My first spat with Apple :(

[drb6]

Hey everyone,

I'm just coming off a bad conversation with Apple support people. I was trying to transfer files from an external HD to my new ibook. Some files transfered (mainly documents) while others like pictures don't. Once I copy and paste them, I waited for several minutes and tried to open them. And I got a message saying that another program is using it. So I figured it needed more time. Now I've waited almost 30 minutes after copying and pasting one picture (jpg) and still the same thing.

I tried some itunes files as well and finder just froze up. This has happened many times since I started 'trying' to transfer files. The guy at apple support was no help at all and asked me to contact the external HD maker. I told him it wasn't a problem with that since it works on my PC fine. I just felt like choking him. Arghhh.

I'm hoping you guys can help me out here. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

Edit: oh btw, I've also seen the beach ball about 6 times now during this process and also when i try to open image files directly from the HD

[tekmoe]

only thought that comes to mind right now is maybe the hard drive is not compatible with mac??? probably not true, but just a thought...

[fuzzwud]

is there an Apple Store nearby? Maybe someone there knows ...

[skunk]

If the drive is mounted on the desktop, you could always do a "Get Info" and see how it's formatted.

[mbdamdg]

Is the Hard drive Firewire or USB? If it is only USB 1, you'll be waiting a long time.....

[skunk]

Is the Hard drive Firewire or USB? If it is only USB 1, you'll be waiting a long time.....Yes, but surely not 30 minutes for a .jpg....

[drb6]

It seems to be formatted for MS-DOS Fat 32. My dad has a whole bunch of stuff on it so I don't think I want to change the formatting.

Oh and its USB 2.0, pretty fast with my old laptop. Is there an alternative to this? Do I have to put everything on CD? I have about 9gb on there so that'll be painful. I was excited because i thought this would be the easiest way to do it.

[bigredsixer]

Yes, but surely not 30 minutes for a .jpg....


Well that depends. JPG doesnt always mean small. If its high resolution or large in size it can be a 400mb file. I doubt thats the deal, but it is possible.

Have you tried any other form of external device with the same file? Thumb drive, diskette??? If that works than there is a good chance either your external HD is not compatable or not working. If that does not work, then you can tell the tech that it cant be the compatibility of the HD because it does it with other devices.

Narrowing it down for the Techs will help immensly. You have to understand that they are helping you fix a problem blindly, and that can be difficult. You have to take the extra steps sometimes.

[drb6]

Well that depends. JPG doesnt always mean small. If its high resolution or large in size it can be a 400mb file. I doubt thats the deal, but it is possible.

Have you tried any other form of external device with the same file? Thumb drive, diskette??? If that works than there is a good chance either your external HD is not compatable or not working. If that does not work, then you can tell the tech that it cant be the compatibility of the HD because it does it with other devices.

Narrowing it down for the Techs will help immensly. You have to understand that they are helping you fix a problem blindly, and that can be difficult. You have to take the extra steps sometimes.

i've used a thumb drive with a few itunes files and it works. not the same ones but this time there is no lag or problem. i think it is because of the formatting. that just bums me out though since every other way is so complicated. my ipod is getting impatient waiting for me to upload music :(

[csubear]

It seems to be formatted for MS-DOS Fat 32. My dad has a whole bunch of stuff on it so I don't think I want to change the formatting.

Oh and its USB 2.0, pretty fast with my old laptop. Is there an alternative to this? Do I have to put everything on CD? I have about 9gb on there so that'll be painful. I was excited because i thought this would be the easiest way to do it.


Fat 32 is the root of your problem I think. OS X is compatible, but sometimes can be very slow at reading it.

[alex_ant]

If it works fine on Windows then it's the Mac's fault for not being able to read from it correctly. I would do a scandisk or whatever it's called of the drive from Windows. If that doesn't solve the problem then I would plug the HD into the Windows PC, copy everything off it (or just what the Mac can't transfer), reformat the external HD, copy everything back, then try again.

[Nermal]

Plug the drive into the Windows computer then copy the files via network.

[skunk]

If it works fine on Windows then it's the Mac's fault for not being able to read from it correctly.You are kidding, aren't you? Like a Windows machine would read an HFS+ disk with no problems.
I would do a scandisk or whatever it's called of the drive from Windows. If that doesn't solve the problem then I would plug the HD into the Windows PC, copy everything off it (or just what the Mac can't transfer), reformat the external HD, copy everything back, then try again.If it's his dad's HD, that might not be such a good idea.

[CanadaRAM]

It seems to be formatted for MS-DOS Fat 32. My dad has a whole bunch of stuff on it so I don't think I want to change the formatting.

Oh and its USB 2.0, pretty fast with my old laptop. Is there an alternative to this? Do I have to put everything on CD? I have about 9gb on there so that'll be painful. I was excited because i thought this would be the easiest way to do it.

Depends how old a laptop. Even if the drive is USB 2.0 the laptop has to have USB 2.0 on the motherboard or it will transfer at USB 1.1 speeds.

Think of it this way. If you make approximately 14 CDs out of the data, it may take you a couple of hours but you'll have an excellent backup; which, if the only copy of the data is on an external drive which is not reading reliably on the Mac, you would surely want to have....

[neocell]

Could it be that spotlight is trying to index the external drive and therefore slowing everything up?

[Benjamin]

Could it be that spotlight is trying to index the external drive and therefore slowing everything up?
I was going to draw the same conclusion.

[rinseout]

It's true that Spotlight will automatically try to index an external HD the moment you plug it in; at least one that's HFS+ formatted.

I think this is a terrible way to have it, personally; they should have had it set to not automatically index external drives unless the user wanted it. I don't need to index my backup disk, for example.

Setting the Privacy options is not a permanent solution to this, since the privacy settings will go away when you eject the disk.

The other thing with external disks (while I'm ranting) is that it seems impossible to eject one partition without ejecting the entire device. So if I have my external partitioned into two HFS+ filesystems, if you eject one filesystem the other goes away too. Badly done, Apple.

[madmaxmedia]

I've always had no problems at all connecting Windows formatted external drives to a Mac. Windows formatted iPods work seamlessly with Macs too, and good transfer speeds.

Although the tech wasn't very helpful, to be honest this is a strange situation. These things normally just work. If the drive is formatted fine, and your Mac is running fine, then the hardware in the drive would be a possibility. What kind/brand drive is it?

After connecting, you can go into Spotlight preferences and turn off Spotlight for the external drive.

Another person suggested copying the files over a network. That would get around your problem. Also, if your Mac only has a USB 1 port, then copying over a network (if it's 100BaseT) will be a lot faster. If it's a new iBook, then it's probably USB 2 anyways.

[Capt Underpants]

You are kidding, aren't you? Like a Windows machine would read an HFS+ disk with no problems.
If it's his dad's HD, that might not be such a good idea.

We're not talking HFS+ here, though. If the drive is formatted FAT32 and Windows reads it fine, the mac should be able to read it as well.

[Sharewaredemon]

It's true that Spotlight will automatically try to index an external HD the moment you plug it in; at least one that's HFS+ formatted.

I think this is a terrible way to have it, personally; they should have had it set to not automatically index external drives unless the user wanted it. I don't need to index my backup disk, for example.

Setting the Privacy options is not a permanent solution to this, since the privacy settings will go away when you eject the disk.

The other thing with external disks (while I'm ranting) is that it seems impossible to eject one partition without ejecting the entire device. So if I have my external partitioned into two HFS+ filesystems, if you eject one filesystem the other goes away too. Badly done, Apple.

I agree with your rants about Spotlight. For such a powerful desktop search tool I feel that the preferences are a bit lacking.

You in fact can eject one partition without ejecting the other, you just can't from Finder.

You'll have to go into Disk Utility to eject on partition.

Hope that helped.

[Mr.Hostility]

Fat 32...one of the worst filesystems ever. :(

[PrOeliuM]

Fat 32...one of the worst filesystems ever. :(

And yet some people (like me) still have to use it since it's the only one to my knowledge that can safely work in a mixed OS environment running OSX, XP, and Linux.

I sure wish there was some "updated" fat32, or any other file system that would gain acceptance and compatibilty amongts the three major OSs so I could not worry about reading from my hd's depending on which of my comps I'm using (network shares not withstanding).

[Mord]

M$ fights to the teeth to make NTFS incompatible with linux/BSD/OS X, mac os x has pretty much the best file system compatibility being able to read NTFS, write/read, UFS, HFS, FAT, FAT32 the only thing i want is EXT2/3 compatibility.

[drb6]

I've always had no problems at all connecting Windows formatted external drives to a Mac. Windows formatted iPods work seamlessly with Macs too, and good transfer speeds.

Although the tech wasn't very helpful, to be honest this is a strange situation. These things normally just work. If the drive is formatted fine, and your Mac is running fine, then the hardware in the drive would be a possibility. What kind/brand drive is it?

After connecting, you can go into Spotlight preferences and turn off Spotlight for the external drive.

Another person suggested copying the files over a network. That would get around your problem. Also, if your Mac only has a USB 1 port, then copying over a network (if it's 100BaseT) will be a lot faster. If it's a new iBook, then it's probably USB 2 anyways.

Yeah I thought it was weird, everything else I connected worked so smoothly. Now I'm a little worried about my iPod which I formatted for Windows, I gotta see how that goes later.

The HD says D.B.F. that might just be the case though. I'll check with my dad. Oh by the way I'm a girl :)

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown.
2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.

Thanks

[bigredsixer]

Yeah I thought it was weird, everything else I connected worked so smoothly. Now I'm a little worried about my iPod which I formatted for Windows, I gotta see how that goes later.

The HD says D.B.F. that might just be the case though. I'll check with my dad. Oh by the way I'm a girl :)

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown.
2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.

Thanks

Can you reformat Ipods to Mac? Will it work on Windows machine then?

[Sean7512]

Can you reformat Ipods to Mac? Will it work on Windows machine then?

No, Mac formatted iPods will only work on a Mac; however, a Windows formatted iPod will work with both, Mac and Windows.

[Counterfit]

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown. Click the Privacy tab in the Spotlight prefpane. I have it set to ignore my Backup partition on a FW drive (and it's still there after ejecting the disk many times) and any spam or junk email folders
2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.
You should be able to mount the drive on your Mac over the network. Then just copy them to the drive.

[maxterpiece]

couldn't she just use the ipod as a hard drive and connect it to her dad's laptop along with the external hd, then copy all the files from the external HD to the ipod, then plug the ipod into the mac and copy the stuff?

more of a workaround than an answer, but it should work.

could also connect the drive to dad's laptop, network to his laptop, then directly access that drive through his laptop and copy it from the drive, directly to the mac through the network. This way you don't have to copy things back and forth.

[Sweetfeld28]

my first guess would have be [like others have said] that maybe Spotlight is doing its thing->indexing your drive.

or here are a couple of things i would check...

1. go in to your Applications folder>Utilities>Terminal. Open it, then type in top, and hit return. Top shows you a list of the top running applications, based on Processor usage/percentage. See if you can determine if Spotlight is running, if it is and is indexing it should have a high percentage.

2. another thing. i have a portable firewire 400 external laptop drive, which has a oxford 911 chipset, that i just recently formatted as FAT32. I did this because, i needed it to used on PCs and Macs for transportability of Graphics, Video, and other stuff. Anyway, i haven't had any kinds of problems with it at all. So, i am thinking it maybe how/or what you are using to copy the files.

So i would try and use some programs which copy what ever you want, to where ever you want [i mean a program that copys every single file, even the ones you can't see]. A good program that i use when doing backups is Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13260). Try using this i think it should do the trick.

Good Luck

[newton213]

Is this going to be a semi-permanent backup, or just a temporary one? Because if it's the latter, why not just use the iPod as the backup drive, assuming it's a full sized iPod. I've done this more than a couple times before I got my external drive, and since you said you only need about 9GB....

[neocell]

Well with all this banter about spotlight, why not just check to see if it actually is indexing, and if it is, wait 10 minutes, 20 mins, whatever for it to be done, and then comeback and transfer the files.

[drb6]

my first guess would have be [like others have said] that maybe Spotlight is doing its thing->indexing your drive.

or here are a couple of things i would check...

1. go in to your Applications folder>Utilities>Terminal. Open it, then type in top, and hit return. Top shows you a list of the top running applications, based on Processor usage/percentage. See if you can determine if Spotlight is running, if it is and is indexing it should have a high percentage.

2. another thing. i have a portable firewire 400 external laptop drive, which has a oxford 911 chipset, that i just recently formatted as FAT32. I did this because, i needed it to used on PCs and Macs for transportability of Graphics, Video, and other stuff. Anyway, i haven't had any kinds of problems with it at all. So, i am thinking it maybe how/or what you are using to copy the files.

So i would try and use some programs which copy what ever you want, to where ever you want [i mean a program that copys every single file, even the ones you can't see]. A good program that i use when doing backups is Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13260). Try using this i think it should do the trick.

Good Luck

I've checked about spotlight and it isn't running when i connect the drive or when i look at the contents. The backup is actually all my files from my dead pc laptop. So now i'm just planning moving all my stuff to the ibook.

okay so i'm gonna try to connect the external hd to my dad's laptop and network that with my ibook and see if it works. i'm doubtful though since the files are still on a drive that seems to be incompatible with the mac. otherwise i guess i'll try the ipod transfer which adds another step.

will be back soon, i hope :(

[drb6]

I'm happpy to announce that all went well. I connected the external HD to my pc and directly connected my mac to that PC and transferred over the files. It was an absolute breeze. :) It took about 3-4 hours for the 9gb to come over.

I haven't figured out why the HD didn't work with my mac directly but my dad said that he can reformat it in another windows format. Hopefully that will work so I can still backup my stuff on it.

Anyway, thanks to everybody for their help. :)
Spat solved! :D

[bigredsixer]

No, Mac formatted iPods will only work on a Mac; however, a Windows formatted iPod will work with both, Mac and Windows.

Got my Powerbook the other day. Decided to format my Ipod to Mac just to see what it was like. (I really dont care to use my Ipod on my Windows machine anyway...Itunes for PC sucks.) I think the Mac formated Ipod works much better than when I had it formated for Windows. Not in terms of sound quality obviously, but Ive noticed my LCD on my IPod shows up correctly now. In stead of longer named artists and songs not fitting...the Mac version makes the songs scroll across automatically so you can see the whole name. Much better.

[scarlco]

Yeah I thought it was weird, everything else I connected worked so smoothly. Now I'm a little worried about my iPod which I formatted for Windows, I gotta see how that goes later.

The HD says D.B.F. that might just be the case though. I'll check with my dad. Oh by the way I'm a girl :)

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown.
2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.

Thanks
In dunno about the spotlight question, but you can copy files from an external drive on the PC without putting them on the PC itself. Just right-click on the external drive in "My Computer" and enable sharing for that drive. You should then be able to access it via the Mac over the network... OR just transfer the files to the mac via the PC, and you don't need to share anything.

EDIT: Sorry. Didn't realize there was a second page, where this has already been solved. Stupid me.

[rand()]

M$ fights to the teeth to make NTFS incompatible with linux/BSD/OS X, mac os x has pretty much the best file system compatibility being able to read NTFS, write/read, UFS, HFS, FAT, FAT32 the only thing i want is EXT2/3 compatibility.

Well, I know it's not a solution directly from apple, but there is a project that has implemented EXT2 (and 3 minus journaling, thanks to backward compatibility by design) for OS X here (clicky). (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/) Plus, it seems it's written in Cocoa, which means a Universal Binary is just a checkbox + recompile away!

I would assume that ext2/3 being open source means it doesn't really matter if Apple does the implementation or not, the specs are out there to help X play nice with the file system should a programmer be daring enough to take on the challenge. What would be interesting is if the support were complete enough that you could run X off an EXT3 partition... very interesting...

-rand()

[sambo.]

Well that depends. JPG doesnt always mean small. If its high resolution or large in size it can be a 400mb file. I doubt thats the deal, but it is possible.

hehe, yuh i hadda do some big giclee's recently (28"x42" @ >2000dpi), the TIFF's were well over 10 gig while a single level 7 .jpg needed three cd's....

the USM took sooooooo long..... :(

[alex_ant]

You are kidding, aren't you? Like a Windows machine would read an HFS+ disk with no problems.
If Windows claimed to be able to read an HFS+ disk and couldn't, then yes, it would be Windows' fault, but they aren't claiming it can. FAT32 is an old and well-documented filesystem that Windows, Linux, and other OSes have no problems with, and the Mac shouldn't either, especially if Apple says specifically that OS X can read/write FAT32.