Hey all,
I have a question. I just moved all my music in my itunes library to an external harddrive to free up some space on my computer. itunes seems to recognize it ok and such. The problem i'm having is that sometimes when I play songs from itunes it is skipping. Like there is a delay. I'm sure this has to do with the hard drive, and someone told me it had something to do with the hard drive warming up. Is this true ? Is there some type of setting or something that I can change to fix this ?
Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks
I have a question. I just moved all my music in my itunes library to an external harddrive to free up some space on my computer. itunes seems to recognize it ok and such. The problem i'm having is that sometimes when I play songs from itunes it is skipping. Like there is a delay. I'm sure this has to do with the hard drive, and someone told me it had something to do with the hard drive warming up. Is this true ? Is there some type of setting or something that I can change to fix this ?
Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Fri, March 7, 2008 - 11:01 PMBoyelek, 9 pm HST • ƒlyday..
it depends, ok ¿..Is the hard drive Firewire® or USB..and if it is USB.. which version..1.0 or 2.2
( high speed ) ? Use System Profiler to determine these facts..Off hand it sounds as if you
are using a USB 1.0 HD connection on an older mac®. That would likely cause delays
and skips..
alo'ha, mactech.tribe.net
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Machine Model: PowerBook G4 15"
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 512 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sat, March 8, 2008 - 2:10 AMHey,
Thanks for the response.
The hard drive i have is a western digital, 320 gig drive and I'm using firewire. I'm not sure what else you need to know.
My mac is older:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: PowerMac6,1
Processor Name: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Processor Speed: 1.25 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Let me know what else you need to know.
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sat, March 8, 2008 - 9:18 AMDoes it happen only when you first try to use it after a while of not using it? If so, check your system preferences, in the energy saving pane. Make sure you have not checked "put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" I've had that option cause problems in many ways. I never check that one.
Also, if you are running a lot of other processes at the same time, your machine may be so busy it can't keep up with the audio. Run Activity Monitor (Applications->Utilities) and check how much memory is remaining. If there is little or no free memory, your machine may be swapping and be unable to keep up with the audio stream. If so, get more memory or run fewer programs. -
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 3:41 AMIf I had to take a guess, I'd be that some other app is accessing the drive. even an F4 pipe isn't unlimited. If you're doing disk searches in Spotlight, or transferring large files to/from that drive, then, yeah, it's gonna get skippy.
HD warmup shouldn't be an issue, except at first. Once you've started playing the file, the HD shouldn't sleep until the access loop is completed. -
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 9:47 AMGood idea! Perhaps there is something else using the drive and keeping the Firewire bus too busy to keep up.
I guess another relevant question is: are there other drives on the same bus? If so, maybe one of them is busy. All the drives on the same bus share its bandwidth. If it isn't on a bus by itself, you could try that as an experiment to see if it improves things...
I once wrote a perl script to expose how much data was being transferred from/to an external drive. You can find it here:
www.timefold.com/osx/tips/driveio.html
If one downloads it, makes it executable (chmod +x thefilename.pl) and runs it it will show you how many megabytes/second are being transferred. Music doesn't make much at all. So, if the number is big, it means something else is keeping the external drive busy.
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 10:50 AMThe only time I've had iTunes skip is when I have the processor loaded up. Try getting having Activity Monitor on the menu bar, showing the current processor load. -
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 4:29 PMuh ,
Although we probably haven't tried to do what you
are doing..and..lol..we use and own iPhones® and iPods ® . .
Here's a potential E Z fix, also :
1) get oO0ºff-line ;
Get the iPod® icon to show up on your G3's desktop..
Highlight it and bring up the information window about it..
-[ by hitting the ' Splat + I ' keys together or ' Apple® & I ' keys ] -
Now, do go ahead and check the ' ignor ownership ' box for the iPod® drive..
Then hit the ' index now ' button and wait for that process to complete..
. .. it takes a l o t of time..you can watch the process in the iPod's® info window as the
capacity & available numbers change..if you want..
..What i am thinking here is that the iPod® hasn't been indexed yet and
the finder's indexing process is slowing it down..
btw - if it crashes during that indexing process and does
not complete indexing you may have an iPod® bug..
They are not unheard of..usually java® related sniffers
or trojan horses trying to grab e-mail addresses and stuff
but don't go and reformat your iPod® just because of that
if you have it just the way you want it
^^ That's one main reason i don't save e-mail addresses on my iPod™
4 gen video, btw
Use iSynch®, too, for your Calendars, etc..it's slick
alo'ha
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 7:43 PM'friends don't let friends drink and Tribe.' -
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Re: Using iTunes on an external drive ?
Sun, March 9, 2008 - 11:41 PM
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