External hard drive recommendations to permanently house iTunes library

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I'm an iMac G5 user and need to purchase an external hard drive to permanently house my iTunes library (ideally via Firewire). Can you recommend any product?

I would like to keep it permanently plugged into my computer so that listening to music from iTunes will be as seamless as it is now whilst hosted on my computer. Having to unplug and replug cables every time is too difficult.

I've been reading about the WD My Book Studio Edition Firewire 400/800 & eSATA drive. There were some posts on Amazon from Mac users that concerned me, including:

- when computer goes to sleep and is awakened again, it doesn't immediately recognise the HD (this would be a major issue for me)

- it cannot act as a start up disc (not sure what this means but if I can't start up iTunes from the HD every time I power on computer then it would be a problem)

- have to power HD on before you connect cable or Mac might not recognise it (not just if this is just the first time you use it or every time -- if it's the latter than that would be an issue)

- there were posts that questioned the software compatibility that comes with the HD for Mac users + potential extended license fee after a 30-day trial (ideally I don't want to pay for anything more than the HD)

- there were some suggestions that firmware upgrades could solve some of the above (I'm a bit of a novice and don't understand what that means so if anyone could explain further, that would be great)

- there were several posts about partitioning that I didn't understand (please explain why this is necessary, and is it easy to do? if it is necessary to access software included on HD before you do this, please explain how and why.)

Apologies for the long post but thanks in advice for sharing any knowledge and experiences you have!
 
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Transferring iTunes library permanently to external hard drive

Hi, I need to permanently transfer my iTunes library (which is 160GB) to an external hard drive to permanently host the content. Could you please explain how I actually do this transfer so that my computer recognises the HD every time I power on? I'm an iMac G5 user and plan to purchase a HD that uses firewire. Are there any other tips you have about how to make this process easy? I also plan to back up the library regularly on an additional HD in case of any future problems. Thanks for sharing!
 
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20" Intel iMac 2.4 Ghz/3G Ram/320HD, Snow Leopard. PBook G4, 1.5Ghz/1.5 Ram/250 HD, Leopard 10.5.6.
One thing is certain here, before we start, all HD's will eventually die - fact.
Now. I had a WD firewire drive, with all of my iTunes on it, running permanently for 3 years +, and it was fine. I never had a problem with it not being recognised either, though I never put my Mac to sleep either!
It's as good a drive as any, and there's a sticky thread here with recommendations for external drives, so have a look at that for some other ideas.
I have never partitioned my drives either, no point to it really.
The start up disc thing just means that someone tried to use it as the main HD for the system. I'd ignore that, it can be done, but doesn't affect what you want to do.
I hope that helps.
 

nZa


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Just to add to what Kevriano said (he basically nailed it)..

When yer iMac is reawakened, it won't recognize ANY external drives for a few seconds. If yer just using it for music, you'd never know the difference. It will be recognized and available before iTunes loads 99% of the time. (I'm using basically the same setup with a Buffalo FW800 drive, just using it for music/movies)
 

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