Splitting a library between three kids

A few years ago, we gave our three kids, then ages 12, 8 and 5, iTouches. To keep it simple, we set up one account in the oldest child's name, and each of them would sync their device with the laptop they shared where the library was housed.
That made sense at the time.
But, now I have kids ages 16, 12 and 9 with completely different tastes, interest in apps, etc. And, alas, the sharing of one account has become quite bothersome to all three.
So, I think now I need to set up an account for each of them, and split the library. That is the part I'd like some advice on. I can set up the itunes accounts for them; that is easy. But, what about the music? Instead of "C:\Mydocuments\mymusic\itunes" do I need to setup "C;\kid1\mydocuments\mymusic\itunes" and a "C:\kid2\...., ", "c:\kid3.." etc? For the music they share, do I need to make a copy of the song to each of these new folders?
Or, do they all import from the same library, but never do a full sync (i.e., check the box for only the songs they want).
I don't want to set something up and a month from not everyone decides it is inefficient and I have to re-do it.
Thus, some advice from experienced users out there would greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

No, I only connect the external drive when I need to access it - and really, music is the bulk of what I keep on the computer. I use nicecast to broadcast music, and I'd prefer to do that using iTunes on the internal drive.

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Split iTunes Library between hard disks

Can I split my iTunes library between my hard drive and an attached hard drive but view it as one and have it update on my iPod together? I've run out of space and have some space on an attached secondary hard drive.

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Can I split my iTunes library between 2 hard drives?

Can iTunes library be split between to hard drives?
Hi,
My laptop has 2 x 250GB internal hard drives. I wish there was 1 x 500 GB one.
1 of them is nearly full with music only 2GB remaining and the other one has over 100GB remaining.
I'm wondering is it possible to split the location of the library between the 2 drives without too much trouble or is it messy or even possible?!
In other words when I open iTunes the music that is on the nearly full hard drive will remain there and any music I import going forward will be re-directed to the other hard drive but still appear in iTunes along with the music from the other drive.
Thanks...

I have the same question.
I would like to be able to do the same thing with all my media. I'm a DJ and certain aspects of Mac Os X Lion or iCloud, and iTunes Match, don't favor folks with tons of media, storage wise. I'm not happy that there's a limit on how much space iCloud will give you. Yet, I feel forced to upgrade to Lion within the next 4 days. I've been hesitant to rip my collection or even upload all those digital copies because where will I put all those files. I agree with needing like 4-8T just to store, but how? I don't have Thunderbolt, only Firewire on late '08 iMac 20" and USB on 08 MacBook 13" Aluminum. Bleh!
If you can use Time Capsule to back up your entire network with more than one computer, it would seem likely that you should be able to piggy back 2 xTime Capsules. I believe they come with 2-3Ts now and you can get them refurbished? I'm gonna look at Time Capsule Support to find out for myself, I'll let you know what I find, also. One thing I did noticed was that I had uploaded a bunch of Digital Copies from movies I had bought from Blu-Ray Combo Packs like 2 years ago and deleted them from MacBook for more space, only to recently find that they had been saved as purchased items from the iTunes Store. So now I can grab them from iTunes and watch them anytime off my Apple TV.
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Hello there - how can I share my iTunes library between two users on the same computer? I put the library in a shared folder between both and have selected this library on both as well, but when I update iTunes with music etc it only appears on one?

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Thank you Joe - I tried this but it's only showing a teensy amount of music - the stuff on the second users account as opposed to the giagntic library on the 'main' account. I actually went to a Genius Bar and they said that apple doesn't really want you to share music between accounts - parents don't want to hear their kids music etc. Which seemed strange, but it might be the case sadly Thanks anyway!

Sharing single iPhoto library between 2 users on a single computer

Hello,
I am currently using iPhoto 5 on a Mac Mini with 2 total users on the computer.
I know that it is easy to share iPhoto pictures over a server with other computers, but does anyone know how to share a single library between 2 users on the same computer?
I would like my wife and I to share a single library of pictures so that we can each upload pics from our digital camera of our family and friends and both have access to them. Currently, we each have to have separate libraries and it is difficult to share photos even between us. If this is not possible on iPhoto 5 or 6, this would be a great upgrade for the next version.
By the way, I was able to work a similar problem out with music out so that all users share a single iTunes library of songs by placing the library in the "shared" folder, but this is not possible with the iPhoto library.
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Mac Mini - G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi mconnor,
Here are all the links I have for sharing an iPhoto Library.
I think you would be interested in the ACL link for your situation. Hope it works for you.
SHARING IPHOTO LIBRARIES
Sharing libraries between users on the same local network
You can also share a library on the same machine between users the same way.
Sharing libraries between users on the same machine...
-both users must have sharing enabled in their iPhoto Preferences
-both users must be logged in and have iPhoto running
-Remember that you can only view the other library. You can't edit the photos or play the saved slideshows or view the made books or burn them to CD or DVD. The books and slideshows will show up as an album. You can play that album as an "on the fly" slideshow. You can drag images from the sharing library to your library in the source column to import them to your library. You can then edit, add to albums, books, slideshow, etc.
Sharing links from Apple....
Sharing your photos between computers
About shared photos
Turning off photo sharing
Looking for shared photos
SHARING ONE IPHOTO LIBRARY BETWEEN USERS ON SAME MACHINE
You can try one of these three methods:
1- Use iPhoto Library Manager-the paid version
The documentation page will give instructions on how it is done.
2- Sharing one iPhoto library between several users on one machine
3- Share an iPhoto Library in tiger Using ACL's
4- I have also read about ShareAlike
There is no other info on the site about how it works.
I strongly urge anyone wanting to try any of the methods for sharing one iPhoto Library folder among more than one user to backup all iPhoto Library folders before attemptin anything.

1. How do I separate my library from my kids'? We have different itunes accounts, 1 computer.

How do I separate my library from my kids'? We have different iTunes accounts and log in and out when we sync our various devices, all on one Windows 8 (new to us) computer. All I want is to plug my devices in and sync ONLY my songs! I've been managing to manually manage and check and uncheck songs, but it's such a pain and that doesn't always work anyway. It is as if there are more than 2 locations for my music and I just want them all to show up in my own library. Does that make sense? Please help.

Stop manually managing content, that is simply not smart or efficient.
Create playlists with the desired content, sync those playlists to the device. iTunes remembers what to sync to each device.
If you really want to split the library, that can be done but it will be a time consuming and entirely manual process.

Share iTunes Library between OSX and Win7 Bootcamp

I've done quite a bit of research on this but I still haven't found a solution that does what I require.
Basically my setup is a SSD & HDD in my MBP. I have OSX and Win7 (Bootcamp) on the SSD and the NTFS HDD is a shared file storage drive for both Windows and OS. I have my iTunes library located on this drive and I want to be able to share the library between the OSs. I also want changes e.g. additions deletions made in windows to be reflected in OSX and vice versa.
Technically this is possible and does in fact work if I point iTunes to the .itl file but the problem is that when I open iTunes after switching OSs it must go through a very lengthy library update which can take 30-60mins in some cases before I can use it. Obviously this is not a good solution so I'm wondering if there are any workarounds to accomplishing this?
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Just for your info, Vista ***** whatever you try to do. I'm stuck with Vista on a pre-installed laptop. All experience I have from Vista is bad, don't buy Vista or a computer with preinstalled Vista if you can avoid it.
We have three computers in a home network, one Macbook Pro, one PC with Windows XP, and the Vista laptop. All are using iTunes-8, downloaded and installed last week.
Sharing iTunes libraries using the option to share libraries on a local network works fine between Mac and Windows-XP. The sharing also works fine between the XP and the Vista PC.
But the Vista PC can't access the Mac iTunes library. When trying to open the Mac library, iTunes on the Vista computer says something like "Fetching library info from...". It's the same problem when trying to access the Vista library from the Mac.
We had a similar problem when trying to access shared folders on the local network. Thanks to a tip on this forum how to tweak the Vista registry, the shared folder problem was solved.
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Sharing iPhoto library between a Mac and a PC

Anyone have any tips on this one?
My wife and I would like to share the iPhoto library between her PC laptop and my Mac Pro. What's the best way to go about this?
Would it be best to put the library up on the wireless drive attached to the Airport Extreme wireless and share that way. I would format the drive for PC so it would be readable from both computers.
Option 2 is to put the iPhoto library on an external PC formatted drive and and then physically attach it to whatever computer is using the library.
I know there are probably problems that come with these methods and possibly that it wouldn't work at all. Not sure exactly. Thought I'd check in before I opened a huge can-o-worms.
Thanks!

1. iPhoto has no cross-platform capabilities whatsoever.
2. Putting the iPhoto Library on a disk formatted for PC is a frequent cause of problems. Folks report issue with updating the Library, keywords, accessing the pics in other apps and so on.
3. Using iPhoto on a wireless connection is also not recommended. Connection dropouts are a fact of life on wireless (even very brief ones.) If one occurs while iPhoto is writing to the Library then the Library will be corrupted.
4. If you look inside the iPhoto Library Folder you can see how that Library is organised: there are various files, which are the Library itself and some ancillary files. Then you have three core folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
Remember: iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
Browsing through the Library folder with another app - for instance, whatever you use to view the pics on the Windows machine - can alter the structure of the Library. Another recipe for disaster.
What you can do:
1. Use an app that has a cross platform capability such as Microsoft’s Expression
2. Run a *Referenced Library*:
Simply go to iPhoto Menu -> Preferences -> Advanced and uncheck 'Copy Files to the iPhoto Library on Import'.
Now iPhoto will not copy the files, but rather simply reference them on your HD. To do this it will create an alias in the Originals Folder that points to your file. It will still create a thumbnail and, if you modify the pics, a Modified version within the iPhoto Library Folder.
However, you need to be aware of a number of potential pitfalls using this system.
1. Import and deleting pics are more complex procedures
2. You cannot move or rename the files on your system or iPhoto will lose track of them on systems prior to 10.5 and iPhoto 08. Even with the later versions issues can still arise if you move the referenced files to new volumes or between volumes.
3. Most importantly, migrating to a new disk or computer can be much more complex.
I don’t recommend it but this will allow you to share the Original files (though not the edited versions.)
Regards
TD

How to split iPhoto library and NOT loose metadata?

My iPhoto library gets too big (30GB); hence I'd like to split it and make two separate libraries, one for 2008, one for 2009.
How can I do this WITHOUT loosing all the metadata and file structure: e.g. the albums, the MobileMe gallery, the Faces and Places data etc.???
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Splitting the Library will not save you any disk space, and will, in fact, use more as the database and support files will be duplicated. Also, it's less convenient as you can only access one Library at a time. If you're worried about disk space you can run a Library from an external disk.
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Duplicate the Library in the Finder.
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TD

Synching between three macs WITHOUT using .mac

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Same question for mail as well as address book.

Get a copy of Folderssynchronizer for each Mac. Choose which folders you want to keep synced - Documents, presumably, and any others. You can do this with Address Book but Mail might be problematic - certainly if you are using different versions. If they are the same you could probably sync the ~/Library/Mail folder, but it could be pretty large. See below for another method.
Get a large capacity USB drive - you can get them up to 4MB. Create an empty folder with the same name for each of the folders you want to sync. Now you can carry out a sync from you main Mac to the USB stick, and from the USB stick to the other computers in the same way
You need to sync each computer at the beginning and end of a session, and operate a rule which is that the computer which is currently between these syncs is the only one to have files modified (if you modify the same file on two computers one of them will get overwritten).
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How can I share my iTunes library between user accounts in iTunes 11

Since upgrading my iTunes library to Version 11 I can no longer share the library between user accounts on the same Mac.
The 2nd user is asked to create oir use an iTunes library, but when it is pointed to the Media folder it cannot share it.
Previously in iTunes 10 it all worked fine.
How can this be done please?
The library is in a shared areas that we both have Read/Write permissions to.

jc_hering wrote:
that works for anything he purchases after he creates the new account. What about his current music that currently resides in my itunes library? How can I get his current music out of my library into his new account/library?? Thanks..
Copy it to his computer into his iTunes library and authorize his computer with the iTunes account used to purchase them..
You cannot tranfser items from one iTunes account to another. Purchased items remain part of the iTunes account is was purchased with.
iTunes account - used to purchase items
iTunes library - where purchases (and CD RIPs) go on the computer

How do I... Set up an entirely seperate iTunes library for my kids?

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Hmmm.... Of course I ignored the "causes problems" line and went ahead and set up a 2nd library anyway!
I experimented with a movie (Forbidden Planet).
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So then I went into my hard drive and looked at the iTunes1 (the new) folder and the movie is not there! But it plays!. So I realized that the movie stays in my orignal library but is now there twice (). Once as Forbidden Planet and once as Forbidden Planet1 (there is a number "one" after the title).
I also have the one sitting in the iTunes1 library where I dragged it first.
Now, I can't delete any of them as the message "access denied" pops up!
So, the movies are duplicated when they are loaded into a 2nd library?
And they stay in the original library's folder system?
Or did I just do everything wrong from the start? (but the movie plays in both library's!)
Help!

What is the best way to share a iTunes library between 5 users on the same computer?

What is the best way to share a iTunes library between 5 users on the same computer?
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Would iTunes file shareing fix this problem?
Thanks

aapl.up wrote:
Rick, are you saying that if you try to share a folder outside of home and use sharepoints, then the other mac wont prompt you to log in? Have you tried that? It is hard to believe that is the case
I am sort of saying that. Have you tried it? I know it's hard to believe, but you really need to help us out by trying some steps that you don't believe.
We can't see what your exact situation is. We sort of know what's worked for us out here. Just trying to help you get this going in less than 24 hours!
Sharepoints manages the samba configuration file. It's free software that puts a pretty face on an otherwise cumbersome config file.
Give it a shot.
windows will not prompt for passwords, I have tried this with multiple computer at home for both vista and xp
As I stated. You will not get prompted on windows, if you have set up sharing in an insecure fashion. You are not using a secured sharing situation.
No argument with your statement.

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jc_hering wrote:
that works for anything he purchases after he creates the new account. What about his current music that currently resides in my itunes library? How can I get his current music out of my library into his new account/library?? Thanks..
Copy it to his computer into his iTunes library and authorize his computer with the iTunes account used to purchase them..
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Splitting a library between three kids

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