Moving Files Onto Ipod From External Drive?

Alright, my problem is a little more complicated than the title of this thread may lead you to believe. So bear with me, as I try to explain all the small nitty gritty details.

I own an imac, a macbook, an ipod and an external drive. My imac does not have any music on it, but it's itunes library catalogues everything that is on my external drive. I have about 175 GB of music on my external drive. My macbook has about 30 GB of music. I just got an ipod (80 GB) and right now it is set up to automatically sync with my macbook itunes library.

On my imac I made a playlist of all the music from that library that I want on my ipod. However, when I try to upload those songs onto my ipod from my imac library, it says I don't have sufficient writing privileges. Not too long ago I faced this problem head on and scoured the internet for a solution, coming up null and eventually giving up. But now I'm once again determined to somehow make use of my 175 GB of music, which for the last few months have been sitting bored on my external drive.

I downloaded a small app onto my imac that converts any itunes playlist into a .m3u file. And I downloaded songbird onto my macbook hoping I could use that to add the files to my ipod. Dragging and dropping didn't work at all. So now I have a portable drive with a playlist (.m3u file) and 175 GB of music, but no idea how to get that specific playlist onto my computer WITHOUT having to "add to library without copying files" my entire external drive music library since that would take hours to do and I only want about a third of it. Not to mention it would only be for the purpose of "adding to my ipod" and then afterwards I would have to completely erase my library and tell it to find it's original itunes collection found on my macbook because I don't drag my external drive everywhere my macbook goes and the last thing I want is 175 GB of ghost tracks.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

Right click on the iPod when mounted on the desktop, select "Get Info" and look at permissions at the bottom of the window. Make sure you have full admin permission on the drive. If not, change it so you do, if you already are, let us know.

Yes, I already tried that.

Ok, so even having Admin privileges on the iPod/drive you still can't move music. Are you an admin on your own computer?

On the imac I am admin and I set the privileges on the ipod (on the imac) to read & write for the admin account. It was actually the first thing I tried.

Ok, now make sure you have done the same thing to the files you desire to move off the external drive.

I didn't think of that!
I did just check a couple odd folders of music (since it is itunes organized by artist/album) and found that all the ones I checked I have read/write privileges to.
I admit I didn't check every single track, since I'm sure that would take me forever.
Do you know of a application, or terminal input, or some quick fix to immediately changing my privileges to any odd files I may not have read/write permissions to?
Other than checking each and every individual track.

Yes. Open the top level folder, set the permissions, then use the drop down menu at the bottom and select "apply to enclosed items" to get everything in the folder.

I'm not sure why but under "Sharing & Permissions:" I see
"You can read and write"
Might have something to do with it's programming, as it's a hard drive compatible with both mac and windows, even though I installed it onto my imac.

There isn't an option to change this.
My imac was the first computer I plugged this external drive into, and I remember formatting it for that mac as well.


I ended up adding a word to the "Sort Show" tag option in itunes to all my songs located on my macbook.
This so I can be sure to tell those on my portable HD and those not.
Then I changed my itunes preferences so it doesn't copy songs directly to my itunes library
And then I added my entire itunes folder from my external drive.
It's taken two days, and my computer (& external HD) are hating my guts [I'm sure...]


I think my only options are:

• Slim Down Music Collection
• Get New Portable Drive
• Refurbish imac

As for my inability to update ipod via imac, well I'm at a loss with that.
When I can afford apple care I'll have them sort it out for me.
Those "apple geniuses" must have some kind of cure-all for those sort of issues.

Whatever, I found a somewhat manageable means of maneuvering around it.

Thanks for all your advice =3

I would maybe go with a new portable drive.

To be honest, my large (120,000+ tracks) iTunes Library is spread across 8 different hard drives, some internal on the SATA II bus (but not my boot drive), some on Firewire external drives and some on USB 2 external drives and I can add songs from every single drive, none get copied to my boot drive (where iTunes resides) and it all works seamlessly. My wife's library on her iMac is actually larger and all on external drives and she has no issues either.

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Comforting to hear too! I'm trying to make my system work seamlessly too, but it seems a new HD is the best way to go.

Can I ask if you organize all your folders yourself? I assume itunes will only "organize" whatever you select to be your main music folder. You mentioned yours is on your boot drive.