Taking HOURS to copy music files from one external hard drive to another...

Am I doing something wrong? Have a about 5,000+ songs on an external hard drive (hooked to my pc). I have networked the PC through my mac mini and I'm now copying those files onto a new/fresh external hard drive hooked to the mac mini. It's successfully copying the files but, when I started, the time remaining said, "About 15 hours"! (Is this for real??) Am I doing this right? It's now...finally down to "About 7 hours". But, I have a LOT more music to copy over. Is it normal for it to take THIS LONG?
PLEASE HELP!

Just to explain a bit about how this data transfer is far more than simply moving 5,000 songs:
To copy or move each file, the system has to chop the file up into a series of 'packets' and transfer each of those in order. If you imagine each file as if it were a plate of food heaped up, each 'packet' is about a single spoonful. Each spoonful then needs a series of extra data to tell the system what's in the spoonful, which spoonful it is in the order of things, and how many spoonfuls in that plateful to expect. Added to the spoonful is additional data containing information that lets the receiving system check whether the spoonful arrived is complete, out of sequence, damaged or even lost.
Each spoonful has to be sent one at a time, and the receiving system has to signal back to the sending system that it arrived before the next one is sent. Once the first plate has been sent, spoonful by spoonful, the system then moves onto the next plateful, until all 5,000 plates of food have been moved.
If any spoonful is lost or damaged, the receiving system has to ask the sending system to have another go before moving on to the next. Add to that that it is not just the spoonfuls of songs being moved around, but also lots of other spoonfuls of stuff to keep the network connection open and each system aware of the presence and identity of the other, and any other networked device that is also running at the time, and you have a pretty slow means to move data around.
The above is a pretty crude representation of how it works, but it does mean that while moving data around a network is not really slow, it's nowhere near as fast as moving data to locally connected drive. As such DaddyPaycheck is right - it would be much quicker to connect the external directly to the Mac and then copy the files to it.

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I get error 8062 when trying to copy files from one external hard drive to another. It starts out copying files, but after 10 minutes or so it stops and I get the error 8062. The hard drive tech support says the problem is in my Macbook Air.

I cannot copy my doc and photos and videos from one external hard drive to a second external hard drive -- both plugged in to my MacBook Air -- I get Error 8062 and the copying (which seemed to be going on for 10 minutes) stops and nothing gets copied.
As any Macbook Air owner knows, there is SO LITTLE storage capacity on the computer that you have to back up big files onto an external hard drive to avoid getting the other annoying error that says you have no more memory/storage capacity/whatever the proper term is, and you cannot use the computer.
Backstory: Before this error cropped up, I had backed up lots of files to an external drive and then removed them from my computer. But then the external hard drive got corrupted and I could not access my entire photo library. Had to pay $850 to Kroll Ontrack to recover those files. I have now bought 2 new external 1 Terrabyte hard drives as protection against another such disaster. BUT I cannot copy the files from the first hard drive where all my reovered files now sit, to another backup hard drive.
Feeling vulnerable. Please help.
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From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter
and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.
If the drive has more than one interface (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, eSATA), try one of the other interfaces.
Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Start up in Safe Mode and test.
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

I can't copy iTunes media files from one external hard drive to another.

Hi, I am running the latest iTunes and Mavericks software on my MacBook Pro. My iTunes library is stored on an external Seagate 2tb hard drive and it is almost full. I want to transfer the files to a WD Elements 3tb external hard drive and have made that new volume the destination folder for my iTunes library. However, even though I have enabled read/write on both volumes and made the iTunes media folders on both shared folders, I can't copy all the files from the Seagate drive to the WD drive. It comes up with an error message that says "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8058)". I can transfer files from my MacBook hard drive to the new volume, but can't copy files from the old Seagate volume to my MacBook hard drive; it makes the "boing" sound that indicates it is copying but nothing transfers. Files that won't copy include all music files, some video files and all podcast files. Some transferred with no problem. Any ideas out there?

Hi Limnos, thanks very much for your reply.
both external drives came preformatted for Windows but I erased each and reformatted them for Mac before using them.
i made the destination folder on the new WD drive the new iTunes folder using Advanced preferences in iTunes.
my original iTunes folder on the first drive contained all my iTunes files, as that, also, was the destination folder that was linked via Advanced preferences.
If I download new content now with the new drive attached, iTunes has no trouble finding where to place the files.
in Preferences I have both boxes checked (copy files" and "organize") that deal with copying iTunes files.
When I first attempted to copy all iTunes files from one media folder to the other on the external drives, I just did a drag and drop of the whole iTunes media folder from one to the other while both were mounted on my desktop. It started copying immediately with no problems, but as it progressed it started skipping files, each time displaying the error message I reported earlier. that included my entire Music folder. When I open, for example, a season folder that contains files that would not copy, eg, Modern Family Season 5, the episodes that won't copy are there and visible but any attempt to drag and drop them into the correct folder on the new drive results in the error message. There is no pattern to it; it will choose some episodes from some seasons but not others, and no music at all.
when I look at the "missing" files in iTunes they have the small exclamation mark that indicates the file is missing, but when I locate it through iTunes it doesn't copy the file on the old external drive to the new one. It just plays it having found the file on the old drive.
originally I had to make the iTunes folder on the old drive into a shared folder using the Get info window after either a software upgrade or an OS upgrade (I can't remember which, it was several years ago). For some reason the upgrade changed the preferences of that folder to a Read Only folder and after researching the problem found the only way to keep using the drive was to make the folder a shared one. I can't remember why and I apologise for that but it was a long time ago.; I can tell you that at the time it was necessary.
thanks again for your time; I have a good working knowledge of iTunes and Macs in general so I truly believe I have done everything according to how it should be done,, but clearly I've done something wrong!

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I have video and photo files on one hard drive. I'd like to keep that one intact but also copy all the files to a second external hard drive. When I try to do so, I can't figure out how to open both hard drives at once. (If I open one, it closes the other window.)
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edited.

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Drag it there in the Finder and then launch iPhoto with the Option key held down. Point it to the new instance of the library.
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Taking HOURS to copy music files from one external hard drive to another...

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