Itunes ?

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Get Super Duper for backups

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

I have an idea, I'll email you.

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Stop by for a coffee if you have time today.

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.

I was originally unable to find the disc in finder. I did all the things you mentioned. When i checked the box on usb in finder, i was then able to see the hard drive. { i labeled it "music", btw}.

When i ran disc utility, it said it couldn't be repaired or something similar.

What happens if you try to look at the files that are on it?

If you are able "to see the hard drive" it tells me that it probably has not experienced a hardware breakdown. So the problem may be a file system corruption, or something like that. The FAT32 file system is prone to that, and external drives are often supplied formatted in FAT32, because that file system can be utilized by both Mac and Windows machines.

I again suggest that if you can get access to a Windows machine, you connect the drive to that machine; examine its "Properties," which among other things will indicate "FAT32" if that is its file system; see what files are indicated as present, if any; and if the music files are not indicated as being present run ChkDsk on the drive. Post back if you'd like further information on how to do that, indicating whether the machine has Windows XP or Vista or 7.

Regards,
-- Al

Update,
I hooked the hard drive with my music back up to do all the steps that Tobias mentioned. For some reason, i was able to play music on itunes now.
It gives the alert that Start up disc is almost full.

When i went to do a disc repair on my hard drive it stops with the message "first aid failed".
Most of the music plays on itunes without the hd attached but a few say file not found. When i hook up the hd, all the files will play. This has me thinking that most of the music is on the internal hard drive., and i have duplicated them on the hard drive.
How can i erase the internal hard drive of all this music and free up space, while using the hd for keeping music only.