Keeping iTunes on a Separate Hard Drive, and Keeping it Safe.

Apple Discussion
Hello everyone. Apologies if is this isn't quite the right place but I've searched around in various communities and had not found something similar to what I'm thinking about.
I have a OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 4TB external drive enclosure (with four drives each 1TB in size) that stored my iTunes library, backed-up school work, old copies of Dropbox and had a partition for TimeMachine. Last night the drive had stopped working and I haven't been able to access any files. Now not all of the drives were the same make and model, and that was just one of several issues.
My problems aside, I am looking for something that I can replace my enclosure with. Ideally I would like to back up my entire iTunes library and that has forced me to think about RAID, which is a little over my head. Ignoring factors like money and memory size can someone talk me through what is the best configuration of RAID for large backups of this type? My iTunes consists more of TV shows and movies than it does of music, and I would love to have a partition for TimeMachine.

I keep all my photos on a separate hard disk.
Are you saying that you're running a "referenced" library? Look in iPhoto's Advanced preference pane and compare what you see to this screenshot:
What is it?

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I had Itunes installed on 2nd hard drive and it crashed

I had ITunes installed on 2nd hard drive and it crashed. I tried to install a new copy of ITunes and it keeps looking for the ITunes that was on the one that crashed. How do I keep ITunes install package from looking for the old install.

No reason to. I always a cloned copy of my operating systems so I can reclone it back in case the the one I use dies.

How do I back up my itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary

How do I back up my entire itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary.
Thanks

This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
I would also move all of the files from the internal file system to the external since you have now told iTunes that is where they are...before deleting from the internal drive, test iTunes to see that it goes where you want it to go.

How do I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

How can I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

I have attempted to make sure my iPhoto library has been backed up on the external hard drive and that it is safe to delete some events from my internal hard drive
You need to think this through.
Time Machine is a back up application. It keeps a rolling back up of the data. It's called rolling because it means you can revert to the data you had on a specific date and time. But that's not eternal, and as time goes by, and your drive fills up, older backups are deleted. So if you delete Events on your Mac they will - eventually - also be deleted from the Time Machine back up.
If you wan tot archive data hendon't use Time Machine for that job. Here's how you might archive an iPhoto Library:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
Now you have two full versions of the Library.
3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
Some Notes:
As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager

I am not much of a computer technician. I bought a time capsule thinking I could use this for an external hard drive and keep my MAC hard drive free. Was I mistaken? One I back everthing up on the TC, can I delete everything off of my MAC?

I am not much of a computer technician. I bought a time capsule thinking I could use this for an external hard drive and keep my MAC hard drive free. Was I mistaken? Once I back everything up on the TC, can I delete everything off of my MAC and then use my TC as my hard drive??

Once I back everything up on the TC, can I delete everything off of my MAC and then use my TC as my hard drive??
TC was designed to backup your Mac. The TC literature is pretty clear about this:
If your Mac's hard drive has a problem....it will sooner or later....you can use your backup on the TC to rebuild your Mac.
But.....if you move all of your data to the TC from your Mac....you only have one version of that data now, and it is on the TC.
Have you thought about what will happen when....not if....the TC has a problem? Since the only version of your important data was on the TC, and the TC has failed......you lose all of your data.....because you have no backup.
A much better plan would be to add a USB or FireWire hard drive and connect it directly to your Mac. Move the data on your Mac over to the hard drive.
Then, the TC will backup both your Mac and the hard drive. So, you have original data on on one drive and backups on another drive.
That would be a minimum backup plan. Most of us have more than one set of backups.

Ios upgrade stopped my external hard drives and keep changing my laptop keyboards

Latest ios upgrade stopped my computers from contacting and saving in my external hard drives and keeps changing my laptop keyboards everytime I turn it on. Please Apple solve this because I know that many people suffer from this. If you do not I will stop my almost 30 year old use of Apples.

iOS has nothing to do with devices connected to your computer. It also has nothing to do with your keyboard. What have you done and when?
Barry

Run itunes off external hard drive and keep settings

I have an imac which has my consolidated music library on it. I also have a macbook which i use while traveling. My itunes is about 130 gigs, which is fine on my imac, but too big for my macbook. in the past what i have done is just put everything on my 80 gig ipod, and then do the manual setting in itunes so that, if i get new music while traveling, i can put it on the ipod. anyway, that ipod was stolen and now i have a nano. So what i want to do is somehow copy my itunes from my imac onto an external hard drive, and then run itunes off that from my macbook. the point being to have my whole music collection there. The problem is that i cant seem to keep all my ratings, play counts and settings and stuff, the macbook doesnt recognize the setting file when its on the hard drive. Is there a way to do this? I tried changing the iTunes music folder location to the folder on the hard drive, but that did not make the songs appear in itunes on the macbook.
In addition, what id like to be able to do is, when i come back, copy the itunes from the external back onto my imac with all the new ratings, play counts, and music.
Message was edited by: poil66

See this article, iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
"If you just want to move all those music and media files to another hard drive on your system, here's a way to make the move while retaining all your playlists, ratings, and play history."

I keep getting the same error message from windows, "iTunes has stopped working and the program will be closed". I have just recently installed iTunes on my external hard drive and everything looked great until the program crash! Any suggestions?

Here is a copy of the windows vista error report.
Product
iTunes
Problem
Stopped working
Date
4/19/2014 9:38 PM
Status
Report Sent
Problem signature
Problem Event Name:      APPCRASH
Application Name:           iTunes.exe
Application Version:         11.1.5.5
Application Timestamp:   53073d6a
Fault Module Name:        ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version:      6.0.6000.16386
Fault Module Timestamp:                4549bdc9
Exception Code:                c0000005
Exception Offset:              00062086
OS Version:        6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID:           1033
Additional Information 1:                8d13
Additional Information 2:                cdca9b1d21d12b77d84f02df48e34311
Additional Information 3:                8d13
Additional Information 4:                cdca9b1d21d12b77d84f02df48e34311
Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID:          95851104
I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas of where else to look for advice. Thanks!

Hey jcaqualung,
Thanks for the question. I understand that you are experiencing issues with iTunes on your Windows Vista machine. The following resource may provide a solution. I would also recommend installing iTunes on the internal hard drive of your computer, as opposed to the external drive.
iTunes for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8: Fix unexpected quits or launch issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1717
Thanks,
Matt M.

Can I partition a hard drive and keep files on separate partition?

That is, can I partition a hard drive and have the system software on one drive, and everything else on the other? That is, have the system software on one drive, and on the other have pictures, music, documents, and all other files other than the system software? Thanks. David

Hi GK1951, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Great question, as a matter of fact it does... or would, but the Devil is in the Details as they say.
IME, OSX works best with 100+GB free disk space, so if that partition scheme cuts that down then you'll lose speed, but ony a few would notice the diff until you get down to 30 GB free space.
I can't say much, but my VM at the moment is 143.55 GB, I've been told that isn't a real number, but hey, it means something!
But there are so many factors affecting this that really, the only rule that seems to hold is Give OSX as much HD Free Space as you can & it'll be happy.
I imagine on the MacPro you could say use the outer Partition of several Disks... one for the OS, one for VM, one for APPs, etc. and gain the most!
Maybe these will help...
iMac/24"/2.4 GHz/4GB RAM/320 GB SATA drive, You can see that Cached values account for more than the Zone on the HD really.
Little 4K Random R&Ws suffer greatly no matter what...

I moved itunes file to external hard drive and want to move the file on my pc to recycle bin. When I move i get an error message that it cannot delete ituneshelper.dll access is denied. Can I move that file to the recycle bin?

I am trying to free up space on my pc and moving itunes files to external hard drive. I have followed instructions and believe I have file copied to new drive, but I am having trouble moving file to recycle bin as the instructions say. I am getting the following error message: cannot delete ituneshelper.dll:access denied, make sure disk is not full or write protected and file not in use. I know the file is not in use when trying to move. Any help would be most appreciated. I am on Windows XP.

Yes. And you should not have moved that folder. Put it back. To move your iTunes library move the folder from User's Music.
tt2

Move PC iTunes library to external hard drive and consolidate with iMac

Hi, I have a PC that I'm not using much. I have a ton of iTunes music files on it so I went through the process of copying these files to my networked external hard drive. I have my iMac connected wirelessly to this same hard drive. I went into the System Preferences on the iMac to tell it where it could find the new library and I pointed it to the iTunes folder but there is not an iTunes Media folder like many of the articles state, like this one: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Do I need to create an iTunes Media folder? Note this is an iTunes Library that was on a PC, moved to a networked external hard drive and will be used on my new iMac.
Thanks.

kneedragger101 wrote:
Note this is an iTunes Library that was on a PC
you might want to read these articles: one and two.
why not move your media files using _*Home Sharing*_ ?

I spent hrs fixing my iTunes since I did the update and it wiped out everything! I have put all of my iTunes on my external hard drive and it works but I got a new computer. I installed iTunes on the new computer but now the folders on my ehd are empty!

I am having a very hard time. First I finally got all of my music back into iTunes and then moved them all to my external hard drive. I set up iTunes to automatically put and get music from the external hard drive and whenever I open the drive al of the music is there. Now, I bought a new computer and went ahead and got iTunes all set up then tried to add folder to import from the external hard drive but all the music folders are empty! They show the names of the artists and the albums but there is nothing inside. Please help!!

If you've just moved the drive between systems then see Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows just in case that reveals the missing files. Apply to a single album folder first as a test. Otherwise, if you've not done too much with the drive since things went missing, an undelete tool might recover the lost media. FreeRecover looks promising... Select the drive, use the options to get file paths and check file integrity, then, presumably, you can restore anything that has been deleted that looks recoverable. Backup to another drive when you're done.
tt2

I had a computer crash and Hard drive data lost, so I reinstalled Itunes on my new hard drive and now cannot locate ALL of the purchases I had done in the past.

I thought that ALL itunes purchases were held on the Apple server for itunes.
When I reinstalled my itunes on my new hard drive, there were NO histoical purchases on my itune account.
Any thoughts to a solution.
Thanks

Make sure you have at least iTunes 10.3.1, then go to the iTunes Store, log into your account, and click the new Purchases link under the Quick Links. The new iTunes in the Cloud service may allow you to re-download your purchased content (music, videos and TV shows not available for re-downloading in all countries at this time; movies and audiobooks not available for re-downloading at all yet). You can also do this from an iOS device.
For more information, see:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519
Regards.

I transfered my itunes to an external hard drive and seemed to have lost my apps. Any ideas?

I thought I could just drag and drop my iTunes library to an external hard drive. After doing this and finding out that it would not work I took my itunes folder and moved it from my music folder on my hard drive to my desktop. After doing that I realized what I needed to do to get my itunes on the external hard drive. I got the itunes on the hard drive alright, lost my playlists which is OK, I will just re-do those, but I also lost my apps for my iPad. I still have all my original files though on my desk top. Does anyone have any suggestions?

davidfrombillings wrote:
I thought I could just drag and drop my iTunes library to an external hard drive.
it'll work ... if done properly ☞
copy the entire iTunes folder (not just the iTunes music or media folder) from <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music on your Mac to the external, then launch iTunes while holding the option (⌥) key, click on choose library when prompted, and select the iTunes folder on the external.
if I already have my iTunes going to the incorrect files how is it going to find the correct files again.
you could try if this script helps:
iTunes Track CPR v1.3
This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx)."
Eric Ross wrote:
When you moved the file back did you go back into iTunes in your preferences and select the advance tab and then selected the location again or where your files are
the iTunes media folder location in preferences > advanced tells iTunes where to put new additions to your library, not where your content currently is.

How do i move a catalog to an new hard drive and keep all of the processed info and collections

Ive recently purchased a new external hard drive, and was wondering how to i move the files so that they retain my collections aswell as the processed info.?

There are lots of advice available on the web. The link below is one such source that describes the procedures.
Moving a Lightroom Catalog - Digital Photography School

Keeping iTunes on a Separate Hard Drive, and Keeping it Safe.

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