Using portable thumb drive to transfer music?

I live in an area that does not have high speed internet access (insert redneck joke here). I do, however, have high speed access at my office. I had the brilliant idea to download music at work, and then transfer them via thumbdrive to my library at home. The problem I am having is that by "dragging and dropping" I am only transferring shortcuts rather than the actual file. Am I doing something wrong, or can files not be transfered in this manner?

In the PC world this would just work.... (Oh the irony!)
On a Mac try Command-C to Copy (or Command-X to Cut) the selected files from their original location then Command-V to paste on the thumb drive. I believe you can also use Option-Drag & Drop to get a menu of possible options.
tt2

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HT5287 If DVD Movies, Audio CD's and even burning CD and DVD's are not supported, what is the point of DVD & CD Sharing then? Wouldn't it just be better to remote in or use a thumb drive if it's only able to be used for data transfer?

If DVD Movies, Audio CD's and even burning CD and DVD's are not supported, what is the point of DVD & CD Sharing then? Wouldn't it just be better to remote in or use a thumb drive if it's only able to be used for data transfer?
Or am I missing the bigger picture?

As long as you have a Superdrive or an external burner/drive, burning, watching, installing, etc. from CD or DVD will work just fine. And so will sharing.

Re-install lion using Apple Thumb drive

I am having some problems with the sleep fucntion and want to consider a re-install of Lion as a way to correct the problem.
I have a MacBook Pro, bought June 2011. I upgraded from Snow Leopard using the Apple Thumb drive.
Pretty much all advice for installing and re-installing Lion refers either to the downloaded version for the App Store or using a recovery file produced by the user after installation.
I am just wanting straighforward guidance on the process for doing a re-install of Lion using the Thumb drive or whatever process is proper.
I have a Time Machine set up with a Time Capsule. Not really sure if this could end up causing me more troubles using the stroed data/files. It may be those which are causing the troubles.
If necessary,I am fully prepared to use an external drive to capture my files (photos, music and iWork stuff) and then use these as I need to for restoring data.
Bottom line: how do I do a re-install of Lion using a MBP with an upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard from a thumb drive from Apple?

Just plug in the thimb drive and reboot the unit. After you hear the startup sound press and hold the "Options" key. You willl get a one time boot screen where you can select the drive to boot to. Select the USB thumb drive.

HT4527 I transfered my Itunes information using a thumb drive to my new computer and downloaded the newest version of itunes to my new laptop. My songs are all there on the new computer but it won't recognize my ipod and sync.

I transfered my I tunes library to my new laptop using a thumb drive. I downloaded the newest version of Itunes to my new computer. My old ITUNES library of songs and books came across just fine. I can play them on the new laptop but they won't sync with my Ipod. The Itunes shows no devices when I hook it up to the laptop. Windows recognizes that the IPOD is hooked up. But no connection with ITUNES. Did I make a mistake in trying to sync my Itunes purchases to the new laptop before transfering the old library into the new ITUNES. If so how do I undo the problem. Please help. I use a PC with Windows XP.

Hi Rob,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
The steps in this article can help:
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538
Best Regards,
Jeremy

Use of thumb drive screws up iPhoto

What has trying to use a thumb drive done to my iPhoto files? A couple years ago, I transferred many photos to a thumb drive as an iPhoto file. I believe there was a trick to getting the iPhoto software over to the thumb drive, but I've no recollection how I did it. Anyway, there was no problem with iPhoto on the thumb drive or on my MacBook-- both showed the pix they should have. The other day, I tried to move a few more photos to the thumb drive, but they didn't fall into iPhoto. I guess that would require some extra software. The annoyance is that when I eject the thumb drive and summon iPhoto, I don't see what should be on my computer but still see the iPhoto display from the thumb drive -- apparently it's been retained on my hard drive or in memory. I've tried restarting the computer, after which the best I can get is an iPhoto screen with no photos at all in it. There are three or four photo libraries on the hard drive, but none containing all my current pix. I have found some of those photos on the hard drive by using Spotlight to list items with .jpg suffixes. But they seem to be scattered, and I doubt that all the old pix are there.
This all involves a MacBook running OS 10.4.11, iPhoto 6.0.5, and a Geeksquad 4-GB thumb drive.

Thanks for your prompt response to my posting. In response to your questions and comments:
1. The thumb drive's format appears to be "MS-DOS File System (FAT32)"
2. "fall into" refers to the fact that the pix recently transferred to the thumb drive didn't go directly into the "iPhoto Library" folder already on the drive and listing material put on the drive a year or so ago but are listed as individual jpeg files. I've dragged these individual pix into the iPhoto Library. But I hesitate to boot from the thumb drive because of the mess it led to the other day.
3. When I enter /volumes in the Finder/Go/Go to Folder wndow, The volumes directory that appears lists aliases for my computer's hard drive and the thumb drive, which is plugged in at the moment. Entering volumes in Spotlight produces only documents that mention the word "volumes."

Can papers be typed on a MAC then use a thumb drive to copy to Microsoft Word and printed?on a Dell

Can papers be typed on a MAC Air then use a thumb drive to copy into Microsoft word and be printed?

Yes, if saved or exported into a format Word can read.
(87620)

Have leopard can I with using lion thumb drive, install without first install snow leoapard

Have leopard, can I with using lion thumb drive, install without first install snow leoapard ?

The requirement for Snow Leopard was for downloading Lion from the app store. With Lion on the thumb drive, you can upgrade without SL.
 Cheers, Tom

Use external hard drive to copy music to second computer

Ok, here's the situation and what we're wanting to do. I'm so confused by all of the iTunes file manipulation, copies of music, libraries, playlists, etcetera.
We have a home computer (Win. XP) that has a slave drive in it. We use the slave drive for image, video and of course, our iPod music storage.
I have a work computer (Win XP Pro) that also has a slave drive in it, and I use it for image and video storage.
I have an external portable Maxtor USB hard drive.
My wife and I have different music tastes, but both of us do mutually like about 70% of the music on our home computer. It's that other 30% that we can't stand of the other person's music. Since iTunes makes it near impossible for us to use multiple iPods on one copy of iTunes (without jumping through hoops (such as computer user accounts, manual vs. automatic management, using Playlists, etc.) and confusing us to no end), I'd like to simply copy all of our music onto my external hard drive, carry it to work, put a fresh copy of iTunes 7 on the work computer, copy the music off my hard drive and onto my work computer's slave drive. Then do a fresh setup of my iPod again (since it's been loaded with some of her junk by accident).
I don't want to change my home computer's settings or anything. My wife does 90% of the music purchases. I'd just like to pick and choose what I want from home and I'll manage it at work on that computer. You see, she has her iPod setup to put any and all new music onto her iPod. If she buys an album, all of it goes on her iPod. Me, I like to pick and choose which songs go on there.
So, how is the best way to copy the music, library, whatever it is I need onto my external HD and then copy it onto my work computer's slave drive?
From then on, if we add songs/albums at home, how should I best keep taking the new songs/albums over to my work computer so I can manage my own iTunes/iPod? Can I just go in and copy the files out of "iTunes Music" folder onto a zip drive and then drop them in the work computer's "iTunes Music" folder?
BTW, I've decided my next computer will be a macbook. It will be my first Mac and I'm really looking forward to seeing what all the Apple/Mac fuss is about. But GESH, I'd thought Apple was a little better than all of this non-sense. I hope it's just that I'm really confused by iTunes and not yet up to the Apple/Mac way.
Oh, and THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP!
Message was edited by: JJCoke

Thanks ed2345!
I was thinking maybe I could just use the "Moving your iTunes Music Folder" instructions all the way down to, BUT NOT INCLUDING steps 11 & 12. Instead, once the consolidation and copy to the external drive was done, I'd just need to go back up and point to the original iTunes Music folder, right?
I have no problem manually adding to the work PC during the week as we add new stuff to the house. Is just copying the new music out of home iTunes Music and onto a USB zip drive to carry to work and then drop in the work iTunes Music folder the way to do it? If so, that's easy enough for me!
As far as playlists, I thought had a pretty good understanding of what they were, but your use of the words "points to songs" better cemented my understanding of what they were. I thought they were duplicating songs into miniature libraries. I would have no problem doing as you suggest (creating a JJ Playlist) and then pick-n-choosing through the library. However, is there a not problem with two different iPods (both are Nanos, but hers is a 4GB and mine is an 8GB) plugging into iTunes (at different times of course) under the same computer user? Will it recognize that my 8GB Nano is connected and not her 4GB and then let me manage my iPod manually or by only updating "JJ Playlist"? And then 5 minutes later after I've unplugged she could go in and it would do her automatic full sync?

Yes you can use a USB drive to transfer photos to the iPad, this is how...

To transfer photos from a USB thumb drive to the iPad you need to:
1. Plug the USB device into a Mac.
2. Open the Disk Utility app.
3. Pick the USB device in the left hand window.
4. Click on the Erase tab
5. Pick MS-DOS (FAT) and hit Erase.
6. After the formatting is done. Click on the USB device to open it up.
7. Make a new folder a name it DCIM (that an eye i)
8. Drag your photos to that folder.
9. Connect the USB kit to the iPad and plug the USB device into it...done.
Now you can on the fly transfer photos to the iPad using a USB thumb drive. No syncing to iTunes. For Windows computers use FAT-16
I've written up on how to play Flip videos on the iPad without converting the video. Yes it can be done. I will post this later today. (I'm getting old and tend to leave out nouns, adjectives and verbs when writing. I hope you understand the above.)

I made a mistake. The one USB drive that did not work was a 4GB not 2 GB. It is formated in FAT 32. The FAT 32 format is not the issue since II have successfully connected both FAT 16 and FAT 32 formated USB drives. I think it is just too big (too many chips inside) and draws too much power.
Doing a Google search it appears that the maximum drive size with FAT 16 is 2GB (one place hinted it was 4 GB). Since many SD cards are bigger that 4 GB today they can't be FAT 16 and thus FAT 32 has to be acceptable with the CCK and the iPad..
David M Brewer wrote:
I did this with a two year old 4 gig USB thumb drive. Did you format the drive on a Mac using the DOS format? If your on windows you need to use fat-16. If you use fat 32 or the wrong Mac format you will get an error that this device draws to much power.
I know somebody else that made this work. If you can't get it to work then it's the drive or you didn't format the drive right. You know this is a work around and work around don't always work. I posted this for the people who come into these forums looking for a fix.

Use portable hard drive for Time Machine & other things

I recently purchased a 1 TB portable hard drive. I'd like to use it for my Time Machine backups, as well as moving my iTunes library there. Is this an easy change? I'm not super familiar with hard drive set ups. Will I have to create any partitions on the drive?
Thanks!

You're welcome. Make sure your drive is formated as Mac OS Extended (journaled), GUID partition table.
Here's a nice link to use for Time Machine information.
You can partition the drive if you want to organize your various backups. For example you might create a Time Machine partition and Other Files partition. When Time Machine is working, it creates a folder (Backups.backupdb) and places the Time Machine backups in that folder. The rest of the partition is open to add whatever you want. I have multiple partitions on my USB external drive with Time Machine backups separated from other backups.

Using USB thumb drive with Parallels and Microsoft Windows XP

I installed Parallels 3.0 because I need to use a few windows applications for work. I am currently unable to find the USB thumb drive when I plug it into the USB port. It is connected and is selected, but I can't figure out how to access it. I check in "My Computer" just like I would on a PC, but the thumb drive is not listed. Any suggestions.
Macbook with Leopard
Thanks.
Jon

You're right, it should show up under My Computer. You may want to post your question over on the Parallels forums: http://forums.parallels.com as they're more geared toward the issue since Parallels is not an Apple product.

I used the migrator utility to transfer music and picture from my old PC and now I have 2 accounts on my new Mac, how can I get back to one account and still have the music and photos transfered ?

I used the migrator utility to transfer itunes and photos from my old PC to my new Mac and ended up with 2 accounts on my new computer. How do I transfer the music and photos and only have the 1 account on the new Mac ?

That's not easy. The Windows migration tool makes a new user account, and you can't prevent it.
You may be able to transfer what you want manually, but it's not quick or easy. See Transferring files from one User Account to another.

Trying to use portable hard drive on both my Mac and PC...

I just purchased a Toshiba Canvio Plus 1TB portable hard drive for my three Macs. Out of the box, I need to format the drive for Mac, which is fine, but I just found out that my fiance would also like to use it for her work computer, which is a PC running Windows XP. I need your help in finding out how to read and write to this portable drive from both a Mac and PC.
I thought about partitioning the drive but that wouldn't work because we want both systems to access the same data. After doing a few Google searches, I thought formatting the drive to a FAT32 would be the answer but I read that file sizes can't exceed 4GB. Since I purchased this specifically to complement my new HD camcorder, a 4GB file size limit will not work for us.
One last thing, since she has a company-issued PC, I'm pretty sure she's unable to install third party software and/or drivers. So please factor that in.
What would be our best solution? Thank you so much for all your help.
Message was edited by: madeinguam

madeinguam wrote:
What would be our best solution?
two possible ways:
(a) format the drive for Mac and install MacDrive on the winsloth machine(s)
(b) format the drive NTFS and install the _*NTFS 3G*_ driver on the Mac(s)
JGG

Can my iMAC use a thumb drive?

I have a thumb drive with photos downloaded from a PC. Can I just insert that thumbdrive into a MAC USB port and read it? (I've tryed o-- doesn't work). What course of action should I take to move those PC-based photos to the iMAC environment?

A Mac can read PC formatted volumes. What happened, exactly, when you plugged in the USB drive?
Perhaps the photos were not exported in a format the Mac can read. Use whatever program the PC uses to read photographs and export them as jpeg or other format.

Can I use Lion Thumb Drive as normal USB pen drive?

I have Thumb Drive OS X Lion, the question is:
Can I format this Thumb Drive and use if as a normal pen drive in Mac and windows PC?
If yes, how do i format the Thumb Drive?
thx! =)

Yes; as a Microsoft FAT-format volume. It's probably already in that format as most external storage devices such as traditional hard disk drives, flash disks or key drives or USB sticks arrive that way, and OS X can use FAT directly. Plug it in, and you're good to go.
If you want to erase and start over with a particular storage device – to reformat the storage as FAT – then use Disk Utility, in the Applications > Utilities folder, and select the formatting option.
But if you're not going to use the storage on Windows (without having to reformat it back to FAT) and if want to use it to best advantage, I'd reformat Windows FAT or NTFS volumes over into the HFS+ volume structure; to reformat the storage using the native file system of OS X.
As for how to reformat as FAT... From the Disk Utility help:
"You can use Disk Utility to format a disk to use with a Windows computer.
Notice: Formatting a disk erases all the files on it. Copy any files you want to save to another disk before formatting the disk.
Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
Select the disk you want to format for use with Windows computers.
Click Erase, and choose one of the following from the Format pop-up menu:
If the size of the disk is 32 GB or less, choose MS-DOS (FAT).
If the size of the disk is over 32 GB, choose ExFAT.
Type a name for the disk.
The name’s maximum length is 11 characters.
Click the Erase button, and then click Erase again."

Using portable thumb drive to transfer music?

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