External Hard Drive Shared By 2 Computers

I have been reading post after post and haven't figured out a good method to achieve my goal.
I currently have two computers (Windows XP) at home wired using a router (Linksys). I installed iTunes on both computers. My iTunes music library is stored on a network hard drive (Buffalo Linkstation) that is directly connected to my router. I intially had a laptop with the music stored on the network drive. I recently added the desktop to be always on. I installed iTunes and added the entire library from the network drive.
I love this setup as I can listen to music on either computer and even stream music to my TiVo. However, I have been running into an issue with iTunes "Keep Organized" feature. Whenever I update a song on one computer, it is not recognized by the other computer and vice versa. It may be simple, like changing an album title to upper case or it may be adding a new album.
I really need to figure this out. Bottom line is that I want to be able to add songs or edit tags on either computer and have both reflect the changes. Some of my crazy ideas that I have considered:
1) Install iTunes on the network drive (it is mapped, so I think it might work)
2) Run iTunes native on the desktop and remotely on the laptop (can't figure out how yet)
3) Do a nightly "Consolidate Library" on one of the computers to keep it current
4) Some magic "update library" function on iTunes
Please help me out here!

Buegie! You are the man. Your solution worked perfectly with a little tweak on my part! I read so many posts that said this could not be done. I knew there was a way! Let me detail the process below for anyone else who wants to share their music between multiple computers. One note, make sure your music files are in a safe directory. Mine were on the network gard drive.
1) Copy your iTunes library files (iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml) to a safe location as a backup. This will save all count, rating and playlist info.
2) Uninstall iTunes on both computers. I used Control Panel to complete this. Then I manually deleted the iTunes folder in the My Music folder under My Documents on both computers.
3) Reinstall iTunes on both computers as normal.
4) Change the iTunes Music Folder Location to the Network Hard Drive location on each computer.
5) Download and install TweakUI.
6) Run TweakUI for each computer according to the instructions at the link Buegie provided. I placed the My Music folder into a new My Music folder on the Network Hard Drive. I pointed both my laptop and desktop to the same location.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302398
7) Paste the iTunes library files from step 1 into the new iTunes folder on the Network Hard Drive. This will automatically transfer your previous Library into the new iTunes. All playlists will be perfect!
8) Enjoy!
The only snag I ran into was a few files (15 or so out of 5000) were not found by iTunes. I just had to manually add them wihtin iTunes from the folder they were in. I think this was secondary to the problem that initiated my question in the first place - I probably updated them on one computer and lost the info to the other.
One last note. I have been able to run iTunes on both computers simultaneously. You said they cannot share the database. What is supposed to go wrong? I haven't had a problem yet. Just concerned that something insidious may be happening that I don't see yet.

Similar Messages

How to use one music library from one external hard drive on two different computers

I have 57 gigs of music in my itunes library on my laptop (Windows Vista). I backed up the library onto an external hard drive. I would like to play the music on a second computer (Windows XP) without putting the music on the second computer, just keeping it on the external hard drive.
I have the latest version of iTunes and Quicktime installed. In iTunes on both computers, under Advanced Preferences I changed the iTunes media folder location to the folder on the external hard drive and checked the boxes for "Keep iTunes media folder organized" and "copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library". Also under the File tab, "Organize Library", I clicked on "Consolidate Files" and "Reorganize Files in the folder itunes music".
On the second computer I tried holding SHIFT while launching iTunes until the prompt appears asking to create a new library or point to an existing library. While attempting to point to the new location, I am only able to open the music folder, not set it as the location. In advanced preferences when I click "change" for the itunes media folder location, I can locate the folder but the only button I can click on is "open" or "cancel". "Open" will open the folder showing all my music. I tried typing in the location. It shows the correct location.
I was able to see the songs in the library in itunes on the second computer but it won't play the music. There are no exclamation points next to the songs. I am also able to see the playlists but there aren't any songs in the playlists.
There are no problems with itunes on the first computer. Everything works as it should.
Ideally I would like to use the same folder on the external hard drive for both computers if possible. But for now I want to at least get the music playing with the playlists on the second computer from the external hard drive.
Please help.

See this post on making a split library portable.
tt2

Is it possible to use Time Machine with an external hard drive for two separate computers?

I'm looking to purchase an external hard drive to use as with time machine as a backup for two separate computers. I'm not sure if I should buy 2 EHDs and dedicate one to each computer, or if Time Machine has the capacity to back up both computers separately. Anyone have any experience with this?
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You can make two partitions on a single drive and dedicate one to each computer.
The pic is of a single external usb drive with three partitions( a Time Machine and two image backups) for two computers

Moving Content to External Hard Drive and Using New Computers

Before doing this, I want to make sure I know how to do all of it:
We are going to buy two new laptops, and retire the old one. I want to move all of my iTunes content from the old laptop to an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme. I then want to be able to share the content between the two computers. I know how to do this, and plan to move the library data base files to the external hard drive, as well.
However, I also want to be able to continue synching all of the content to the Apple TV. To what should the Apple TV be synched after the content is moved to the external hard-drive and the old computer is replaced by two new computers? How is that done under the circumstances? And, in the meantime, will the Apple TV lose all of its content and need to be re-synched entirely from scratch, or will it continue recognizing the current iTunes library as moved to the external hard drive?
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This is an option, although as a note of caution; depending on how regularly you modify your library this could become a little bit of a chore. The option is likely a good one in many cases but not all.
In my own case I considered using an old mac as my media server in the sense mentioned by tmartine. (I do a bit of experimental stuff and need to restart my mac quite often, I also have 5 Apple tv's and a library which is too large to do anything but stream, my family don't take too kindly to my frequent restarts and I find myself waiting until the early hours).
However I also modify my itunes library on a daily basis, I buy quite a bit of stuff and also add my own movies regularly, as well as make several recordings a day through my eyetv, all this new content would need to be manually added to my (server) library (and deleted manually), I felt this would be too many extra things for me to do and so my personal preference is to have my itunes library on my main computer as the primary library.

External Hard Drive Sharing - Mac format works - FAT32 doesn't?

Hello,
I recently upgraded to Lion and since the upgrade the sharing of my FAT32 external hard drive no longer works when connecting from a windows machine. I used to use this external drive as a backup and now I cannot access it. I did attempt to reformat the drive as Mac Journaled and then the drive sharing worked fine but I need this drive to be portable and functional on all OS'.
Can someone please help?
Thanks,
Mathieu

All of the issues you'd find would be in reference to just connecting to a Windows server or PC, not necessarily accessing an external drive.
I assume you want it in a cross-platform format so that you can disconnect it and use it on a Windows machine. Otherwise, the format is irrelevant.
Have you gone into Sharing and set it up to share out the drive specifically, not just turn on File Sharing.

Install Arch on External Hard Drive Bootable on Most Computers

At work I've been using a Mac OS X partition to boot up people's Macs and perform file recovery/partition manipulation. I'm trying to figure out how to install Arch Linux to an external hard drive so that it can be booted by the max number of computers, both PC and Mac. Should I go with grub, grub-efi 32 bit, grub 64, lilo, efistub, etc. for the bootloader? Can anyone give me some guidance on this?
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Last edited by duke11235 (2013-06-05 03:10:34)

With grub, you can actually specify where the config is located. So you can put the grub config for UEFI in the same path as grub.efi, then the bios grub could still be in /boot/grub like usual. Personally, I would use something else though, as I am not the biggest fan of grub.
I think that you need to read through the grub wiki page, as most of the grub knowledge that i have (which isn't much TBH) came from that page. So the fact that I know this crap and I don't use it, means to me that you haven't actually read through that page very closely. It is a wealth of information actually.
I like using the EFISTUB for UEFI, so I am more of a gummiboot or rEFInd kind of user. Then I use syslinux as my backup bios setup.
I know nothing about requiring rEFInd for UEFI booting from an external HDD. I have never actually tried it. But when I set up UEFI on my old macbook in the ESP, the entry just showed up in the mac bootloader. So unless the Macs don't respect some of the basic UEFI standards (which is a very real possibility) there should be the ability to have multiple ESPs.

Partition of external hard drive for backup different computers

I have a macbook(40Gig) and an iBook(80 Gig); I want to make an external hard drive to backup.
1. Is this possible to partition the external drive into two to make a bootable backup for both laptops?
2.If so how big the external drive should be?
Many thanks

1. Is this possible to partition the external drive into two to make a bootable backup for both laptops?
Yes. Set up a partition for each on the external and then clone a bootable copy of your current drive to the appropriate partition.
2.If so how big the external drive should be?
At least 40 + 80 = 100 GB. You're probably going to end up with an even bigger drive. I'd set up partitions to roughly match each of your computer drives in size (so 40 GB and 80 GB), then another for any extra. Having them match size makes it easy when cloning. Don't forget that if you store files on the extra you will also need to back those up on yet another drive.
Cloning And Backup Tools
A bootable clone is an exact copy of your drive which is capable of booting your computer. Making a copy of your computer which is capable of actually starting the computer requires special copying procedures. Some people just back up data files but if you have problems you have to reinstall all your operating system and all your applications. With a bootable clone you just start up from the backup drive and clone back everything.
To copy files from one hard drive to another hard drive you can use:
[CarbonCopy Cloner|http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html] (donationware)
[SuperDuper|http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html] (shareware)
[IBackup|http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/index.html] (free)
The Restore function of Disk Utility included in OS X. [Kappy's directions|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8799711#8799711]
[Tri-Backup (commercial)|http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html] (payware)
[Silverkeeper|http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper> (free) - version 2 has some issues (references: [1|http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html#d12jan2009],
[2|http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html#d13jan2009]) and it is recommended Tiger users stick with 1.1.4.
[Kappy's Backup Software Recommendations|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9065665#906 5665]
[Overview of Mac OS X Backup Programs|http://8help.osu.edu/1247.html]

External hard drive, sharing, itunes? Not sure where to post this?

sorry guys but i'm not sure where this belongs, but anyway. I just bought my macbook and purchased a Western Digital harddrive ( external ) anyway I have like 80gigs of pics and music and want to get it from my iPod back onto the computer. Not a problem............My problem is that I can't put it directly onto the external drive I first need to put it on the macbook then transfer it to the externak hardrive. When I do this is winds up on my mac HD and also on my external hardrive. I only want it in one place. Ok, my ultimate goal right now is to buy an iMac which I'm doing this weekend. Got rid of my PC's ( Go Apple !) LOL. I want to put all my music ,videos,pics, movies on the external hardrive and be able to share it with both my Macbook and my imac. I simply want to be able to access my everything from both pc's but get it all from the EHD. Right now it's all on my macbook and I want to free up the space, plus learn how to do it for the future. Sorry to ramble. So far I've posted a few times and someone always comes through. Everyone here is awesome, it's like another planet compared to the PC world.
thanks
Mike , NYC
macbook Mac OS X (10.4.9) HP Desktop

Put your iTunes folder on the eternal hard drive, and make a alias to it from your home directory on the MacBook (Cmd-L). Do the same when you get the iMac.
I didn't quite get how the two computers are sharing the hard drive, or maybe you'll put the hard drive on the iMac and share the library. There's a lot of ways to make this work. You made a good decision.

External Hard Drives- Shared Vs. Mounted Device & Time Machine

If you connect an external via firewire 800 it's fast for streaming itunes music, iphoto and high def movies- AND it's contacts will back up to your time capsule. If you also connect it via USB to the time capsule you can even access it via back to my mac from anywhere.
If you connect a hard drive to the gigabit ethernet port on your mac or on your time capsule does it show up as a shared drive though? Shared drives do NOT back up to the time capsule. When I bought a second time capsule to use as a second hard drive I learned that- there was no way to get it to back up to the time capsule.
I want to get the Lacie 1tb Hard Disk. It has USB, FW400 and eSata connections. My fear is that FW400 isn't fast enough for streaming HD movies- my MBP doesn't have eSata but I could buy the spyderhub and convert it to FW 800.
Another option is to get the 1tb network version that has Gigabit Ethernet- but would that show up as a shared drive or a connected device? Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the reply.
It seems as though that one would work but I would definitely buy the eSata adaptor ($129).
Would the ethernet version show up under "device" rather than "shared"? It would save me about $100, still be a fast connection, but I need to be sure it will be backed up by the time machine as a "device" and not ignored as "shared".
When I use these categories of course I am referring to the left column in a Finder window.

Does an external hard drive automatically put different computers data apart

just took all data off one imac onto a hard drive using time machine and now i want to put some data on from another imac using time machine
will the hard drive keep the data seperate as i need to put all data took off first imac back on it at some point but dont want my stuff going on it as well so when i open my time machine to back up will it keep the two seperate?

You can back up two computers with Time Machine onto the same external drive without any problem. Time Machine will create a different folder for each computer, so their backups won't have conflicts

How to change external hard drive sharing and permissions

I have two new hard drive that are formatted NTFS. The sharing and permissions is et to ready only so I can only read the drives I can't edit any files on these two drives.
Both drives are connected via USB to my iMac running OS X 10.9.5
I have other drives on my network that under sharing and permission I have 'Custom Access' for file sharing. Both these drive are NTFS format.
How can I change the other two drive sharing and permission settings to 'Custom Access'
Thanks

There is no permissions you can change. OS X can only read from an NTFS formatted drive. If you need to read from and write to an NTFS formatted drive you will need to use a utility such as Tuxera NTFS 2012.3.4. Alternatively, re-partition and reformat the drive for a Mac.
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Seagate external hard drive works on some computers and not others

I have a 1T Seagate external HD. I upgraded to the new Snow Lepard recently and ever since then I can't access it. There are a ton of posts about this, I know. But when I plug it into my friends Imac, it runs fine. But when I plug it into my MacBook, it says "This device cannot be read by this machine" and asks for me to ignore or eject. I have no permissions. I can't mount or unmount, delete or partition. On the Imac I have all the permissions though. I have changed all the settings to make sure that everyone can read/write. But the laptop still can't use it. I have Iphoto from a few of my friends computer's backed up on it and that doesn't allow you copy it so just erasing or reformatting is out of the question. Any ideas or help would be awesome!

it only charge if itunes is installed on the computer
for some reason

Recommendations for an external hard drive I can use for both the Mac and PC

Hello,
I’ve used PC’s for nearly most of my life, and recently Imade the leap to using a Macbook Pro (the 15” Intel i7) as I got tired of theconstant crashes. Long story short – Ineed to have a common external hard drive that I can use with both the PC’s andthe Mac I own. Mostly I need theexternal drive to save my Microsoft Office documents, and family photos (aswell as Mp3’s and other programs). I’vegone to the Mac Store in town, but I keep getting told that you cannot have acommon external hard drive between the two computers. I’m just having a hard time excepting that,as I keep reading on Apple’s own website making the sales pitch of how PC userswho switch to a Mac wouldn’t have to purchase replacement hardware. Are there recommended external drives thecommunity could recommend? Also, wouldit be best to create a network drive to accomplish my goal? Any advice isgreatly appreciated.

Only one computer can be connected to one drive at a time without a server being involved or a NAS drive.
I don't think your needs are along those lines it's too complex.
Just a external drive formatted exFAT will do between Mac's and PC's.
Swtich the cable and connect to one or the other as needed or get two drives.
There are some hacks floating around that create a portable wireless shared storage so anyone with a wif can connect and share files with at like coffee shops.
Is that what your looking for?

Safely eject external hard drive

Anyone know of a good way to safely eject external hard drives shared over a network with a Time Capsule? It seems to me like you'd need to unplug the Time Capsule, as that is the only way to power it off, before disconnecting an external hard drive. This interrupts the network connection at home, though, so if there's some way to do this in Finder on a connected Mac, I'd like to know!

Sorry but I am a bit unclear..
The drive is plugged into a Mac and the share is from this Mac to the network?? Or is the external drive plugged into the Time Capsule?
You should be able to eject the hard disk if mounted simply by clicking the arrow in the normal way. That will not stop it showing up in the client computer.. simply dismount it when mounted. As a network shared disk.. the share will still be active..
To dismount the disk from the computer it is shared on, will have to be done from that computer.
Unless you use Remote Access of some sort to take over the local computer you really cannot control shares that are offered from another computer.
I am not sure I have answered your question though.
What are you trying to achieve.

Hello, I have two questions on time capsule I can only have it on my external hd files and free up my internal memory to my mac I can use an external hard drive, in my case a lacie rugged as shared memory for my two computers

Hello, I have two questions on time capsule I can only have it on my external hd files and free up my internal memory to my mac I can use an external hard drive, in my case a lacie rugged as shared memory for my two computers

I have a mackbook pro and an iMac if I buy a time capsule 2tb airport, I can use it with time machine and what would be the best way to use it.
There is no particular setup required for TM.. both computers will create their own backup sparsebundle which is like a virtual disk.. Pondini explains the whole thing if you read the reference I gave you.
and how to use time capsule airport whit other external hd to use my old lacie airport with the new time capsule
Up to you.. you can plug the external drive into the TC and enjoy really slow file transfers or you can plug it into your computer and use it as external drive.. which is faster than the TC.. and TM can include it in the backup.
Again everything is explained in the reference.. you are not reading it.

External Hard Drive Shared By 2 Computers

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