Screen Lock When searching external hard drive?

Why would my screen be locking up when I try to access my external hard drive? It shows the folders contained in it, but won't let me scroll down to see the rest or open the folders when clicked on. when I try to use the menu at the top I just get the spinning wheel. I have to force quit to get back to my main hard drive, which works fine. I'm able to access the folders through lightroom so I feel like the hard drive is not at fault.. Any help or ideas would be greately appreciated

…and I suspect you want some clairvoyant or mind reader to guess all the details and specs of your setup?
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

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I downloaded several cds to my external hard drive in .mp3 format. Later, I copied them to iTunes. The songs only play when the external hard drive is plugged in. I tried to load the songs from iTunes to my iPhone and the songs don't play.

I downloaded several cds to my external hard drive in .mp3 format. Later, I copied them to iTunes. The songs only play when the external hard drive is plugged in. I tried to load the songs from iTunes to my iPhone and the songs don't play. I thought iTunes allowed me to transfer music to my iPhone and play it. What am I doing wrong?

Hi skoorb1,
When adding music to iTunes, you can set it to either make a local copy of the file, or simply point to the original location of the file (for example, on an external hard drive). If it is set to do the latter, it will not be able to play or transfer those files when the external hard drive is not plugged in. You may find the following article helpful:
iTunes: About the Add to Library, Import, and Convert functions
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1347
Regards,
- Brenden

How do I move a partition on my mac hard drive, to an external hard drive so that i can run windows when the external hard drive is connected

How do I move a partition on my mac hard drive, to an external hard drive so that i can run windows when the external hard drive is connected

Are you talking about a Bootcamp partition? You can't boot Windows from an external drive.

Itunes freezes when my external hard drive is plugged in

Awhile back, in the summer, I upgraded to the newest version of itunes, and ever since, itunes doesn't work when my external hard drive is plugged in (which contains most of my music). When I unplug it, it will play the music on my computer, but when it's plugged in, it won't work at all and only freezes. I reinstalled it, and then slowly started putting some music in from the external hard drive, and it worked, but after I put a bunch in it froze up again. I have no idea why this is happening, as it was never a problem before. SUGGESTIONS?!

Either use the startup key commands or use System Preferences>Startup Disk to select the external hard disk before you shut down.

ITunes Locking Up When Using External Hard Drive

Has anybody else had any trouble with ITunes locking up for about 30 seconds at a time. The music keeps playing but the cursor locks up and you can't click, use hot keys, etc. I'm using a 150GB external hard drive to store my music and while it's locked up the hard drive is crunching something, almost like ITunes is looking for something. All of my files are organized, no viruses or spy-ware that I can find. Doesn't happen with any other audio program, just ITunes. I've watched the CPU usage on Task Manager when it happens and the only thing that is running is ITunes. Please help!

I came across your post because, I have been having issues for a while with the same description, except that I am using separate partitions on my main drive.
What I noticed is that if I set my podcast downloads to go to my NTFS main partition, there is no lag... but the moment I set it to my FAT32 partition, the lag starts back up.
I believe that the issue is with the slooow write time to FAT32 in large drives. (And in my instance, the move command apple does to put the podcast, which writes to the FAT32 partition and removes the NTFS temp download) Do you see the same lag or alot shorter if the drive is formatted to NTFS?
I don't really have any space currently to format my partition to test the issue, but I the fact of the downloads speeding up when set to my NTFS main disk makes me think that this issue could be lessened by using FAT32.
a side note for me, I'm considering reformatting my drive to NTFS, after backing up due to the advancement of ntfs3g in linux, so this could solve my problem at least.

Grey 'rolling' screen when using external hard drive

Hi,
I have the mid 2009 MacBook, and recently started having issues when plugging my 500GB Seagate external hard drive into the usb ports. I plug it in, it shows up in finder with the name, but when I click on it to view the contents, the grey screen comes rolling down and asks me to hold down the power button to reboot.
I tried reinstalling Snow Leopard (I'm on 10.6.4) but it hasn't worked.
Would appreciate any ideas.

What are seeing is a kernel panic*:
http://www.macmaps.com/kernelpanic.html
Since it only happens when plugging in your external hard drive, it sounds like either there is a hardware issue with the ports, the drive has specific software that has not been tested with Snow Leopard for connecting the drive, or issue with the cables you are connecting with. Follow my tip for isolating your issue.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Searching external hard drive attached to Time Capsule

I have a 1 TB Time Capsule which I use for backing up my 2011 MacBook Pro and for providing my WiFi. I also have a 1 TB external hard drive plugged into my Time Capsule which I can access via WiFi. I can go to Finder on my laptop and browse the folders/files on my external hard drive. It appears under Shared in the sidebar of the Finder window. I can open files from it and I can save files to the drive, so it appears to be working fine. I have hundreds of gigs of files on the drive. But when I was recently hunting for a specific file, I noticed that my Spotlight wasn't doing a very good job at finding files on my external hard drive. I tried many different searches - by name, by type, by date - and had no luck. But as I was searching, I realized that I had more files of certain file types than Spotlight was showing me. So I tried searching for files I first confirmed were actually on the external drive. And again Spotlight failed to find them. If I used a partial filename search, it would find some files that matched but not the ones I was looking for.
So, this led me to think the index is corrupt. I'm not sure if this problem is related to my recently upgrading to Lion or not, since I haven't had to search the drive in awhile. I tried to force Spotlight to recreate the index on the drive by using the Privacy panel trick (of the Spotlight Preferences) but that didn't work. I then tried to get Spotlight to recreate its entire index and I think all that did was recreate the index for my internal harddrive.
So, are there things I need to know about attaching an external hard drive to a Time Capsule that I perhaps forgot to do? Should I be able to search the drive with Spotlight? Do I have to somehow force Spotlight to look in external drive when doing a search or is it supposed to search everything it can?
I should mention I have been having a little trouble with my Time Capsule as well. I recently had to erase the drive and set up a whole new backup since the backup was failing - not sure what happened to it, but it seems to be working again now. But I did notice yesterday that my Time Machine hadn't backed up all day but it was not giving me a warning message. It was just sitting there not backing up. I had tried resetting my PRAM and after doing so, my Time Machine was back to backing up. I'm not sure if the PRAM reset helped with that or if it was just the restart of the laptiop.
One more thing - I feel like since upgrading to Lion I have had to restart my laptop more than ever. Things just start acting funny, especially when I am using Safari and I find myself resetting Safari and then restarting my laptop all the time. Odd.

It should be HFS+.. it may work with fat32 but that is a lousy format.
The actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. the TC offers SMB connection.. so it is a true file sharing device.. the format used to store the files cannot be directly read by windows but is "interpreted, translated" via the firmware of the TC.
BTW this is true of all network storage.. A NAS can store files in whatever format its OS requires.. freebsd like freenas might use XFS.. or linux use EXT2 or REISFS.. it makes no difference as long as it offers that store to the windows (and apple) network as SMB.. then windows can handle it.

Slow boot time Mac Osx when USB external hard drive is connected

I have bought some days ago an external hard drive, the Western Digital 500 GB Elements.
It goes very well by now but I have a problem.
When I turn on my MBP, after the "bong", I have to wait 60 second more than the normal boot time.
The screen stay grey and after 60 second it appears the apple.
It appens only when the external hdd is connected.
Someone has a solution?

Some time ago, I read that the OS has a problem waking from sleep or booting if an external was attached (USB or Firewire), something about it being confused about the startup order. Anyway, since then, I have religiously followed this procedure when I'm done using the external: unmount, unplug, and then turn it off (if necessary). I have never experienced a problem with my Mac not recognizing or not being able to boot because of an external. It certainly doesn't involve more than a second or two to unplug a USB drive.

Spotlight won't search external hard drive

I have recently upgraded to Yosemite but when I use Spotlight to search for a file spotlight does not search or include any files on my external hard drive. I have had one community member suggest to explicitly check the Spotlight index via command line. I tried to follow his instructions but my limited skills produced a zero. Unfortunately, he hasn't replied back for further instruction.
Can anyone else please shed some light on this annoying problem?

Hi chalkybones,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
I understand that you would like Spotlight to locate files on your external hard drive but it is unsuccessfully locating them. In this situation I would recommend first re-indexing the folders or volumes in Spotlight if you have not yet done some. Please use the attached article as a reference on how to complete the process.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support
Cheers,
Joe

HT1751 So what happens when the external hard drive with all of my iTunes media on it crashes??

I moved my iTunes media/library (as well as iPhoto) to an external hard drive many moons ago. It's been a great decision up until today, when the portable hard drive I was using decided to commit suicide. Is it possible to restore the lost media and library files from Time Machine, or are all of my music (and picture) files officially gone??? Help!!

If you have been doing the basics and backing up your computer, then they are not gone. They are in your backup.
Use your backup to put them back.
Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering items using Time Machine and Spotlight

Search external hard drive

I just got my Mac two days ago and I cannot search for movies on my external hard drive. I tried to add and remove through System Preferences-Spotlight-Privacy then add/remove but I still can't search it.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.
Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
mdutil -as 2>&- | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.
The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Error message pop up when connecting external hard drive to eMac

Hi,
The external hard drive's icon don't show on desktop when the Maxtor 6Y160P0 Media connected to the eMac. Running the Disk Utilities still can detect the external hard drive.
After a while, it pop up a message shows that "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click Ignore." It has three options – Initialize, Ignore, Eject. Choosed "Ignore" to continue but useless. The external hard drive still spinning but can't access to backup data.
Sometime the icon showed after restart the external hard drive, unpluged the cables and pluged in again then restart the eMac. Sometime after doing these also no response.
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you!

If the previous user always SHUT DOWN the computer (vs. just sleeping it) then that wouldn't be the cause because when you shut down, the Mac OS closed up everything and dismounts the drives anyway. So shutting down without ejecting the hard drive and then turn the drive off after the computer is off is perfectly safe.
Is there something on the drive now that you need or would it be ok to simply reformat it and start over?
Patrick

If I start up when my external hard drive is plugged in Mac doesn't boot up

If my external hard drive is connected to my MacBook when I turn it on, Mac OS X does not load. What can I do to make the computer load with my external hard drive attached?

Either use the startup key commands or use System Preferences>Startup Disk to select the external hard disk before you shut down.

How can Time Machine backup automatically when your external hard drive isn't connected?

Everywhere I search, it says that Time Machine will automatically backup every 24 hours and so on.
However, I was wondering - how can these automatic backups take place if you are backing up to an external hard drive which is not always connected?
Is this to say that if you do not connect your external hard drive for a day, no backups will be done that day?
Thank you

If the drive is not connected then TM pauses until the drive becomes available. Yes, if the drive isn't connected then there are no backups.
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Black screen but still powers external hard drive

I have two Cinema Displays, not thunderbolt, hooked to a new iMac 27". I took the first one to an Apple Authorised Repair Center and was told that either the logic board or power adapter were shot. The monitor is too old for them to get parts from Apple, so I went and bought a used one from ebay a year ago. Now this monitor just went black while I was working on it. It still powers an external hard drive that appears on my imac, and the light on the front still pulseates.
Both these monitors are the chrome edged 23" HD displays. One is an 07' and the other 11' neither are thunderbolt and neither have a camera. Any ideas. My Apple authorised tech shop said i can have the later one replaced by apple for $670. I don't want to spend that much when I only paid $350 off ebay. If it was just the power adapter I would buy just that, but who knows?

…and I suspect you want some clairvoyant or mind reader to guess all the details and specs of your setup?
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Screen Lock When searching external hard drive?

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