Huge memory loss with hard drive connected to Macbook

muff03

Hi lads, came across a bit of a problem today and hoping someone can come to the rescue. I've just bought a new 1TB drive and am in the process of moving my iPhoto and iTunes libraries over to it. I've a 2007 Macbook, running 10.7.5.

The problems starts when I go at the iTunes library files, or anything other than the music files. GB's of memory just start disappearing from the Macbook HD, and Finder becomes absolutely unresponsive. The only way to get anything to work again is to force the Macbook to shutdown holding the power button.

I've 21GB free at the minute on the Macbook's HD. Once I start copying the iTunes folder over, the fan kicks in, everything gets a little jittery and then completely freezes up, until it asks me to force quit Finder because I've no free memory left. As it is I've all my music files moved to the new drive, and removed from the Macbook, but now I can't set up my library there.

Any ideas?

K.O.Kiki

Can you rewrite all the steps you took? It's actually hard to understand what you're asking here.

Your RAM ran out while copying files?

muff03

It's a copy and paste job, but for some reason the built in hard drive's free memory (21GB) dissapears to nothing during the process.

Losty Dublin

Muff, are you using Time Machine to save to the external hard drive or actually going copy paste and manually doing it that way?

Duggys Housemate

muff03 wrote: »

It's a copy and paste job, but for some reason the built in hard drive's free memory (21GB) dissapears to nothing during the process.

You could try copying via the Terminal. My guess is the Finder is creating a record of all copies it is going to do in memory before it copies. Thus taking up loads of memory and causing that alert when it runs out of virtual memory.

Duggys Housemate

Also, of course, close all other apps before doing this.

muff03

No I'm just using it as a separate hard drive for any media files that I rarely access, my Mac was practically full recently and I wanted to shift some things. I didn't want to go down the Time Machine route.

I've hooked the new hard drive up to a Windows-based laptop to see if I can get at some of the files as I'm in danger now of loosing an awful lot of photos. I was able to take most from it to a smaller HD, and am thinking now that something is up with the formatting, as some of the folders are corrupt, and when transferring on the Windows-based laptop, some of the files don't show up even wen hidden files are on.

As I type this I've run disk repairs and it says to reformat, that it can't fix the disk.

And yep, everything bar Finder is off when working on the Mac. If I can get the photos from the HD I'll reformat it, I've got iTunes Match set up so I'm not overly worried about the music files.

Thanks for the help lads.

Duggys Housemate

If you copied the photos are still on your main drive. Forget that.

Some ideas, in order.

1) just do music first. Ignore photos
2) you can ask iTunes to set a different folder as the iTunes folder I think it will copy automatically then. Try that.
3) if not: in the Finder, try dragging rather than copying. The finder is going to have to reverse a Cmd-c so it keeps all pending operations in memory. It is the finder using memory which is eating up the hard drive. It may need to store less information when dragging.
4) a unix copy command won't do any pre-processing so it will use little memory. Lets do that last if nothing else works.

muff03

The problem with that, Duggy, is the external HD was fine when I moved my photos, and erased them from the Macbook. So now the only copy of them is on the HD.

I tried setting up the iTunes library like that first and that's when the problems started, as soon as I touched the libraries the memory started disappearing, and it was drag and drop that I used.

Something that's also happened now, and bear in mind that this laptop has given me no jip since the day I got it in '08 but has decided to be a prick this week, is the USB ports are acting up. Nothing, from my HDs to some music peripherals I've got, can be seen every now and then, so I'm having to reset PRAM to get it going again.

Head = wrecked.

On a good note, I've managed to get the majority of my stuff from the new drive to my older one, so I reckon it's time to reformat the new one and see if that helps.

ZENER

Seriously, just let time Machine do its thing. It'll back up everything with no fear of missing important files. Once you do this it's very easy to recover those files when you re-install.

By default iTunes is set to keep your iTunes folder organised. This means it will copy all songs, movies, podcasts and artwork back to the original library when you start it. If it still thinks the library is on the internal drive then that's where it will try to put them. So unless you tell itunes NOT to do this it will continue to create a new library each time.

Ken

muff03

Thanks for the reply Ken, but the problem is the hard drive, I can't use the laptop now with it plugged in.

ratsam

Is the hard-drive a Seagate one by any chance....? If so did you install the software that comes with it on your mac? I bought a 2TB Seagate drive a few months ago that gave me a serious headache on my MacPro. I wife started it up and installed the software that was on the HD.... Grrrrrr... I then had my first ever system freeze in 3 years on the MacPro.Like you my finder went very unstable and all manner of problems raised their ugly head. Once I figured out it was the Seagate software it was erased and everything returned to normal.

Rats

ratsam

Is the hard-drive a Seagate one by any chance....? If so did you install the software that comes with it on your mac? I bought a 2TB Seagate drive a few months ago that gave me a serious headache on my MacPro. I wife started it up and installed the software that was on the HD.... Grrrrrr... I then had my first ever system freeze in 3 years on the MacPro.Like you my finder went very unstable and all manner of problems raised their ugly head. Once I figured out it was the Seagate software it was erased and everything returned to normal.

Rats

muff03

right, just an update, I was working late all week and didn't have much time to sort this out until this weekend. It's a Samsung 1TB drive, brand new, USB 3.0. I wiped it and reformatted it and now we are in the clear, and I luckily got everything together in the end. Don't know what happened, and didn't come across anything similar when looking online. All good now though, I even partitioned it for time machine Zener!

Thanks for the help lads.