Troubles with external hard-drive and iPad

Hi,
First post and all that. Thanks for taking the time to help me out.
I've recently bought my iPad, and while most things work especially well, one issue is really bugging me. The majority of my media is stored on an Iomega 1TB external hard drive, connected via USB to my computer. I'm running Windows XP and iTunes 9.2. When I hook up the iPad to the computer, iTunes loads, starts to sync the iPad with the music from the external HDD and suddenly I get a message saying "the device is not recognised" by the computer. The HDD has dropped off the radar. I've tried different things to get them to talk to each other, but to no avail.
Could someone help me please, to get my precious music off the external HDD? It's bugging me!
Cheers!

Thanks, I'll try connecting the HDD to the front USB ports and the iPad to the back. I did some more digging after posting here (my search-fu is weak!) and found a similar suggestion.
The HDD is indeed independently powered, so I wasn't sure of the power issue, but I'll check it out.
As to more info, the iPod Touch I have doesn't cause the same problems. And I can't transfer the media to the iTunes location, since that's on my first hard drive and I don't have enough space (hence the external one! :oD)
Cheers all!

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Trouble with external hard drive and disk repair

So I save my music and photos to an external hard drive. The drive is partitioned to also be the back up for my Time Machine. I live in an old house with the electricity for my MacBook Pro and the external hard drive coming from a wall plug which drapes scrape over when opening and closing, occasionally moving the plugs to the point of cutting off the electricity. Sometimes when that happens, the MacBook Pro won't read the external hard drive and I have to restart the computer for it to read the HD.
Well, this seems to have happened again, only this time it wasn't reading the HD when restarted. I Opened the Disk Utility and did a verify disk, and was told that I couldn't save anything to the drive, but to access the files that were on there. So I attempted to do a disk repair. What happens at that point is instead of getting the solid blue line indicating the repair is happening, I get the barber pole blue line indicating it's trying to access the HD to begin repair. This goes on for hours at a time without the repair taking place.
Can anyone out there give me a "for Dummies" overview of how to get the Disk Utility to repair things?
Thanks.

What I was trying to tell you is that all the music and photos that are on the same drive as your Time Machine backup must also be backed up elsewhere. Unlike all the stuff on your primary (internal) hard drive, those photos and music are not backed up at all unless you have copies of them on a different drive. If your Time Machine hard drive should fail before you do that, they'll all be lost. So copy all the music and photos to your second external hard drive as soon as you are able to do so.
I generally consider the nuisance of backing up extra hard drives to other extra hard drives burdensome and annoying enough so that I always upgrade my primary (internal) hard drive whenever I begin to run short of space on the one I'm using. Now that it's possible to get 750GB and 1TB internal drives for MBPs, I'll get one of those as soon as my present 250GB drive fills up to about 80% of its capacity. I don't want to lug around an external drive in order to have all my stuff with me when I'm away from my home or office — I want it all on my internal drive, and I want to be able to back all of it up at once to an external drive of the same or a larger size. At least until I outgrow a 1TB drive, and I think that will be a while.

Trouble with external hard drive. help.

I was formatting my hard drive to allow larger GB files with a lot of trouble so I got my other hard drive which I have previously formatted to find the program that worked. It was formatted with NTFS so I downloaded NTFS 3G and restarted my computer (iMac intel) after trying to format my portable hard drive to ntfs the software didnt work so I uninstalled it. Now my external hard drive will not read on my iMac but it will on my TV and Windows computer. When I installed the software a little error message popped up but i made no changes to the external hard drive and now it wont read on my mac.
The hard drive is a Western Digital My Book 1TB

Did you read this section of the ntfs 3g website? I don't use the program but it may have left pieces of itself on your mac causing your current problems.
You can type the following in a terminal window to see what "non-apple" drivers are still loaded on your system.
kextstat | grep -v com.apple
Post the results if you need to
2.2 Uninstalling Tuxera NTFS for Mac
Tuxera NTFS for Mac can be easily uninstalled using the Uninstall Tuxera NTFS... button in the Tuxera NTFS preference pane, which will be available in System Preferencesonce you have installed the package. See section 4 for a description of the other features in the preference pane.
If this should fail for some reason, an uninstall script exists at the following location:
/System/Library/Filesystems/fusefs_txantfs.fs/Support/uninstall-package.sh

Disk Utility and DiskWarrior trouble with external hard-drive.

I got an external hard-drive that doesn't show up on finder. On both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior it keeps mounting and unmounting. Disk Utility when trying to repair, spits this out when it unmounts...
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Error: Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: : Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: [DUDiskController mountDisk] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
On DiskWarrior it simply says 'Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-36,2747)
Earlier today it would stay mounted and Disk Utility would spit out...
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
Invalid node structure
The volume Back-up Hard Drive could not be repaired.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
while DiskWarrior would try to fix it, but on
Step 5: Locating directory date...
Speed reduced by disk malfunction: 339,474, er make that 340,239, er make that 341,327
and I finally gave up there.
I try to fix the Invalid sibling link error via Terminal and I get this...
imac-2:~ Migrated$ fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk2s2
** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
Can't open /dev/rdisk2s2: Resource busy
Is there ANY THING I can do to get it to stay mounted and possibly fix this? This is my back-up hard-drive!!

It's the cord that's being used that decides if it shows up, or if it shows up and then goes away over and over. Using a cord where it stays on in the programs, when I run Disk Utility of the darked out part of the hard-drive, it spits out...
Verifying and repairing partition map for “MICRONET”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Updating Windows boot.ini files as required
The partition map appears to be OK
while the part of the disk just below it that's light spits out
Verifying volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Starting repair tool:
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Disk Utility stopped repairing “Back-up Hard Drive”: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
while DiskWarrior tries to rebuild it and spits out a memory error.

Macbook pro, trouble with external hard drives

I just got the drive on my mid-2010's macbook pro replaced at Apple. I am now experiencing a new problem.
My macbook is having trouble with ALL my external hard-drives. After a few minutes of being plugged in I click on them to open and the finder window is blank. Its not allowing me to veiw the content stored on the drive. If I keep trying my computer will freeze. I try to 'Force Eject' the drive and it doesnt eject so I have to unplug then start over.
This seems to happen roughly about 5 minutes after I plug them in. They work fine the first 5 minutes. Its becoming extremly annoying. All my drives are different makes, sizes, etc.. so I pretty sure its the macbook.
What might the problem be?
Thanks,
Shane

Start with SMC and PRAM resets:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3964
http://web.archive.org/web/20140711222006/http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
These are external HDDs that worked prior to the install of the new internal HDD?
Ciao.

Need Help with External Hard drives and too much music

I am not terribly tech-savvy, and I need your help. I have a G5 PPC dual processor with an internal 250GB drive. I have two seagate firewire/USB2 external hard drives. One is 250GB and one is 350GB. I want to know how to use them to get my Mac to run faster and better.
My original hard drive is 7GB shy of being full. Almost half of this is my itunes library which is over 100GB. The older (250GB) hard drive has about 150GB of photos/videos.
My Mac is running slow as molasses and when I power up the external hard drives it slows down to what I recall my original Mac Plus ran like.
I use the G5 primarily to work with photos, illustrations and creating the occasional DVD with video and photos. the apps I use most often are Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter. I always listen to music while work.
I hope all of this information is helpful! Here is my question:
What is the best way for me to set up and use these external hard drives to return my G5 to its original blazing (to me) fast speed?
PPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I think you should look at adding two 500GB internal drives. I'd say Maxtor MaxLine Pro for cost, but they also run much warmer (43ºC even when nearly doing zilch) so I'd go with WD RE2 500GB for $40 ea. more.
dump whatever you don't need, trash anything that is hogging space and is just temp file or useless cache. Web browsers can leave behind a ton of small files eating up tens of MBs.
Use SuperDuper to backup/clone your drive.
Disk Warrior 4 to repair (after it gets to 15% free, or just forget for now).
A 250GB drive formats to 240GB and you have ~3% free it looks like.
For every data drive plan to have two backup drives.
Keep your boot drive to 40% used.
And your data drive to 60%.
Backups can go a little higher.
Drives are cheap and inexpensive, especially for the space and performance. And they have improved SATA over the years it has been out.
By doing a backup followed by erasing your drive, and then restoring it, using SuperDuper, which optimizes the organization, skips copying temp files that aren't needed, it also defragments your files. I would do backup daily to different sets that you "rotate." And before any OS update. And do the erase and restore probably every 2 months.
Make sure you keep one drive partition somewhere that is just your disk utility emergency boot drive that is not a copy of working system, used for doing repairs like running Disk Warrior and Disk Utility.
You may need to repair; backup; even erase and restore your external drives. Rather than spend on vendor made case, just pick up a good FireWire case either with drive, or bare (and add your own). I think it'd add 500GB FW drive though.
Why?
To begin backup of your current drive. To leave your other FW drives "as is" for now.
Then install a new internal 500GB drive as well so you now have a good current backup, and you have moved your data off 250GB to 500GB. If anything happens, you have one off line FW backup.
Then begin to clean up, organize, and get your FW drives working. It sure sounds like they have had some directory or file problems.
You can find a lot of Firewire and SATA drive choices over at OWC:
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/

Using Apple TV with external hard-drive and Time Capsule

I am trying to figure out the best way to stream movies stored on an external hard-drive.
At the moment, I have my hard-drive connected to my time capsule via USB, and am streaming them through iTunes and Apple TV. However, for this to work, I have to have my laptop on.
Is there a way to have the movies stored on my local network, or on my time capsule, so that I can just watch them without my MacBook having to be on?
I've spent a bit of time researching this on Google, but haven't been able to come up with a good solution, so I'd be grateful if anyone has any cool suggestions.
Thank you.

There isn't a solution, the Apple TV will only read your iTunes library if iTunes is running and will only play content through iTunes.

New Apple User - Trouble with External Hard Drive

I am not very good with computers so hopefully this is a simple task. I just purchased my first mac, a MacBook for college. I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 160 GB drive with the intent of using it for time machine back ups and also for storing my music. I am wondering how or if this is possible.
So far I have:
- Transferred all my music from my PC to the hard drive no problem.
- I tried to set up Time Machine it said I had to delete everything from the Seagate drive in order to use it.
- I then copied all my files off of the hard drive to my Macbook's HD.
- Found out I also need to reformat my Seagate drive to Mac format.
Now I am wondering how to go about all of this and find out if its possible to store my music files on my hard drive as well as use it to for TM. I was thinking I can just move all my music back to the Seagate after TM erases it...would that work or is TM back-ups the only thing you can have on a drive?
Thank you!

Larko,
Generally speaking, you'll need an external hard drive with a capacity that is at least twice the size of the space being used on your internal hard drive. So, if you only have around 30 GBs of data on your new Macbook, you'll need at least 60 GBs for Time Machine. I'm going to state, though, that you'll probably end up using something more like 50 GBs on your Macbook's hard drive, so plan on using around 100 GBs for Time Machine.
Now, what you'll need to do first is format the external drive using Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility). In Disk Utility's "source list" at the left side of the window, select your external drive (not the named "volume" that will appear indented below it), then switch to the "Erase" tab. Erasing the entire hard drive will re-write the partition map, using the Apple "GUID" partition scheme (required for use with Time Machine).
If you want to store additional files on the external, that's OK. However, it is recommended that instead of storing both your Time Machine backup and your "personal" files on the same volume, that you partition the drive with 2 partitions. This will allow you to store the Time Machine backup in isolation on its own volume, and your "personal" files on the second. Disk Utility will handle this, too. Instead of erasing, switch to the "Partition" tab, use the pull-down menu to select 2 partitions, adjust the sizes according to your needs, then click "Partition."
I recommend that you size the first partition (for use with Time Machine) at 100 GBs, and the second with the remainder (which will end up being about 40 GBs).
You can certainly store that 10 GBs of music separately, but wouldn't it be best to import it into iTunes? If you do import it, or if it is kept on your Macbook in some other place, it will be backed up by Time Machine.
Scott

Trouble with External Hard Drive

I recorded some saved programs on my Dish Network DVR 622 to an external hard drive that formatted it for that purpose according to their instructions. Can the external hard drive now be reused by being hooked up to my HP notebook computer and reformatted or have I lost it because of that use? If so, how do I do it? I do not want to save anything on the drive--just format it and use it for a different purpose. I no longer have the Dish DVR. When I connect the external drive to my desktop I do not even see an icon for it in My Computer.
Thanks for any help.

OK with a little googling around I discovered the DISH DVR formats its external drives for Linux using the ext file system. Windows cannot natively read ext formatted drives. If you plugged it into a machine running Linux you could read the drive. There is also a Windows program that will allow you to read ext formatted hard drives right from Windows.
http://www.ext2fsd.com/?page_id=16
This may also be kind of a fools errand because I am also seeing that the movies on the hard drive may be encrypted and can only be read by a DVR running your account anyway. If you just want to wipe the drive right click on each of the rectangles in Disk 1 and select delete volume or delete partition until the whole box is blank then create simple volume and format it ntfs and you have a useable external drive.
You could also just delete one of the partitions like say the last one on the right which is 396.26 gb and then create a new partition in it and format it ntfs and give it a drive letter and then you would have a storage space for your laptop files. You could then keep the movies on the rest of the drive for when you get a new DVR. As I understand it from the DISH forums, when you plug the hard drive into a new DVR it will give the option to set it up to work on that DVR. Also I am not 100% clear that the external drives have encrypted movies. That may only apply to people who pull the hard drive out of the DVR and try to get movies from it.
This is an interesting project. The real easy way to see if the movies can be played from a PC is to make a Linux Live disk like ubuntu, boot the system from it and plug in the hard drive while you are running Linux from the Live disk. You could then see if you can see the movies and if they will play in the Linux media player program and it would not cost anything or change anything on your computer. Post back if you want more info on how to try that.

Help with external hard drive and firewire?

2 questions: 1) Does anyone know if there is a hub made for the firewire 800 to allow more than 1 device to be hooked up at 1 time? ex... capture deck and external hard drive.
2) I was cleaning up my external hard drive. I ejected it and now it won't come back on line when it is plugged in. Any Advice?

Most external FW enclosures have 2xFW800 ports that allow daisy-chaining multiple drives.
There are FW800 hubs available, but I don't recommend them if you intend to use with a camcorder or deck. Ditto regarding daisy-chaining a camcorder or deck with a FW drive ... the camcorder/deck usually locks up the FW bus if you have daisy-chained it with a FW drive.

HAving trouble with external hard drive

Hey
i have a mac mini 1.83ghz intel core duo its about a year old now. I have a trekstore 160gb 2.5 external harddrive and for some reason it wont show up on my computer or the harddrive programm from apple. It worked fine for awhile and i was able to transfer all th data that i want to store on their as a back up and then one day i plug it in and it wont show up. Now this kinda ***** i paid 80 euro for the stupid thing have all m files backed up and its not showing up on my mac.
Any suggestions?
THX

If you've got another Mac around the house or know someone who does, the next step would be to try connecting it to something other than the Mac Mini. If the drive works on another Mac, then there may be something wrong with the Mini; if the drive doesn't work on another Mac, continue being concerned about the integrity of the drive.
Also relevant for 2.5" drives, some of these don't come with AC adapters and instead draw power from the USB or FireWire bus. Though the FireWire bus can supply more than enough power to keep a 2.5" drive spinning, USB power is usually pretty measly, requiring either a complimetary AC adapter or a strange two-headed USB cable to draw extra power.

I have a new iPad Air. Can I use plug in USB camera reader to have a load of movies etc on an external hard drive and then plug and play so to speak. I'm off on holiday and haven't got the capacity to have everything on that I'd like for the kids

Can I use a plug in USB camera reader to have a load of movies etc on an external hard drive and then plug and play so to speak? I'm off on holiday and haven't got the capacity on the iPad to have everything on that I'd like for the kids.
So basically I want a hard drive with X amount of films etc on. Can I then watch them on my iPad?
Hope this makes sense.

External HDD won't work.
You need something like this:
http://www.seagate.com/goflexsatellite/

I moved my itunes library to an external hard drive and now when I try to sync my ipad it says it is already synced to another library.

I moved my itunes library to an external hard drive and then I tried to sync my ipad. I got a message that says my ipad is synced to another library and it will erase my ipad, which I don't want to do. I'm not sure how to fix this problem, any ideas?

Ok. progress...
So is your media folder called iTunes Music or iTunes Media? And does it have a folder called Music inside it?
Before going any further you should first attempt to use File > Library > Organize Library > Rearrange files in the folder "<Media Folder>" (ignore if grayed out). This will make sure that any iPod Games or Mobile Applications get placed inside the iTunes Media folder which is needed for portability.
If your iTunes Media folder is called iTunes Music, close iTunes, rename the folder as iTunes Media and start iTunes again. iTunes will automatically adjust. Close iTunes again.
On your external drive rearrange the folders that you have already copied there so that they match the layout in your active library. You should end up with a folder called X:\iTunes where X: is the external drive letter, and the media folder is X:\iTunes\iTunes Media. If the library layout was upgraded then you will need to create a Music folder inside this and move all the artist folders and Compilations into Music. You will also need to copy iPod Games and Mobile Applications from your internal drive into the new media folder. Next copy the files iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, sentinel and the folder Album Artwork from the internal drive into X:\iTunes. The preceding manipulations should make the internal and external copies of your library match without you having to copy all of the media over again.
Now hold shift as you start iTunes. Click choose, browse to and open X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl.
Finally use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate files. This will ensure that any stray files that might have been added from outside your original media folder will be copied into the new one.
You can now reclaim the space used by your library on the internal drive, however before you do so I would advise you to obtain another external drive and make use of this backup tip.
tt2

Rescue and Recovery backup with external hard drive

When I first backed up my computer to my WD 1 tb external hard drive using R&R, boot files were placed on the drive. Recently, some files I had corrupted my external hard drive and I had to fully erase it. Now, after making the drive recognizable again, I went to go back up my computer using rescue and recovery. This time, it asked me whether or not I wanted to make the drive bootable, I said yes, but an error popped up saying I needed 1000 more mb, even though I had 931 gb open. The backup started anyway, but it did not include any boot files. Is there a way to make the drive bootable the next time I backup? What is the difference between nonbootable and bootable? Help? Thanks.

I do NOT have a external Hard drive. If you just zeroed the drive, it is blank. Go into control panel,administrative tools, computer management, disk management. See if you can get a PROPERTIES of the external drive and post a Screen shot of that here. This will show what partition(s) are there, Fat32 vs NTFS. My experience is after you zero a drive, You have to boot your system, then use a Vendor (WD) standalone format utility or windows Disk manangement format, Make partition, etc. The screen shot i need is the one that says: DISK 1 (d 298.09 GB NTFS
Healthy(active,primary partition). This is what my 2nd drive, D, says. 1 partion on the drive.
When i added my second hard drive, it was blank. Booted up, BIOS recognized drive, Then i Formatted it with windows disk managment. I then pointed R&R to take backups to that drive. Create rescue media then made a Master boot record, install standalone R&R boots files, then took the backup. This makes my 2nd drive bootable, should i ever care to boot my D drive up and have R&R standalone program in control. Thus i have 2 bootable drives. C boots into windows, D boots into the rescue and recovery standalone program. I can also boot my C drive into R&R by hitting PF 11 at startup (bios) time.
Which version of r&r you have? Which version of windows? Windows 7 changed the way Master boot records are written.
You can go into R&R, advanced menu, create rescue media. Point to your External drive. WARNING. make sure the do not destroy existing data block is checked. IF YOU ARE brave, uncheck the destroy existing data. This will erase everthing on the drive!!! <<Warning. And be sure NOT to point to any drive you really love.
Buts lets 1st get the screen shot requested to make sure the drive is FORMATTED correcly.

My final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help

my final cut is running extremely slow after having for 6 months. I use external hard drives and save nothing on my computer. it takes a long time to render now. do you think something is wrong with computer. took it to mac store but they fail to help me. I have a 13 inch mac book pro 10.6.8 8gb 2.3 gfz intel core i5

What did Apple tell you about what they did (or did not) find here?
See if working on the main disk is any faster.
USB2 is glacial, as I/O interconnects go. And USB2 disks have been known to fail, or sometimes to drop back to USB1 speeds, too. FireWire 800 is substantially faster than USB2, but still not as fast as the internal drive connections can provide.
Put another way, start varying your configuration, and see which configuration changes (still) have the problem, and which don't.

Troubles with external hard-drive and iPad

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