers with external drive and two copies of software?

I have two copies of premiere elements. One on IMac and one on Macbook. Video files on external drive. I want to be able to edit same project on both. I originally started the project on macbook but IMac doesn't see the exsisting project. Can I do this? thanks for the help

jazziegirl
Thanks for the follow up.
The matter of the sign in/trial version has happened to me from time to time with Premiere Elements (I worked with Windows). I supply
the requested information and that usually takes care of that message for a long while.
What is the status of the issue now with the MacBook Pro to iMac projects? Is that matter restricted to just one project from MacBook Pro to iMac?
If so, on this particular one, did you try the Project Archiver/Copy Project workflow in MacBook Pro?
As for the error message...I am not a Mac user, and consequently I am not sure I am interpreting the following correctly. But take a look to see if any of it applies
Have you looked at the permissions on your file?
USB tethering lost after installing iphone conf... | Apple Support Communities
iTunes 11.4 - All Things Apple | DSLReports Forums
"System extension cannot be used -- The system ... | VMware Communities
Please review and then let us know the outcome.
Thank you.
ATR

PC to Mac with external drive as main library

I recently switched from PC (Dell Inspiron) to Mac (MacBook) and am having some serious difficulties getting my iTunes to cooperate.
I used an external drive as my main iTunes library on my PC. I would like to continue doing this with my new Mac because my library is quite large. I know it is not as simple as pointing to the folder on the external HD from within the Mac. I have read all the posts out there and none of the address my issue specifically.
To reiterate, I currently am using an external HD with my PC that contains my iTunes library. I am now using my Macbook as my main computer and want to continue using the same external drive because my library is too large to import to the internal HD. How do I get the iTunes on my MacBook to read (point to?) the external drive where all of my media (music, podcasts, TV, Movies, Games, etc) reside without losing any information and/or files?
Please help...thanks!
Brian

I pretty much did the same thing (switched from PC to Mac) and had the same issue and this is how I set it:
go to preferences then click on the advanced tab, then on general
then for the folder just click 'change' and set it to be what your folder with all your music is on (on the external). I unchecked the 'copy files to itunes music folder...' as well (not sure this is needed, but didn't want to experiment it copying everything again)
then I went to File > Add to Library, selected the same folder and done. It will take a bit as it goes through the whole library. I guess after this you could go back to preferences and check that copy to itunes folder so any future additions get put on the external.
I hope that helps.

Poor performance with External Drive

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