Does your external HD show up in the Finder, when you do command-N and open a Finder window for example? It should do this, as long as your Finder preferences are set to let external discs show up in the sidebar. If not, you can reset the Finder prefs to do it.
Once your external HD shows up in the Finder, it really should also show up in the iTunes "Choose iTunes Library" dialog. That's the one you get when you hold down the Option (Alt) key as you open iTunes.
I suppose you've tried this already, have you? |
OK Sd, if it were me I would take the external HD back to the original Mac and run a repair utility on it. Use Apple's Disk Utility if that's what you have. There is a chance you can save your music.
If you're using Disk Utility and it doesn't seem to do anything the first time, repeat the repair process a few times. BTW the big gun in repair programs is DiskWarrior, but it costs. |
Good advice from Al. One thing to try before you go either my route, above, or Al's, is unmounting the external disk (drag its icon to the trash or use the Eject button), then reconnecting it to the computer. See if the same message comes up. Sorry I didn't think of it earlier.
Do post back with an update if you get the chance. |
If your new HD is a duplicate of the one that's troublesome, and the troublesome one was you main iTunes library disc, then it should have an iTunes library on it.
In that case, hold down the Option (Alt) key when you click to start up iTunes in the Finder. When the "Choose iTunes Library" dialog appears, click "Choose Library...". In the window that appears, navigate to the new HD, find the iTunes library on it (just selecting the iTunes folder should be enough) and click "Open".
You should then have all your music available.
Good luck! Any other questions, or if this doesn't tell you what you want, please post. |
Streetdaddy, the "first aid failed" message may be because of the circumstance Al posted on above: FAT32 formatting of the hard drive.
If that's the case, I certainly agree with Al that you have much to gain by correcting the situation. Transfer your music to a backup drive when you have finished following Herman's suggestions, above. Then partition the hard drive as I described in my own long post, using Disk Utility. Finally you recopy your music to the reformatted drive.
Use SuperDuper ( or Carbon Copy Cloner ) to do the first transfer and the second recopy. Just clone one disk to the other.
Once that's done, you may have to tell iTunes once more, via Preferences --> Advanced ( thank you Herman ) where your iTunes Media folder is.
Good luck and update us if you can. |
Streetdaddy, I don't know what "music" is on your system. Is it a folder, or a drive, or what? Also, how did you copy your music data to the backup drive?
I don't understand why your system is looking for aliases either. An alias is a signpost pointing to another item. It looks just like the original but there is a little arrow in the bottom left corner of its icon. Aliases are useful when you're working in one part of your system, your travel pictures folder for example, and in it you want to have convenient access to another part of your system, say your maps folder. So you make an alias of your maps folder and you keep it in your travel pictures folder.
An alias can lose its internal map, the one which tells the system where to look for the file the alias points to. When this happens, the alias can be deleted (because it's now useless) or fixed, which means you have to show the system where the original file is. If you choose to fix it, the system will show you a file dialog and you will have to navigate your computer's file structure in that, until you find the original item.
If this item is your backup hard drive, this drive should show up in the Finder if it is in reasonably good shape. If you don't see it already, there are two ways to check:
1. Choose "About this Mac" in the Apple menu and click the "More info..." button. System Profiler will open and you'll be able to select USB or FireWire in the left hand panel. The right panel will show you what is connected to your computer by these protocols.
2. In the Finder, choose "Preferences..." in the Finder menu and then choose the "Sidebar" tab. In the Sidebar panel which appears, make sure the item "External discs" is checked in the list titled "Show these items in the sidebar:". Then open a window in the Finder by choosing "New Finder Window" in the File menu or by holding down the Command key and pressing "N". The external disc should show up in the sidebar.
Once you find the backup drive, I would run Disk Utility, select that drive and choose Repair, just in case. However it is possible that your main hard drive needs repair also, or instead. To do that, start up from your System Install DVD by inserting the DVD and choosing Restart while you hold down the "C" key. Keep that key down until the computer has started. Startup will be slow. Find Disk Utility when the computer has finished starting up and run Repair. |
Streetdaddy,
You're very welcome for the help. If it turns out to be useful, pass it forward
when the chance comes up. BTW I see you have a good connection with
Herman so all this is hopefully of secondary use.
OK, last things first. You can run Disc Utility on your Mini's drive if you
connect the Mini to your other Mac with a FireWire cable and start the Mini up
with the "T" key held down. It should show up in the other Mac's
Finder as an external drive. Now run Disk Utility and check it.
Apart from that, to check or repair an internal hard disk, you have to run the
repair utility using the computer the disc is inside. If the Mini's internal disc
has a problem, there's no way around lying on the floor unless you can boot it
as a FireWire external, or attach an external monitor to the Mini, or else
remove the Mini's hard drive and install it in or connect it to another
computer.
Second last: yes, the startup DVD is one of the things that came with the
computer.
Third last: option-dragging from one location to another works for files and
folders, but it won't work for hard discs. This is one major reason you have
problems. The best way I know to make a disk copy is to use a disk-copying
program. There are two you can download. One is called Carbon Copy Cloner
and the other is SuperDuper. I use SuperDuper. It has nice interface and will
let you copy a whole drive to another drive for free.
OK, now the essential thing: you want to try to save your music. I am guessing
the music is on your original music external disk, but it might be on your
backup music disk as well or instead. Now you need to find a new place to put
it, temporarily, because you are going to have to set up iTunes all over again
and also probably reformat your music discs.
Finding and copying. With your music disc connected and visible in the Finder,
click on its icon to show the contents and find the iTunes folder. Double-click
that if it's there, and then look for an iTunes Music folder and/or an iTunes
Media folder. Open them. You are looking for folders named after the artists,
with files named for musical pieces inside these folders. iTunes Music will
have the artist folders directly inside. iTunes Media will have them in another
folder called Music.
Check to make sure your music is in these files. You can use the Finder's
"Quick Look" command, in the File menu, to play one or two and
make sure they're functional.
Find out how many bytes these files take up by selecting the iTunes Music and
Music folders in the Finder and then choosing Get Info in the File menu. Now
see if you have room on your Mini's hard drive or on your other Mac's hard
drive for them.
If there's room, copy them--you can use option-drag in the Finder this time-
-to the other drive. You may have to unmount the disc and take it to the other
computer. If not, proceed to the next step, which is to repeat the entire
process from "Finding and copying" above, but this time with your
backup drive. You don't need to copy the music twice, if it turns out to be
intact and identical on the two external discs.
You don't even need to copy the music once, but it's insurance. If you turn out
not to have any extra room on your two Macs' internal drives, never mind. (
Remember, too, that a Mac needs 10% hard disk space free and unused, for
normal operation. )
Now here's the step you can't go back from. Reformat one of the external
drives, probably the backup, anyway the one with the least music on it if
there's a difference. Do this reformat with Disk Utility, but *don't use the
Erase function*. Use the Partition function instead. This will appear when you
click on the disk icon--NOT the volume icon. The volume is the name you
gave to the disk, and it's indented right under the disk icon in the left panel of
Disk Utility. Choose "1 partition" in the drop-down menu.
Now click on "Options...". If you think you will ever want to use
your disk with a Windows computer, choose "GUID partition map".
If not, or to be perfectly safe, choose "Apple Partition Map". Now
finish the reformat. The disc should mount in the Finder.
Now, from your other external or from your computer's internal drive, copy
your music folders back onto the newly formatted external disk.
Once that copy is safely done to your satisfaction, reformat the other disc the
same way, but don't copy your music to it.
Now for this next step you'll need both external disks connected to your
computer and mounted (i.e. visible in the Finder). Open iTunes with the
Option key held down. Choose "Create Library..." and in the
"Where" dialog, choose the empty external disc.
You get the rest. Once iTunes is opened, choose "Add to library..."
and restore your library from the other external disc.
When this is done, trash the music files you copied onto the first external
drive you reformatted, and then use SuperDuper to back up your (renewed)
music disk to the empty backup disk.
You may very well want to buy a licence for SuperDuper so you can use it to
do a quick incremental update of the backup music disc, every time you add
music to the main disc. This will mean your two music discs will be exact
copies of each other all the time. You can see the value in this.
Last thing: if you don't have a backup disk for the Mac Mini ( the internal
drive, not the music drive ), do consider getting one and maintaining it with
SuperDuper. If the Mini's internal drive ever fails ( and it will ), troubleshooting
it will be a snap.
Sorry this was so long but I didn't want to leave you hanging. If it seems like
too much, take your Mini and your drives to an Apple service shop and get
them to do it all. Good luck and let us know how it goes if you get the chance. |
Thanks very much for letting us know how things turned out, Streetdaddy. Your plan sounds excellent. Best of luck! |
Al's advice is on the money. Basically you have to stash your music files somewhere safe while you get your music drive into perfect shape, emptied and squeaky clean with all the bookshelves in order. So to speak. Then you reformat the music drive and copy the files back onto it. Then if it all works, you clone your music drive to a reformatted backup drive, using SuperDuper.
Al suggests you stash your music files by copying with the OS. On a Mac, copying files with the OS is called copying in the Finder. You open a window and navigate within it until it shows a list of the files you want to copy. You open a second window which shows the destination, the place you want to copy the files to. Then you select the files in the first window and drag them to the second. The Finder will put up a progress bar to show you how long you'll have to wait till the copy is done.
The only worry I would have here is the possibility that some of the music files have been corrupted. If you have any of these, copying them is not a good idea. They need to be trashed asap. Unfortunately I don't think you can find them without a diagnostic and repair program. I use DiskWarrior. However it costs $100. I have never been sorry I paid the money but you don't have to feel the same way. You can go ahead and do your copy without it. The chances are small that there will be a file corruption problem on the disk. |
Al, Herman's excellent response gives my reasoning for the clone operation using SuperDuper. Once it's set up, regular incremental backups become so easy that they are actually likely to get done. As well, familiarity with the SD process may encourage a user to adopt a regular backup strategy for the startup disc too.
As for the possibility of confusion between volumes, operator error is always a thrilling possibility. However the volume and its clone are allowed to have, and should have, different names and creation times. Also, on startup, iTunes will open the last iTunes library used. If that's not available, it will ask to be shown, or told to create, another. It's not likely iTunes will inadvertently get confused this way. |
Thanks for an interesting read, Al. I don't believe SuperDuper cloning goes quite as far down into the disk structure when duplicating data as the Windows process does. For this reason one would have to consider the Windows cloning operation as more rigorous.
Cloning programs for the Mac were not even necessary before OS X. A simple drag and drop Finder copy would have been enough, previously. SuperDuper adds the extra operations required after the OS change, but the word "clone" is actually a popular usage, it seems. |
