Transferring Music from an external hard drive to a Windows 8X phone via a MacBook

[Barryshane]

Hello,
I'm looking for some help here because I am slowly going mental trying to get music on my Windows 8X.
I have all my music stored on an external hard drive, which is connected to a Macbook, all the music has been burned from CD using iTunes.
I have downloaded the Windows Phone app for the Mac to transfer music. I have set the Allow Access to Folder to the folder within the hard drive that all my music is stored on. However when I select the the Playlists or Artists I want to sync from the app menu, I get an error telling me it "could not copy "song name" to the device" for every track i am trying to transfer.

I've tried restarting the laptop, uninstalling the app and reinstalling it but nothing works.
I'm hoping someone has an idea about this because other than this the phone is great, but one of the reasons I went with it was because it was Mac compatible and for the Beats audio.

Many thanks

Barry

 

[HeyCori]

Have you tried to temporarily transfer the songs to your computer and then sync them?

 

[mr_808]

If you used iTunes to rip the music you want to make sure the files are in a format that WP can handle. Chances are that you ripped them in a proprietary Apple format. If this is the case you are going to have to convert these files before you can transfer them to your phone. Also, make sure you have the latest windows phone connector app. There was an update a few weeks ago that fixed some stability issues.

 

[Barryshane]

If you used iTunes to rip the music you want to make sure the files are in a format that WP can handle. Chances are that you ripped them in a proprietary Apple format. If this is the case you are going to have to convert these files before you can transfer them to your phone. Also, make sure you have the latest windows phone connector app. There was an update a few weeks ago that fixed some stability issues.

All the apps are up to date as I only got the phone yesterday. I've ripped them in what every they are ripped to by iTunes, mp4 I think, which according to the guy in the shop where I got the phone, shouldn't be an issue, I'd upgraded from an iPhone 4.

 

[Barryshane]

I've tried copying songs from itunes and pasting them into a folder on my desktop and then tried to sync the phone with that folder and it is still doing the sum total of sod all.
I have also tried to convert these to mp3 and they still won't sync with the phone.

 

[mzeldin]

That error message also appears when tracks with DRM protection are selected for transfer. If your tracks were purchased via any source which accepts DRM tracks, the tag will stay with the track, even when converted from whatever format it was in when purchased. iTunes has many DRM protected tracks. I've been having no problems transferring music from my Mac computers to my Lumia 920, as long as the tracks are not protected. I hope your issue is not DRM.

 

[Barryshane]

I have no downloaded music stored on my hard drive, everything comes from cd's

 

[mr_808]

Hmm... I'm kind of at a loss here. Have you tried syncing anything right out of the iTunes folder? Obviously, it shouldn't be an issue pulling them from your external hard drive or the folder on your desktop, but sometimes software can be tricky like that.

 

[Barryshane]

My path to the hard drive is
Finder > My Book (hard drive) > Shared music > Music (the next jump after this is all the individual artists i have stored)
when i am setting the Access to folder, i have been setting it to the Music folder.

Oddly I've just tried doing this again and I got it do sync 1 playlist of 150 songs.
I then got carried away and decided to sync another playlist and it went back to not transferring again.

 

[mr_808]

Do you know if your phone came with the latest update to WP8, aka: Portico? I'm reaching here, but maybe there could be a problem between the newest version of software and the latest OS update. If you go to Settings on the phone you'll find the option "Phone Update". You can manually check for it there.

 

[Barryshane]

The phone updated pretty much as soon as it was switched on yesterday.
In the settings everything is showing as being up to date.
The OS on the Macbook is up to date as well as I had to pay to download the latest version of OS X (10.8) before I could get the windows phone app to download. Which at the moment is looking like money well spent.

 

[mr_808]

Well, this is strange. I'm now trying to do the same thing with my Macbook and I can't even get WP Connector to recognize a folder other than what is in my iTunes library. I even tried dragging and dropping the file into the sidebar(on the left) in the Windows Phone app. I can't drop folders but I can drop individual songs.

When I sync by manually selecting songs that are in my iTunes library(with the WP app), on my internal drive, everything works fine.

 

[Barryshane]

Well, this is strange. I'm now trying to do the same thing with my Macbook and I can't even get WP Connector to recognize a folder other than what is in my iTunes library. I even tried dragging and dropping the file into the sidebar(on the left) in the Windows Phone app. I can't drop folders but I can drop individual songs.

When I sync by manually selecting songs that are in my iTunes library(with the WP app), on my internal drive, everything works fine.

I somehow managed to get one playlist, with 150 songs, to sync using the Windows Phone app. But since then it's done nothing.
I spoke to someone on the HTC chat site last night who seemed totally stump. They weren't able to suggest much other than reboot the Macbook, uninstall and re-install the app, all of which I've done about a dozen times.
They are going to look in to it and get back to me at some point today.

The fact I got some music on there is a positive sign though, if only I could figure out HOW that worked.

 

[mr_808]

Well, at least you are getting somewhere. I would say your best bet is to just drag and drop the files on to the sidebar. This worked every time for me and once they are the phone they are automatically grouped into albums. If you like using playlists though this won't be ideal.

Please post back if you ever come up with a fix. Good luck!