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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Mac/PC sharing external drive holding iTunes

elinh - Jan 22, 2006 - 12:34 am

I just got a mac and am trying to share my iTunes library that is on an external drive. This drive is hooked up to a PC and all my music is imported onto it. I managed to get all the music to show up in the iTunes on the ibook and update my ipod but I have a couple of problems I don't understand.

1. I can't import music from a CD on the iBook and have it go on to the external drive. When i look at the properties of the drive when its hooked up on the mac, it says it is read only. I don't understand this - it is a read/write when hooked up to the PC.

2. How do I update the iTunes list of songs on the ibook? For instance, I import songs on the PC onto the external drive, then hook up the external drive to the ibook. At this point the iTunes music list just shows the songs that were on the external drive before importing the new songs. There must be some way to refresh or update the listing on the ibook.i know when I initially hooked up the external drive to the ibook, I selected some option to get the songs to be "seen" in iTunes. I think it was "consolidate library" but I can't remember. I tried that on the second time I hooked it up and got an error message so now I'm a little lost.

I obviously don't understand how the library works. It appears that the list that shows up in iTunes is just that and needs to refreshed if the contents of the library its hooked to is changed - it doesn't automatically sense any changes.

baldprof - Jan 22, 2006 - 8:56 am

I don't know if I have the answer or not, but I think one of the settings in iTunes Preferences on your iBook is where the source of the problem is.

If you open iTunes Preferences, then click Advanced, then General. Make sure a check mark is placed by Copy files to Itunes folder when adding to Library.

I think that is it.

elinh - Jan 22, 2006 - 5:16 pm

Thank you for your reponse but that option is selected. It appears to me the difficulty is with the hard drive itself. It's as if it is paired with the PC in regard to copying rights. It allows other computers to view its contents but not to write to it or copy off of it - is this possible?

baldprof - Jan 22, 2006 - 5:31 pm

Yes. This is part of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) in iTunes . The iTunes software stores information about which computer generated a particular library. For the Music purchased from iTunes, the music cannot be played on other computers unless the computer is "Authorized" to play purchased music.

If you open the Advanced menu in iTunes, you can authorize a computer to play this music.

baldprof - Jan 22, 2006 - 5:33 pm

Another possibility is that you have a permissions problem. If you Control-click on the drive, after it mounts on the desktop, select Get Info. From there you can change the permissions for that drive.

elinh - Jan 22, 2006 - 7:57 pm

None of the music in the library is purchased from iTunes - it's all ripped off CDs so I'm not sure the authorization option is applicable. I think it is authorized anyway since when I look at the Advanced menu, the only option is to Deauthorize Computer. However the permissions factor rings true. I saw that the drive was read-only in the Get-info dialog but didn't see that you could change the permissions. I will look again next time I hook the drive up to my ibook.

Do you have any suggestions about my 2nd question?

baldprof - Jan 22, 2006 - 8:19 pm

At the very bottom of the Get Info Window where it shows ownership and permissions is a drop down list where this can normally be changed.

Consolidate Library is normally the command that would be used, refering to the second part of your question.

I really don't know why it doesn't so I'll re-open the question.

elinh - Jan 22, 2006 - 9:55 pm

Thank you Michael - I'm going to try to both the Consolidate Library option and look for the drop-down list to change permissions when I hook up the drive to my ibook again. I'll let you know if it works this time - thank you for your time and clear instructions! best regards

philippe99 - Jan 23, 2006 - 2:18 pm

Was your external drive formatted on a W2000/WinXP PC as a NTFS format ?
If yes, MacOsx can only read such partition, not write to it

Just reformat the partition as the standard DOS FAT32 system (just do it on the PC or on the Mac through the DiskUtility) and the MacOsx will see it.

Warning: FAT32 system limits the size of a single file to 4GB

Regards
Philippe

elinh - Jan 23, 2006 - 4:15 pm

Hi Philippe - I think it formatted as FAT32 - I seem to remember seeing that when I took a peek at it with the Get Info option in Finder but I will take another look.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by partition - this drive is not partitioned.

Can you reformat a drive when there is data on it without damaging the data?

philippe99 - Jan 24, 2006 - 2:52 am

When partionning a drive, you slice it in several parts, each part being independant and being able to handle a different format.

When you reformat a partition or the whole drive, everything is erased on the partition/whole drive

So, NTFS partition is a common problem when sharing drives between Mac and PC, so I thought it was your issue

What about Michael's tip on ownership and partition in one of the posts above ? If read-only, can you change it (not a dimmed area ?)
If you manually copy files on that drive (other than iTunes stuff), do you face the same problem ?
I hook several FAT32 partitonned PC drives to my G3 -now G5- without any problem since years, so I have difficulties to finger what is this issue ?

Philippe

elinh - Jan 24, 2006 - 1:06 pm

Thank you Philippe for your quick responses - I'm a little frustrated right now because all this stuff I'm trying is at home and i have to be at work!!! Grrrrr...By the time I get home I can't seem to try all this stuff out. Yesterday I got my new iMac that seduced me into playing with it last night and ran into a bunch of other problems instead of working on this external drive problem. I will be trying to hook it up to the iMac soon and will be able to try out the tips both you and Michael have given me. I'm encouraged by your experience that this external drive should not be a problem and am hopeful its just a matter of finding this place where I can change the permissions. I DO have the same problem in not being able to copy any files off of the external drive to the iBook so it seem logical that its a matter of changing the ownership/permissions.

I appreciate your time and responses and will let you know when I've tried them out and how I fare. Cheers!

philippe99 - Jan 24, 2006 - 1:10 pm

Another thing you can also try is to create a new uszer on the machine with basic rights (so I mean, not an administrator as you are if you are the sole user of the machine) and when logged as this new user, try to copy.

I'm a little bit disappointed by your issue: I never find any issue related to a ownership/permission level with external drive ???

Philippe

elinh - Jan 24, 2006 - 1:15 pm

Roger - I will try this too. - thanx!

elinh - Jan 24, 2006 - 8:15 pm

OK - I finally got back to this and have verified that this drive is in fact NTFS so it is behaving as expected.

I'm afraid to try reformat it as FAT32 because I'm unsure if that procedure will #1 wipe out my music library and/or #2 make it unreadable by my PC when I hook it back up there. Be gentle with me - I'm a newbie and feel very over my head.

I looked in the Disk Utility and couldn't figure out how to reformat it. Can you give me some reassurance about my fears listed above and some clearer steps on reformatting?

philippe99 - Jan 25, 2006 - 2:16 am

(1a) format = erase; so backup the iTunes folder of the external drive somewhere else (Pc or Mac: you cannot write on this drive, but can copy from)
PC warning: Windows 2000 Professional and XP Professional cannot FORMAT a volume larger than 32 GB in size using their native FAT32 file system
http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

(1b) you can format it on the PC side and see if this works. See Windows help for how formatting on FAT32
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q255867

(2) for DU (sorry I run a french Os), select the drive on the left, than the Erase (?) tab; select in the selectmenu the DOS format
See this guide:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...ing_tiger.html
for Tiger, but same principle for panther
The erase will wipe out the drive
I've already do this operation with USB storage key without any problem

(3) I do not thing you need to partition the drive, except if you want to cut the drive into 2 partition: one you'll partition as MacOsExtended if you need to have a bootable secure partition in case of you internal drive failed, the second you'll partition as DOS for your actual need

(4) to be sure make a test: format the drive through DU; when this is ok, copy a text file or a Word document onto this fresh partition; unhook the drive and see if you can retrieve the file on the PC side
Do the same in the other way: Pc_file -> drive -> mac_desktop

Philippe

elinh - Jan 25, 2006 - 9:12 am

Thank you Philippe - I think I'm all set now. In reality, my new iMac has plenty of space on it to keep the library so I'll probably copy it there and then reformat (or have one of my techie friends do it) the hard drive for future use.

Thanx for being so patient and prompt in your replies. You've really been helpful in making me understand this stuff. Best regards!

philippe99 - Jan 25, 2006 - 10:55 am

I was very happy to helped you on this issue and hope you be able to format the drive without any problem.

Thank you for using macosx.com.
Regards
Philippe