[Storyboy]

Hey,

I just bought a 40g iPod photo (good deal at buy.com: $359-$20 Instant Rebate).

I had prevously ripped about 20g of tunes into an iTunes Library on an external 120g FW HD, in anticipation of eventually getting an iPod. I have never had trouble listening to the files, nor any trouble with the HD in general (I use it also for backup).

But now, when I try to transfer tunes onto my iPod I can only get a few done before iTunes hangs and I must force quit...and then I can't eject the iPod, so I resort to a hard restart. When I am back up and running, the external drive doesn't mount until I turn it off and on again.

Just to be sure this wasn't a problem with the iPod, I ripped a cd to an iTunes Library on my internal drive, and there was no problem at all with transferring from there.

I would suspect a problem with the drive, but, again, I've had no other trouble since I bought the thing about a year ago.

Is there perhaps some sort of a speed issue.

My first iPod experience has been a bit soured, and I'd like to get this figured out.

Any thoughts?

[ibook_steve]

Are you using the same Firewire port for both the iPod and the drive? Even if it is not, it's possible that the two devices are drawing too much power from the Firewire bus. An external power adaptor may be necessary for the hard drive to do what you want to do. Or you could use the iPod on USB. What machine are you trying to do this with?

Steve

[Randman]

I'm assuming the external was made bootable. Have you tried repairing permissions?

[cpac]

All I can say is that it's not an impossible situation. I have all of my music on an external 120 GIG drive, and the iPod is on the same FireWire chain (since there's only one firewire port on my rev A TiBook).

Since it's working part of the time and then stalling, I'd wonder whether there's some corruption somewhere - either on the iPod or the source files. Also, I'd try starting the process, and leaving it overnight just to see if the stall is something the system can work through eventually.

[Storyboy]

Originally posted by ibook_steve:
Are you using the same Firewire port for both the iPod and the drive? Even if it is not, it's possible that the two devices are drawing too much power from the Firewire bus. An external power adaptor may be necessary for the hard drive to do what you want to do... What machine are you trying to do this with?

Steve

Steve,

Thanks. I am running the iMac DV 400, which has two Firewire ports, and the HDD has an external power adapter.

Thanks.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Storyboy:
Steve,

Thanks. I am running the iMac DV 400, which has two Firewire ports, and the HDD has an external power adapter.
.

ooooh ... careful there. The DV iMacs have notoriously weak FW ports ... they do NOT supply as much power as ones on a powermac (I had a DVSE just like yours). Also, though you have two physical FW ports, there is only one FW bus with 2 external ports to that bus that you see on the outside of the machine ... meaning that the incoming data from your HDD is competing for bandwidth with the outgoing data to your iPod. This may slow down data transfer considerably.

I would listen to the suggestion above, try to run it overnight ... if you make it through that, then future additions won't hurt so much.

[edit]
Also remember that the same firewire bus is sending power to charge your iPod. Maybe make sure that your iPod is fully charged before attempting the transfer. I actually burnt out my FW ports on my DVSE (from attaching an external drive that was supposedly "bus powered" .... several months later, the vendor released a technical bulletin stating that their drives were not bus powered on iMacs or laptops because they supplied significantly less wattage than those on PowerMacs). Your DVSE's FW is really doing a lot of work in the config you have: In/out data transfer to 2 devices and charging your iPod. Have you thought about chaining the iPod to the extra port on the back of your external HDD ?

[Storyboy]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Have you thought about chaining the iPod to the extra port on the back of your external HDD ?

Wow. Thanks for clearing this up. Seems you know what you're talking about.

I am at work now, so I can't be certain, but I am pretty sure the extra FW port on my external (Seagate in an enclosure) is only a 4-pin...and, hold on...I think I just answered my own question!

I can do a 4-6 pin arrangement between the HD and the iMac, thereby freeing the 6-pin for the iPod.

Am I thinking about this correctly?

If not, I suppose I can crack open the iMac and make the external a new internal. This is off iPod topic, but do you think I'd have heat issues swapping that internal 5400 for the external 7200?

Thanks again!

[Krusty]

I'm not sure about the 4 or 6 pin arrangement you have. I was just suggesting hooking the iPod to the external so it would (theoretically) draw power from your external HDD's power source instead of the FW port on your iMac. Not sure it this will work since I don't know your exact setup. But its worth a shot.

As far as the external-> internal switch of hard drives, you should have no problem. More modern 7200 rpm drives run as cool or cooler than the old 5400 rpm drives from the DVSE era. Seagate in particular makes cool running (and quiet) drives. I switched out my original iMac drive with an 80gb Seagate and it worked just fine. Only caveat is that DV series iMacs have ATA-66 hard drive controllers ... they will NOT recognize more than 137gb (so a 120gb drive is the largest you can use in it for all practical purposes). If your external is 120gb or smaller, you should be set. There is a visual step-by-step guide floating around on the net somewhere that shows how to do it. I've done it a few times on 2 different DV iMacs I've owned ... no problemo.

[Storyboy]

Originally posted by Krusty:
I'm not sure about the 4 or 6 pin arrangement you have. I was just suggesting hooking the iPod to the external so it would (theoretically) draw power from your external HDD's power source instead of the FW port on your iMac. Not sure it this will work since I don't know your exact setup. But its worth a shot.

Yeah, I was thinking the power thing as well, hence the need for a 6-pin. Turns out the back of the HDD has a spare 6-pin...but...it's apparently not powered. So, it didn't work. Same problem. It is clearly, as you surmised, a FW buss power issue.

I found a work-around. I managed to eke out 5g of spare space on my measley 13g internal, to which I could easily drag-and-drop folders from the iTunes folder on the external. Transferring these folders to the iPod from there was a breeze. With 20g to move, it didn't take me but 4 or 5 passes.

Sure it's less convenient, but, hey, I'm still running a 400MHz G3, so I can live with that!

Thanks also for the HDD swap info. I still may do this.