EXTERNAL HD / iTUNES / ISSUES ADVICE
Cosmo
9,768 Posts
Hey all. I've been working on this for the past two days and, as soon as I thought I had it, it's not working quite right. Hopefully someone can give me some advice and help me figure this out.I have all my MP3s on my desktop computer running through iTunes, with an external HD hooked up to the tower serving as the iTunes Library. In essence all the MP3s are stored off the computer but I can can play then using iTunes.So the external HD that I had all the music on it got filled up, so I had to get a new bigger external HD. I got one and last night and today ended up dragging and dropping all the files of music to the new drive (it took over 10 hours or some shit like that.) I had to completely erase my library in order to reimport all the music running off the new drive (as you can see here, which was a pain in the ass.)So everything should be working well, but the problem is that every couple of minutes whenever the music is playing there's about a 5 second pause of the music. It's like a lag or latency or something like that.So my question is this: what can be done about this? There's plenty of free space on the new external HD. I was thinking that maybe it's because the external HD is connected to the tower by a USB 2.0 but I'm not sure that's the case. My old external HD was connected using Firewire.I could really use some advice so I don't have to go out and buy a new damn terabyte HD! Let me know if you need any more information about my system. Thanks!
Comments
Here's something I found about the difference between the two:
Is it really better to have an external firewire 400 drive rather than an external USB 2.0 one? Isn't USB 2.0 theoretically faster?
"Well, in terms of maximum possible speed yes, USB is spec'd slightly higher but the difference is that Firewire offers a steady 400Mb/sec throughput while USB 2 fluctuates depending on what you're doing so i believe that for real-world use (especially using it as a system drive) you'd probably see better results from Firewire. But you could potentially get faster speeds from USB 2 when doing stuff like copying a single large file. Also, you can't boot from USB drives, only Firewire.
From: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-194677.html
I can't say for sure, but I think I have a Firewire cable plugged into my USB 2.0 drive on a PC.
but also, I definitely think firewire is the way to go.
I am hoping this is not the case.
I need to fix this as soon as possible because I cannot listen to music this way.
While we're on it, anyone have a recommendation for a good 1TB external HD with 2 firewire ports on it, to be used on a Mac?
Doh! That would have saved me hours and all my playlists...
You can rename a harddrive at any time.
That doesn't sound right...
although I haven't noticed a lag in playback, I have noticed that in general iTunes has slowed down the larger my library has gotten.
Did you check your playback settings?
I was thinking of picking up one of these when I was in Japan. I've seen them over here. But none with all these ports.
Pretty awesome! Just pop in any drive (Including laptop drives!!)
Tho, it was kinda expensive at around $100 bucks.
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-15629-HDD+Rack+Super+Combo%2C+the+Very+First+ALL+IN+ONE%21.html
I almost bought this one lastnight. But I haven't seen any with firewire ports here in North America yet sorry.
http://www.jumbocomputers.ca/index.php?do=Product&cmd=pd&pid=002459&cid=710.428.537
Which would kick ass cause of the esata port (3Gb per second transfer rate!!)
But I hate white for computer products.
The card has about four USB jacks and two Firewires. My external came with both cables, so I used that one.
Wha-happpen?