Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with externalharddrive

Yo! The tunes are over there now!

wg — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:17:07 -0800

I would like for Windows Media Player to play music from my external hard drive. My google-fu is typically strong, but apparently I don't have the vocabulary for this task. I have a lot of music, gigantic photos, and a 5 year old desktop; so I moved it all over to an external hard drive. (A 1TB iOmega, if it matters.) Now, my computer has room to breathe and I have plenty of room for more music and pictures and God only knows what all it would take for me to fill that bugger up.

Now, I can go to the external drive in My Computer and play an individual song. But, that's kind of pointless. I can copy-paste the music back to my C drive, but that defeats the point of getting the external drive.

I've googled all I could, I've seriously browsed the WMP Help Guide, and I've been to the online version as well. Hell, I even asked my mom.

Surely, there must be a way for me to say to Windows Media Player "Hey, go look for that file on the E Drive instead." Alternatively, can I move WMP to the E Drive?

backup --> iPod

Jaltcoh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:25 -0800

Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity. (Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.

Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.

I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).

I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.

But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)

So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.

So my questions are:

(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.

(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?

(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)

I'll show you not valid

shothotbot — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:34:18 -0800

Lightroom is not cooperating with my external hard drive. Here is my tale of woe.

Windows XP, SP3, Lightroom 2.5.

External hard drive starts acting funny. Round here we expect hard drive failure, so I order a new drive and when it arrives copy the backup onto the new drive. The new drive has the same drive letter as the old one, but not the same name.

When I try to open a catalog by double-clicking on the .lrcat file I get: "The temporary file path is not valid. Lightroom cannot start." The catalogs seem to be fine, as when I open lightroom directly, not by clicking the .lrcat file, catalogs look normal. If I copy the lrcat file to my internal hard drive it opens. If I create a new catalog on the external drive I get the same problem. If I create a new .lrcat file on the internal hard drive it behaves normally.

I have tried removing lightroom and reinstalling, but it did not ask for a serial number on the re-install so I am guessing there is something in the registry which did not get wiped out, but I am not sure.

I am sure I am pretty confused.

External hard drive for Mac & Vista PC?

saileyn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:44:34 -0800

I need an external firewire hard drive for video editing on a Mac at university. Is there a product that will also let me access the footage stored when I'm at home on my Vista PC? We're using Final Cut Pro to log and capture our footage, which will be stored on the external drive. We're then editing on FCP, again using the external drive, but I was hoping to be able to also have access the footage after classes have finished, using my copy of Premier on my Vista PC at home.

Our lecturer recommended Western Digital drives, which I read can work on Mac and PC, but he's Mac-only so wasn't much help with my question. He's also recommended we get a "IEEE 1394b 800 (9 pin connection) Mac-compatible external drive, at least 500GB, preferably 1TB" if that helps any...

I need to go out and buy something this weekend, and am from Melbourne, Australia, so if anyone has any suggestions as to what might be suitable, and be available out here, it would be fantastic!

Thanks for your help!

Hello, external harddrive? Can you hear me now?

veryhappyheidi — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:53:59 -0800

How can I get my mac to recognize my external hard drive again? Disclaimer: I'm pretty new to macs, but would consider myself a competent user.

I have an WD 500gig My Book external hard drive that I use on both my macbook pro (running Mac OS X 10.4.11) and PC. I don't remember ever formatting it, it just worked on both as soon as I plugged it in.

A few days back, the hard drive accidentally unplugged from my mac (aka, I did not eject it). When I plugged it back in, the hard drive would not pop up on the desktop. I'm 99.9% sure that all the hardware is fine-- it still works on the PC, and lights and spins when I plug it in-- and when I go into the System Profiler, the USB says that my external hard drive is attached. (One forum said you can click and force it to manually mount the drive, but I can't figure out how to do that.) I also installed Disk Warrior, which recognizes the hard drive, but says "The directory cannot be rebuilt, the file system is unsupported." There are bullets under that that say " This disk is not a Macintosh disk; This disk does not appear on the desktop; This disk is 465.75GB in size."

Every similar problem I've read about (including this one) turns out to be either hardware or fixable by Disk Warrior. Please help!

But this WAS my backup!

N2O1138 — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:02:37 -0800

How can I repair any broken files resulting from power loss during defragmentation? It seems that most file recovery applications want to move everything to a new disk, but this is not a good option for me because I don't have any other drives large enough. I was using iDefrag on my terabyte (My Book) external hard drive. It had gotten almost 21 hours in, and somehow the power cable got unplugged and the battery died. To make a long story short, iDefrag can't see the disk at all, Disk Utility sees the hard drive but not any of the data or the partition itself, and verify and repair are not selectable. So this is
Mac OS 10.5.6, Macbook Pro, My Book 1tb external hard drive, iDefrag.

Why would you defrag an HFS+ external hard drive, you ask? I'm about to set up Boot Camp, and I want some extra space for Windows-compatible storage, but it won't make an NTFS partition because the free space isn't consecutive.

I have a feeling that there isn't much to repair, and all the data (including backups of every computer in the house, including some long since reformatted, as well as my 30gb+ iTunes library that I just moved there) should still be there, I just don't know how to make anything see the hard drive in the first place.

I do have access to another My Book 1tb (this one is NTFS), but I don't know if it would have enough free space either (and it's my dad's)

How should I go about using an external hard drive for Time Machine and other things?

MadamM — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:34:59 -0800

I have a Macbook and a new external hard drive. I'd like to set up Time Machine, but I don't want to devote my entire new hard drive to back ups. I'm new to this, but I think I want to partition my drive- how do I go about doing that? And how large of a partition do I need for Time Machine? My Macbook has a 160GB hard drive, of which 84GB are used. The new hard drive is 640GB, so using the entire thing for Time Machine seems like a bit of a waste. I'd like to also use the hard drive to store large video files, which are eating up my laptop's drive at an alarming rate. My questions:

-What is the minimum amount of space I should allot on the new hard drive to Time Machine? My impulse is to divide it in half, which would leave Time Machine 2X my laptop's storage to work with, but I have no idea if this is far too much or far too little.

-I understand OSX has a built in drive formatting utility. Is this the best way to partition my drive? If so, um, how do I actually use it?

A few notes: I am not set on partitioning my drive, but from what I've seen on Apple's site, they intend you to devote an entire hard drive to Time Machine. If you can use a hard drive for Time Machine and also store other stuff on it, well, yay! I just don't want to do my first back up to discover that I'm wrong, and have to start from scratch.

I'm not really looking for other backup programs. I like that Time Machine is easy to use, built in to the OS, and automatic.

Anyone have personal experience with this? My googling and time on Apple's site have not been terribly helpful.

Will my PS3 play nice with a networked hard drive?

Ghidorah — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:36:16 -0800

How to use wifi, a PS3, and external hard drives to stream media to the tv? I've got a PS3, and recently set up a wifi connection at home. I'm thinking about getting one a networked hard drive (the kind you connect to your wifi router) so that my wife (using her netbook) and I (using my toshiba laptop) can access photos, music, whathaveyou wirelessly. I'd also like to set it up so that my PS3 can play videos from that hard drive.

I asked a guy at Yodobashi Camera if this was doable with a Buffalo network harddrive like this one (the product name is slightly different in Japan), and he said he didn't think it would work. I'm hesistant to drop about $150 on one of these things if it won't work with the PS3.

I guess, to take this to its natural extension, is the PS3 (with aforementioned HD) a decent stopgap for a media center? Or should I just continue to hook my laptop up to the tv when I want to watch videos?

best/easiest way to backup a hard drive

AZNsupermarket — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:41:24 -0800

What is the best/easiest way to backup my hard drive? My Dell laptop's hard drive is suffering from bad sectors and will have to have its hard drive replaced. Before I send the computer back to Dell to be fixed, I want to backup everything on my hard drive to an external drive which should have more than enough room to contain it. I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium edition. I am fairly savvy with computers, but I prefer a solution that is simple and effective. What would be the easiest way to back up the contents of my hard drive to an external hard drive? Is there a program that can easily automate the process?

MyBook won't format

NoMich — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:21:14 -0800

Why can't I format my new MyBook USB external hard drive? My computer is Windows XP Professional and I just bought a brand new Western Digital 500GB MyBook Essential external hard drive and I can't get it to format. What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to get it to work with my computer? I've tried three of the four USB drives on my computer and I keep getting an error that reads, "Windows cannot complete the reformat of the drive," or something similiar. This is very frustrating since it's taken about six hours for these failures.

Dual boot backup on external HDD.

kraigory — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:34:42 -0800

What's the best way to setup a 500gb external hard drive to backup windows and linux? I just got a seagate external hard drive for my laptop, which is out of hard disk room. Surprised by the $100 price tag, I splurged and got a 500gb model. So, I would like to set it up to backup my computer, as well as store files.

I dual boot ubuntu linux and windows xp. Should I make two ntfs partitions, and use windows to image backup my current hard drive? Or, should I use FAT32 and use linux to perform the backup? Would there be any complications when backing up ext3 from windows, if it's just a hard drive image? Also, I'd like to use open source programs to do this.

If I go the linux route, and format it with FAT32, are there any disadvantages, or limits on partition size?

Thanks for the help! Oh, and I use linux about 80% of the time, so It would be most handy to backup with linux, if that's the easiest solution.

External hard drive keeps waking up

one_bean — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:15:24 -0800

Why does my external hard drive (OS X) keep spinning up? I have a Mac Mini connected to a Lacie external hard drive. I've had them for about a year and a half, but about two weeks ago, the hard drive started spinning up every two minutes or so. All the time. How should I go about investigating this?

I overwrote a bunch of mp3 folders and need them back

Falconetti — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:10:52 -0800

I was transferring a lot of mp3 folders from my laptop (MacBook Pro) to an external hard drive (160 GB iomega) and overwrote some of the folders, losing a lot of mp3s in the process. Help! Already on the hard drive were folders with the band's name and then subfolders with the various albums in them. I assumed that when I transferred the folders from my laptop to the external hard drive that if there were folders with the same band name on both my laptop and external hard drive, but with different album subfolders, that they would integrate and the result would be all the album subfolders from both sources under the same band folder. Instead, the band folder from the laptop completely replaced the band folder already on the external hard drive and I lost whatever album subfolders were already on the external hard drive.

I am having a hard time explaining this coherently, so I will try to briefly give an example of what happened. On the external hard drive is a folder called "Animal Collective" with has the album "Sung Tongs" as a subfolder. On my laptop is a folder called "Animal Collective" which has the album "Feels" as a subfolder. I thought that when I saved the laptop folder onto the external hard drive that the result would be a folder called "Animal Collective" with both album subfolders inside. Instead, the laptop folder "Animal Collective" folder completely replaced the external hard drive "Animal Collective" folder and I've lost the subfolder "Sung Tongs."

This just happened and I haven't touched anything (the external hard drive is still connected to the laptop). Is there a way I can reverse this or retrieve the folders that were overwritten? Is there any other information you would need to determine a solution? Thanks in advance for any help.

You want to see this e-mail with attachment? Ok, let me go check out your external drive for no reason before I fetch it.

roomwithaview — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:49:33 -0800

Why does Microsoft Outlook insist on spinning up my external hard drive before letting me see any e-mail with attachments? I've noticed this in Outlook 2003 and 2007, in XP and Vista, and I'd like to know what causes it.

Basically, whenever I have an external hard drive connected (via USB) to my computer, I cannot see an immediate preview of any e-mail in Outlook that contains an attachment without having everything in Outlook freeze for a few moments while my external drive spins up. Once the drive is spun up, the body of the e-mail shows up.

If the drive is not attached, or if I have accessed it recently (so that it is spun up and not idle), I can click on an e-mail with an attachment and have it show up in the preview pane with no delay.

My .pst files are my local drive (not on the external) and this happens with both POP and IMAP folders.

So what causes this behavior and is there any way to stop it?

Photoshop cannot open cr2 and jpg files in a single folder on an external harddrive

msbrauer — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:57:42 -0800

I can no longer open a number of raw and jpg files in a single folder on an external harddrive. What's going on? Is my harddrive about to die? Between some time last night and sometime this morning, a folder of pictures on my external harddrive has become almost entirely unusable. I'm using photoshop cs2 on windows xp.

The pictures are all .cr2 raw files from a canon 5d digital camera. My workflow involves tagging and color coding the pictures I want to tone and edit, and once I'm done with the editing, saving a new jpg with the same filename as the original with an additional identifier that it's an edited version. I spent a little while working on the folder (toning in photoshop and captioning in photo mechanic) and then left the harddrive alone and turned off for the night.

When I opened the folder in photomechanic today, a majority but not all of the files (both the cr2's and the jpg's) would not display. When I open the files in photoshop cs2, I get errors. For the cr2 files, photoshop says "could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document." For the jpg's: "could not complete your request because an unknown or invalid JPEG marker type is found."

Some jpeg's and cr2's in the folder work, and as near as I can tell, all other jpeg's and cr2's on the drive open without a hitch, as well. As such, I don't think this is not a problem related to my raw plugin. In some cases, the cr2 opens, but the edited version, a jpg, does not open.

There's a possibility that, last night, while working on the offending files, the drive quit responding (could not do the "safely remove hardware" thing) and had to be restarted.

Though I have backups of these files on dvd's, I'm still concerned. Is this a larger problem with my harddrive? Is it only a problem with these particular files that won't crop up elsewhere on the drive or my computer?

Is there a way to fix the offending files?

Can I run programs off of an external hard drive?

waywardgirl — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:54:44 -0800

Can I run Microsoft Office (2003) off of an external hard drive? I have a legitimate copy with a license and all that. What I really need is to run Publisher at work. You see, my work computer has Office 2003, but not Publisher, and they will not install for me (but that is another story). Anyway, would I be able to put my copy of Office 2003 on my external hard drive and be able to access Publisher from another computer?

If so, how?

Young Pooterstein

Huplescat — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:41:25 -0800

I have some novice questions about a re-install with dual booting in Windows XP. More inside.... My computer is a little over four years old and has fallen bit by bit into the ranks of the walking wounded. Now I’m hearing a pronounced whirring from the hard drive on start-up and a couple more times during the five minutes or so that it takes to boot up. It used to boot a lot faster and, for that matter, do everything a lot faster.

It had some problems before but everything pretty much went to hell when I screwed up while renewing my AVG subscription and set its virus vault free to wreck havoc. Now I know better, and I’ve caught a lot of that stuff with various free programs. Nevertheless it looks like the system will never be the same again, and I suspect my hard drive might have been near the end of its useful life anyway.

In any case, over the last year or so I picked up a virgin copy of Win XP and an 80 gig external hard-drive and I still have my old CDs that I used for the initial install plus a reinstallation CD from Dell for Win XP service pack 1a.

Can I just install everything on the new hard drive and forget about the old one or should I tear the old one out?

Will I be able to tap back into the old drive without malware crossing over and infecting the new one?

I don’t know much so any and all insights are greatly appreciated.

A good external storage option for $100 and under?

Empyrean_72 — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:55:11 -0800

What is a good external HD option for around $100 that focuses on reliability and capacity? Speed is unimportant and I am willing to use an enclosure/internal HD as an option. OK, I used to build my own PCs but it has been a while and am a little out of the loop... looked at reviews online, but am a bit overwhelmed and I haven't done my own hardware in 7 years or so.

I am looking for an external HD for storage to team up with a pending Ipod Nano purchase. It will mainly be used to store my growing collection of MP3s, photos and such. It need not be fast and should cost around $100 so that the Nano & storage costs combined are similar to the Ipod 80 gig classic.

If I can get more bang for my buck using an enclosure - HD combo, then I will go that route. I would prefer to connect via USB 2 but am willing to look at SCSI on the off-chance it is cheaper. Added firewire connectivity would be a plus since there will be a future move to a mac (I am quite mac illiterate at the moment), but it isn't necessary.

As far as the HD is concerned, storage capacity & reliability are much more important to me than speed. Unit must not be too bulky since it will travel, but 3.5 inch HD is fine. A regular Ipod isn't an option since a flash based player better suits my needs. I am currently using Windows Vista and XP.

I am looking for opinions, pointers to good review sites, etc... Any thoughts?

How do I access an external firewire attached to a Mac Mini from my Mac Book?

nivekraz — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:25:45 -0800

I have an external firewire drive attached to a Mac Mini. I have enabled file sharing on the Mini and added the external drive as a shared folder. When I browse to the Mini over the network, I can access the internal hard drive but the external does not show up. Both Macs are running Leopard. How can I get it do show up?

Can you stop my USB Drive hating me?

Brockles — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:48:42 -0800

I need to stop my external (USB) drive having a petulant fit (and hiding/refusing to play ball) on an annoyingly regular basis during normal service. How? I have a MacBook Pro. I bought a Maxtor 15Gb hard drive a month or so ago (possibly two). I have never even moved this drive more than a few feet (never mind dropped it) yet it has started playing up.

When I try and transfer stuff backwards and forwards, it often will crash the finder, freeze the operation entirely and sulk. There seems to be no pattern to when it does this. No matter how long I wait, it will only do anything after unplugging it (with appropriate hissy fit from the OS about losing data for not ejecting an unresponsive drive - meh). Plug it all back in (sometimes this needs to be done twice) and all is well and it will work normally for a bit.

During the crash, Finder is totally screwed. Relaunching the finder (as I initially assumed was the issue) will mean none of the desktop icons reappear, it is still frozen, but everything will come back (instantly, and with a bump) when I unplug the USB drive.

Any ideas why this is happening? Or shall I take the stuff off it and launch it back at the shop with suitable stern words (possibly involving Gratuitous use of the word fuck, although possibly not enough to warrant a Rory).

Will airport x-ray machines damage an external hard drive?

Afroblanco — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:00:24 -0800

Do airport x-ray machines damage external hard drives? I'll be traveling tomorrow with two external hard drives. I'll be taking them carry-on, so that they don't get all banged up. Should I just leave them in my bag and let them go through the x-ray machine? Or should I, like, take them out and hand them to the guy or something?

Accidentally repartitioned drive - can I recover files?

jbb7 — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 07:27:12 -0800

I was going to repartition an external USB hard drive in Mac OS X 10.4 in Disk Utility, and after I clicked Partition, I thought I clicked Cancel when I learned it would result in data loss. I guess I actually clicked OK, and then I quickly quit Disk Utility and disconnected the drive (it had already been unmounted). Now, when I reconnect the drive, it shows up as having been repartitioned, and all of the data on there is gone. Can I get my data back? It only had about 4 seconds of being connected before I cancelled and unplugged it. I am sure that all of the bits are still on there, but the partition table seems to have been nuked. Is it possible to recover the files without sending the disk to DriveSavers? (It's mostly backups, but there are some original photos not backed up anywhere else that I would really like to recover.)

All partitions are Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The disk is a 500 GB Western Digital external USB hard drive.

iPhone w/External USB Drive?

jstrater — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 08:18:08 -0800

iPhone has OSX and USB. Can I hook it up to an external USB hard disk? I don't even have a personal computer anymore, just a company-issued one. I don't need a computer for much outside of work, so I'm thinking the iPhone might just be serviceable ...if it can connect to an external USB hard disk by itself and run iTunes as a standalone device. The idea would be that when connected to the external drive I could move tunes to the flash drive inside the iPhone.

I'm doubting this is possible, but I thought I'd ask.

Help me move just the songs I want

evilbeck — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:28:35 -0800

How do I move only songs from a certain playlist from my external hard drive to my computer? The easy way, please. I want to move about 3000 songs from my external hard drive to my computer. I use itunes and my itunes music folder is located on the external because it won't all fit on my computer's hard drive. Is there a simple way to move just that playlist of 3000 songs, other than manually copying every song file over? Please tell me there is. This seemed like a great idea in theory, and then I got to the execution part and now I want to execute myself! Help, please.

How can I get my Simpletech drive to mount in windows?

JFitzpatrick — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:48:42 -0800

Windows XP Home Edition won't recognize my Simpletech external hard drive. The USB ports are fine, the computer recognizes -every- other USB device I own (15+ devices.) Help! I already searched google on the matter. It turns out that Simpletech drives are remarkable crappy at plug and play'ing properly in XP home.

Before I bust the case open and put the drive in a new enclosure, can anyone help? Here are the stats:

USB 2.0 ports, verified working and "hot swappable" with a ton of other USB 2.0 devices.

Machine running XP Home, no previous problems with anything.

The drive -does- power up (as indicated by the power light and the whirring of the drive inside) The hard drive activity light becomes active after a moment and then flickers.

When plugged in Windows -does- "discover new hard ware" but then it just craps out and nothing happens. 30-60 seconds later windows makes the chime noise which indicates a device has been disconnected.

The part number of the drive is: SP-U25/40R

The website for the model is:
http://www.simpletech.com/parts/spu2540r.htm

I bought it off eBay new in box, and I -can- return it... but given that I can pick up a tiny enclosure for a laptop drive for under $10 on ebay... I'd just as easily swap it out as I would return it (since it was a really good deal.)

I -would- like to keep the cool red case though :) Help!