External drive for iTunes library and backing up via time machine

Hi, I currently have an 320gb external drive plugged into usb port of my imac for time machine back up, but my itunes library is 500gb and currently excluded from time machine back up, I would like to buy a 2 or 3tb external drive and then move my itunes library to that to free space on my imac.
I'd really like to know the best way to set up and what to buy, ie, if i move the library to an external drive am I able to back up the external drive via time machine, plus I assume if I do this i need a second external drive or time capsule to back up the library
Also the external drive is plugged directly into imac but I have an airport extreme is there any benefit plugging the drive into this, would this mean you access file from network (should you do this if its used for time machine), should I get rid of the extreme and buy a time capsule
Thanks in advance

Hi, I'd recommend one of these...
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
FW400 will be faster than USB2, & FW8000 even better.
I see no advantage to plugging it into Your Extreme.

Similar Messages

  • If I move my itunes and photo libraries to an external drive, will they still be backed up via time machine (on another external drive)?

    I have 2 external drives, one of which I would like to use to store my iphoto and itunes libraries (to create space on my laptop hard drive).  Then I have a 1tb drive that I'm going to use for my time machine backup.  Will I be able to back up the itunes and iphoto libraries from the external drive onto the time machine drive with the rest of the files that are on my laptop hard drive?  Thanks.

    Depends on the version of the OS that you are using I would post on the forum for the version of the OS that you are using.
    Later version od Time machine will, definitely. If the version you have doesn't, then there are plenty of 3rd party back up utilities that wll do the job for you.
    If you're moving the iPhoto Library then remember the disk needs to be formatted  Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Regards
    TD

  • Using an external drive for Itunes library

    I find Itunes a poor program and I am being discouraged from using it to get music which is a shame
    The albums are often more expensive than the CDs and it is difficult to back up the downloads. You need to rip them to disc straight away.
    I would like to have a external drive ripnas where all my music is stored and it can be accessed by my three computers when and I want to listen to my music and I can download tracks from which ever computer I want.
    Finally when I use my ipad, or Ipod it can be linked to the Music drive rather than a computer this means I can play tracks downloaded from any source with out the ipods etc being linked to a particular computer and having to be wiped clean if you want a track from the wrong computer you downloaded the track from.
    Any ideas sorry about the rave but seem to have lost tracks I have brought ( back up with time machine but thats no longer working only a year old the power supply blown so lost whole lot of music I had thought i had carefully backup)
    Any thoughts about who to resolve this mess would be gratefully received
    If I download Flac files I dont have any of these problems and easy to back up)

    Neale Watson wrote:
    The albums are often more expensive than the CDs and it is difficult to back up the downloads. You need to rip them to disc straight away.
    Buy the CDs. there's your backup-the original CD.
    I would like to have a external drive ripnas where all my music is stored and it can be accessed by my three computers when and I want to listen to my music and I can download tracks from which ever computer I want.
    This works. I do it this way.
    Any thoughts about who to resolve this mess would be gratefully received
    If I download Flac files I dont have any of these problems and easy to back up)
    iTunes music files should be backed up on CDs or DVDs (not hard drives) as a data disc.
    Tracy

  • Use of an external drive for itunes library - backup options?

    Hi,
    I have a dell laptop with 60GB of memory and I just purchased an 80GB ipod classic. I cannot upgrade the storage in this laptop. Originally I was thinking I would just buy a new laptop. But given that all laptops now come with Windows Vista and reading about all the issues that users have had with Vista and Itunes I do not think that would be a good idea. Do you agree that I should just stick with my Windows XP Machine?
    So I was thinking I would change my music library so it resides on an external drive. My only concern with this - is how do I keep a backup of this external drive? From reading all the forum posts if this external drive failed it can be done moving the information from an ipod back to another drive using third party software but it sounds risky.
    Any thoughts on how others are handling this would be appreciated.
    Thank you!
    Karen

    Karen, most 3rd party software is pretty easy to use. The one thing I need to point out that relying on the iPod can be pretty risky, too. What if iPod is lost or stolen? What if you have an iPod problem that requires a restore? I would suggest that as a secondary backup for the EHD, you either burn data discs or possibly consider a 2nd EHD, since you can buy them pretty cheap these days. Right now, I backup to 2 different EHD's, then burn data discs as needed of my iTunes library, just in case I would be unlucky enough to lose everything.

  • Dlink router + external drive for itunes library?

    I have a MBP who is slowly running out of space... I have a dlink router 826L with a 2TB external hard drive that is plugged in by usb into the router. dlink has settings to set it up as storage, but it wants to use a sharepoint software thing. I want to know if I can put all my music on it and then have itunes look for my music there. I have to admit, when it comes to networking, etc. i become so so so dumb.

    Well did you let iTunes import all your music into its folder structure or just let it create a database of the songs?
    More then likely it copied your music into itself because that is the default behavior of iTunes unless you first turn that off. So all your music is in the iTunes Library. Go to your Home folder, Your User Name folder, then Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music and all your music is in there.
    But you can just copy the complete iTunes folder, ~/Music/iTunes, to your external drive then open iTunes and go to Preferences and the the advanced section and click the Change button
    then browse to your external drive and select the iTunes folder that you copied over to the external.
    Once you do that you can Delete, move to trash, the iTunes folder in your username music folder.

  • External Drive for itunes library.

    Hello,
    I was just hoping that someone could answer what is probably a very silly question.
    I currently use my ibook as a working computer and itunes library. This is causing problems now as i'm running out of disk space. Is it possible to buy an external drive, move my itunes library file onto it, and then carry on as normal - obviously whenever the external drive is attached?
    It would certainly help me out, stop me having to use my PC and therefore losing the Contacts, and Calendar features that my Mac gives me.
    Thanks
    Martyn

    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
    You could have searched Apple support for the terms "move iTunes folder" and saved yourself the wait, and you can also search here too as this is asked repeatedly.
    Follow every instruction, step by step, no short-cuts and such and it works perfectly.

  • Using external drive for iTunes Library

    There's about 80G of music on my external hard drive. I'd like to use this music as the library when the external is connected to the laptop. I don't know how to make this work. I know it's possible to duplicate the music on the Powerbook and create another library on the HD. But what I'm looking to do is have the laptop library separate from the HD and to manually choose which is being used. The problem is getting the mac to create a library of the 80G of music stored on the HD.
    Any replies greatly appreciated.
    Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    It's no different than creating any new iTunes library. Since you already have an iTunes Library file that you want to keep, rename that file...something like iTunes Laptop Library. Then hold down the Option key while opening iTunes and choose "Create Library" when presented with the option. iTunes will create a new iTunes Library file in the iTunes folder, and it will be empty. Use the Add command or drag-and-drop the external HD music folder to populate this new library. When you close iTunes, you might want to rename this new library file also, so the two library files, which can coexist peacefully side by side, are easy to distinguish from each other.
    Whenever you want to switch from using one library to the other, just hold down the Option key when opening iTunes, select Choose Library, and select the other library file.
    iMac G4 17; iBook G4 1.33 Mhz 14; iPod 3G 20GB   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

  • Sharing a single iphoto library and backing up with time machine

    Alright,
    I want to share my iPhoto library between several users on my Mac. I have found an Apple article that explains how to set up a disk image to store the iPhoto library in. This article is at
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198
    However, implementing as described in this article has a very painful disadvantage described below:
    I back up Mac's my hard drive to an external disk using Time Machine. Once I've created a disk image to hold my iphoto library, time machine will now back up the entire iphotolibrary.dmg file each time I've added or changed any photos. Now I have a lot of photos, and my iphoto library takes up 27GB even when put on a sparse-disk-image. So that means that each time I add or change even just one photo, time machine has to write a >27 GB file to the external hard drive which contains my backup. Obviously this is a problem and will fill up even my 1.5TB drive pretty quickly if this continues.
    I came up with an idea on how to solve this. I decided that I'd exclude the disk image that contains the common iPhoto library from the time machine backup and create a second library in the home directory of one of the users on my machine. Then each time that I added or edited photos I'd use a syncing application to sync the iPhoto library on the disk image and the iPhoto library in the user's directory. This way the iPhoto library in the user's directory would be backed up incrementally by Time Machine in the normal way, and Time Machine wouldn't fill up the backup disk with huge disk image files that have only changed slightly.
    The problem with my new approach is that the snycing program that I'm using (Synk by Decimus Software) has some difficulty syncing the packaged directories like that used for iPhoto libraries. I get all sorts of conflicts and I'm worried that the file syncs will be unreliable and lead to instabilities and data loss.
    An ideal solution would be exclude the disk image file from the Time Machine backup and then add the mounted disk image to the backup. I think that Time Machine would then correctly leave the large 27GB file alone and only do incremental backups of my iPhoto library. But I can't see any way to add mounted disk images to the Time Machine backup.
    Thanks in advance for any help that any of you can provide.

    This is a little more simple that all that.
    For iPhoto 09 (version 8.0.2) and later:
    If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc.
    Quit iPhoto in both accounts. Move the Library to the Users / Shared Folder
    (You can also use an external HD set to ignore permissions, a Disk Image or even partition your Hard Disk.)
    In each account in turn: Double click on the Library to open it. (You may be asked to repair the Library Permissions.) From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
    However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
    No need for dmgs at all. No need for Syncing software.
    Note: No Syncing software can run on an iPhoto Library. Period. There is none that can parse the Library database. Attempting to sync two Libraries will lead to damage to at least one of them.
    Regards
    TD

  • I am about to reformat my drive for Bootcamp. I backed up with time machine... BUT

    I dont have a working CD drive, there is a cd stuck inside (shop confirmed busted drive, not gonna pay for 300$ repair).
    Can someone guide me through the process of reformatting my drive (thus flushing it completely) and having the computer reboot with the Time Machine's backup (which is on my USB external hdd) including getting the initial OS software and all (since i cant put the startup CD in the drive anymore).
    Thanks!
    I just dont want to have a bricked laptop that wont eat the startup CD

    For reference, this is after having made this thread yesterday (where I was unable to repair my internal HDD)
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/21444004#21444004

  • I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

    I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

    If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
    iTunes: library on EHD
    iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
    Roger

  • Once I upgraded to ML, I'm now finding that my Seagate Free Agent external hard drive is no longer being backed up by Time machine.  Do I have to wait for Seagate to update their drivers for this hard drive?

    Once I upgraded to ML, I'm now finding that my Seagate Free Agent external hard drive is no longer being backed up by Time machine.  Do I have to wait for Seagate to update their drivers for this hard drive?

    I tried your suggestion, and it's been giving me the message "Preparing for Backup" for the past 8 hours.  Does this mean TM is backing up my hard drive?  I'll give it a few more hours, but if nothing else happens, I'm not sure what else to do.  I'm not sure if there are any new external hard drives that are compatible with ML yet. 

  • Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music?

    ...or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    (Secondary question: would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder)

    Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music? or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    I see no good reason to create a separate partition unless you're backing up with Time Machine. TM prefers to have it's own volume, so in that case partitioning would probably be a good idea.
    would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder.
    No, probably not. As long as you're not getting the drive too full - opinions vary but about 20GB remaining should be plenty for most uses - you probably won't see any overall change in performance just from moving the iTunes content.
    Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

  • Unfortunately I have deleted my entire itunes library and back up from my computer, is there any way I can copy my ipod nano back onto my computer into the itunes library? and re-download all the tunes I have purchased  from I tunes.

    Unfortunately I have deleted my entire itunes library and back up from my computer, is there any way I can copy my ipod nano back onto my computer into the itunes library? and re-download all the tunes I have purchased  from I tunes.

    Hello bigali,
    Your options are kinda limited. I would use this first:
    Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and ...
    Then check here for the non-purchased items:
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022
    You want to rebuild the library first, then sync the ipod.
    Here is a good idea for when your done:
    How to back up your media in iTunes
    Hope this helps.
    ~Julian

  • Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

    Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

    Yes, but you might want to note that the port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0, and that it runs at about half the speed of the USB 2.0 port on a computer, so things are going to be quite SLOW as far as backups are concerned, or anything else for that matter.

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