Storage Advice for iTunes Library

My LaCie 200G drive is almost full, I'm using it to hold my iTunes library. I placed a large number of rare live performance recordings on this drive and my collection is still growing. I'm looking for a drive in the 500G range to which I could move my current library and add new acquisitions, any suggestion?
Thanks
Brian

I would look for rebate deals on a large Seagate or Hitachi IDE/ATA hard drive, and stick it inside a third-party Firewire or USB enclosure like this one or this one. This should save you a bit of money over buying a pre-assembled external drive, and assembling it yourself only requires a screwdriver.

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SSD storage good for iTunes library?

I think the hard part is done, 256GB of SSD storage can be had for £700 now, by net year (I'd say Q3~ish) we could have 500GB of SSD storage for maybe £900, then it will only be a year and a half or maybe two before we get 1TB of SSD sotrage, which I think will tip past £1K.
What I want to know is if an iTunes library would be good with SSD, I've read up on it and the technology works best with data which require small file access, not large quantities of data like video.

Well you see my current setup is that I do have a 1TB HDD, I stream this over a TimeCapsule network to iTunes on my MacBook. But I find that it can get itself into a bottle neck, especially so with video, music too. So I thought that SSD might help, I was told the 802.11n frequency allowed for good speeds and thought that the spinning HDD would be the main offender.
I saw this technology from Intel, a video demonstrating wireless streaming of several GBs in a few seconds, but it was restricted to a few meters. But as mentioned I didn't think that it was a network issue because 802.11n is fast.
Your thoughts?

Im after so advice for itunes!

im after so advice for itunes! so, when i buy my music from dj sites such as beatport, i download it and it loads straight into itunes as i want it to so it syncs with traktor!
however when i download sample packs for logic if i play them or audition any of the sounds they to load in to itunes which i dont want cause i dont want it clogged up with loads of little samples, plus its takin up extra space on my harddrive.
so what i want is to have all samples on an external harddrive and be able to play them with out them copying on to itunes. so when i open logic there all saved away from the mac, i can play them etc and they wont jump onto the mac.
aswell as this i want to have multiple itunes librarys saved to the external harddrive. one for my albums and band music etc. and one where i can save all my dj music to before i drop it onto the mac library for traktor.
i hope this makes sense.
cheers
drusif

drusif wrote:
so is there some way of making Quick time the default player for an external harddrive?
Drusif, not really. As Christopher notes, you can set the default by file type, but not by drive location.
What I suggest you do is to set QuickTime (or some other non-iTunes player) as the default for all music files. Then, when you find something you plan to keep, add it to your iTunes library.

Using External Hard Drive as storage for iTunes Library - Problems

I currently use an external hard drive to store my iTunes music, does anyone know why when I copy folders to iTunes library, duplicates appear - sometimes 2 or 3 copies of same song, same artist, album everything. A trud copy. Also, when you are setting up your music folder on the External Hard drive, would you copy from C: the entire iTunes tree - ie. iTunes/iTunes music/iTunes library or just have one folder called iTunes library? Also, when specifying location for finding music in preferences, again would you use entire tree of just iTunes music library.

See Dave Sawyer's post here - it's the easiest way
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1866272&tstart=0
Also, make sure Windows assigns a drive letter that won't change
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

ICloud storage for iTunes library

Hello --
I am unclear on how he iCloud works with the iTunes library.
Is all my media files saved there, including items bought from the iTunes store and mp3 that add to itunes that I buy elsewhere?
Thanks
fpe

Hello there, fpefpe.
The following links provide some great information on how iCloud works:
iCloud - All y our content on all your devices.
https://www.apple.com/icloud/features/
With iCloud, anything you purchase in the iTunes Store, the App Store, and iBooks is automatically available on all your devices the moment you tap Buy. You can also access past purchases from any of your devices.
If you want to have your non-iTunes purchased content in the cloud, then you may want to look into iTunes Match. These articles provide great information on the service as well:
iTunes Match
https://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/
and
iTunes Match on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5637
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Time Capsule as media storage for iTunes library?

i'd just like to start by saying that i have been searching and reading online now most of the afternoon and any help at all would be greatly appreciated.... seriously.
i'll try and keep my question(s) as to the point as possible: i have a Time Capsule - i am trying to figure out how to use it to store all or some (is some just possible?) of my iTunes library, as i am running out of space on my MacBook due to the size of my music collection. two, if i get all the music copied onto the TC, can i delete some of it off my MB then to free up the space i'm wanting? three, will i still be able to put music from the iTunes on my TC on my iPod?
i would LIKE to still be able to do backups with my TC, but after all the reading i've done it sounds as though it may be an either or situation.... if this is the case, i can always manually place files i wanted backed up on the TC, right?
i apologize that some of this may belong in another forum. i'm new and frustrated and just trying to understand. again, any help would be much appreciated. thank you.

1 - Quit iTunes.
2 - Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from MacBook to Time Capsule.
3 - Hold Option and launch iTunes.
4 - Select *Choose library* an select the *iTunes folder* on the Time Capsule.
5 - System prefs > Accounts. Add the Time Capsule to your Login items so it mounts when you login in as the drive with iTunes folder on it needs to be mounted when iTunes is launched.
You can now delete /Music/iTunes/ folder on the MacBook. You can put an Alias of the iTunes folder on the Time Capsule if you wish.
three, will i still be able to put music from the iTunes on my TC on my iPod?
Yes. Everything will work just like it did previously.
i would LIKE to still be able to do backups with my TC, but after all the reading i've done it sounds as though it may be an either or situation
It's not either/or.
You can put other files on the Time Capsule. The Time Machine backup is a separate folder on the Time Capsule.

Network drives for iTunes library...

Hi,
At the moment my current iTunes setup consists of 4 external desktop hard-drives storing my library - music, movies and TV shows (4.6TB is the size of my library).
I want to use a network attached storage device that works well with a Mac OS X and iTunes. Preferably I'd like a multi-bay hard-drive enclosure and connect it to either my MacBook Pro or to a Airport Extreme.
I've seen some enclosures that offer 2-4 3.5" hard-drives but there isn't a great deal of information on Mac support.
Does anyone have any advice on this?

I suspect this is possible by unchecking the "consolidate library" feature
Yes. I have my music split between two drives.
but would like to have new music added (which I burn or download occasionally) into the main library rather than scattered around. Any easy solutions here?
I don't know if this is "easy" but I just have two folders for music and whenever I add something to either I also drag it to itunes so for me it is easy by being systematic. Even if you forget to add it to itunes, as long as you keep it in one folder you can just periodically drag that folder to itunes and it will add anything that isn't already in the itunes library to the library. In my experience if something is already in the library it ignores it.

Advice: transferring itunes library to Time Capsule?

We just got a Time Capsule (wireless router + HD) and I would like to move my itunes libary there, so that when I load itunes on my laptop (thinkpad, winxp sp2) it will look in the itunes library on the external Time Capsule drive rather than looking on my laptop hd -- it doesn't really matter that it's a Time Capsule, just that it's an external (network, not usb or firewire) storage device.
Why: to be able to delete the library from my laptop hd, which is starting to fill up. I don't really need to carry around all my music on my laptop, after all, that's what the ipod is for. I still have a working itunes library, I'm not trying to fix something that's broken (yet!), just trying to free up space on my laptop hd for other things.
Questions:
1. I see lots of threads with people having trouble accessing external hd's. Is there a preferred way to do this so that I don't screw it up?
2. I already have backed up my whole itunes folder to the Time Machine, just copied the files using my file copy utility. I'd just as soon not have to copy it all again to use it as my itunes library (instead of just as a backup) -- can I just tell itunes to look there rather than looking on my c: drive, or will that mess w/ my backup? Is the backup already usable as the main library, or do I have to recreate it somehow, and how?
3. Ongoing backup: I would plan to backup the Time Machine itunes library to another external hd (usb), so I still have a backup...again, the whole thing would then be off my laptop hd.
4. Other advice?
Thanks!

Hello Styles36. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Can anyone give me a step-by-step assist on how to transfer and compress my dvd library to my time capsule using something other than Handbrake (will not recognize my 32 bit VLC) or Mac the Ripper.
Other than copy files to the Time Capsule (TC), your questions are really not related to AirPort Networking or Apple-specific software so you may find better results in getting a step-by-step for using either Handbrake or Mac the Ripper in one of their forums. Note: There are a number of beta 64-bit versions of VLC floating around on the Internet. Just do an Internet search and you will find them. Most folks stick to the 32-bit versions of both programs for reliability.
As far as copying the DVD Library, since these are large files, you will find that you will want to connect your MacBook Pro directly, by Ethernet, to the TC. Copying would be as simple as using the Finder. The TC's drive will show up in the Shared section.

Options for iTunes library - quickly growing with mp4 videos

Hello all,
Here is my dilemma. I have a large library of MP4 videos (movies) in my iTunes library, which is growing daily. These are not iTunes purchases. I plan to unload these files to an external HDD. Home Sharing is the main reason why I use iTunes for my Movie library to begin with.
Here is my dilemma. I cannot, to my knowledge, run a partially referenced iTunes library- where Music is automatically copied to the iTunes Media folder, but Videos are not (but rather referenced on the external hard drive).
1) Is there any way around this besides unchecking "automatically copy to iTunes folder" everytime I add a Video to my iTunes Library
2) Would I be better off creating two seperate iTunes libraries? One for the referenced video files on the EHD and one for my music, which I want to remain on my internal drive.
3) Any other plausible solutions?
I hope I'm being clear. Just looking for the best plan of action. Thanks in advance
MBP Late 2013''
10.9.2

1) Is there any way around this besides unchecking "automatically copy to iTunes folder" everytime I add a Video to my iTunes Library
No, not automatically, not with how iTunes presently works.
2) Would I be better off creating two seperate iTunes libraries? One for the referenced video files on the EHD and one for my music, which I want to remain on my internal drive.
No. I used to think it would but at least with my old iTunes version any libraries made in my user account share the same single user preferences. Unless you disable the "automatically copy to" feature I am pretty sure either library will put the items in the same media folder because they both use the one set of preferences settings. You can check this by making a second test library but don't add anything to it. Then check advanced preferences from yur main library and this test library and see if they point to the same media folder.
3) Any other plausible solutions?
Do it the way Michael Allbritton outlines, or leave it set to organize automatically but put the movies on the external drive, then add them back while holding down the option key. This overrides the copy-to function.
Note, splitting media storage this way will work but has disadvantages. If links break for any reason, iTunes will not automatically search for ones that are not part of its media folder organization. If you need to move files to a different drive in the future it will be somewhat tricky as you are likely to end up with a lot of broken links. There may be ways to avoid this but it won't be automatic.

Can I use Time Capsule for iTunes Library?

I have a Macbook Pro, an Apple TV, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones at home. Just bought 2TB Time Capsule today.
My kids purchased a lot of movies/TV shows from iTunes store, and it is building up lots of space in my MacBook. I also like to rip my CDs into Apple Losses Format to enjoy on my iPhone.
My Macbook is running out of space, I wonder if I can point my iTunes Library (Music, Videos) to Time Capsule. In other words, I hope to have access to my Music library whenever my iPhone is connected to my MacBook, and most importantly, the kids will be able to access their movies/TV shows from Apple TV / iPads.
Could someone please advice how to do that? Thanks!

Thanks!
Bob, if you don't me asking some details - if I will buy an external harddisk to store my itunes library:
1). Does it mean everytime I open iTunes (or before I connect any device), I have to ensure the external harddisk is connected vis USB?
2). Say I have some 50GB of data on my MacBook. If I modify Preference/iTunes Media Folder Location, will all the data be "moved" to the external USB drive automatically?
3). When we talked about "moving iTunes Media folder", does it include everything (i.e. my iPhone, iPad, backup, apps, etc), or it is just Music/Books/TV Shows/Movies?
Shamefully speaking, I might be a stupid dad - I used iPhotos to import all pictures/videos from Digital Camera, iPhones, iPads for a year, until last night I installed Aperture 3. I selected a folder "Pictures" and clicked Import from iPhoto Library, then I was shocked ....my Macbook HDD space shrinks from 40GB free to 1.29GB and still shrinking....as a result I had to move some of my music, videos to trash (to free up another 20 GB of space). Until Aperture finished importing all photos, I had only 2.5GB free
This morning, the first thing I did is to buy a Time Capsule, and try to free up spaces on my Macbook

Storage solutions for Aperture Library & vault??

My Aperture library has grown to over 400 GBs and I am concerned about storage as it grows larger week by week. I have been using two 500 GB firewire 800 drives, one for the library and one for vault. Today I purchased a 1 Terabyte drive for the library, it works well and I actually see a speed improvement. I will pick up another next week for the vault.
Aperture lumps all of the data in one folder therefore requiring the size of our hard drive to keep pace with the Library. I need a different solution than replacing firewire drives with larger capacity ones every three to six months.
My main requirements are speed and expandability. I do not want to keep several aperture libraries, to me this defeats the purpose of an image database.
I have heard the pros and cons of raid and I do not think it's the best solution for an Aperture based system. Sata sounds interesting and seems that it may become more standard. I have also read about using an out-dated mac as a server by installing several hard drives and connecting it to the workstation by gigabyte ethernet. I would like to have my library on a very fast connection, firewire is fine for the vault. I am wondering what others are doing in the same situation as mine and if you might have any advice.
With the purchase of the 1TB drives I figure that I will be fine until mid to late summer, by that time Apple will have their new desktop available which I plan to purchase. It might be best to see what the machine will or will not support. Any thoughts?........
G5 dual 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

As the previous poster said: this is an Apple problem that needs to be solved. I might add, it probably will be in the near future. So, you should try to scrape by for the next few months as best you can and wait and hope and pray for a solution from Apple.
With DVD and Firewire drives backing up your original you are well--probably over--backed up. One copy on DVD is more than sufficient for your originals. Make more backups of the Aperture library which includes your original file and your time consuming metadata and adjustments.
RAID 0 is risky because if a single drive goes then you loose everything! There are other RAID schemes that make your system more dependable. RAID 1 mirroring is safer but doesn't expand your storage capacity.
RAID 3 & 5 are both more dependable and give you bigger working volumes but there is a lot of processor work going on to calculate parity (error correcting and data recovery information) that is spread across several drives. If you use Mac OS X RAID or Soft RAID that processor power comes from you computer's CPU--which probably has enough work to do already without having to crunch numbers for every byte that goes to/from your hard-drive.
RAID 3 & 5 are good systems if you have hardware to to the parity calculation but they each require a minimum 4 drives to make a set--which you don't want to use as a boot drive. That means you would need 5 drives inside your G5 of a combination of internal and external drives.
A cleaner solution might be getting a Wiebe Tech Siver SATA V case and port multiplier card (about $1500 w/o drives). That will give you a good fast connection for 5 external hot-swappable drives. Then use Ben Long's library spanner to get you by until Apple comes to the rescue with a multiple drive library.

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.

Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme + External Hard Drive for iTunes Library

Hi, I currently have an Airport Extreme (Gigabit) and am planning on getting a MacBook Pro. What I want to do is keep my iTunes Library on an External Hard Drive and attach it to my AirPort so I can access it anywhere in the house (and world). Now I have been reading various reviews that perhaps a Time Capsule would be better for my needs. I don't plan on using it for Time Machine backups right now, just as a NAS Drive. If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate the advice.
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Mr. Macintosh693

Hi,
I have something like that working at the moment. My setup is based on a Mac Mini Core Duo [ OS 10.5.6 ] connected to a Time Capsule. I have configured iTunes to store all archived music on the Time Capsule. I use the Apple Lossless format for my CDs and approx 420 titles have taken approx 130Gb from my 1Tb Capsule. In general this setup works well [ especially the optical out of the Mac ] but be aware of the following potential pitfalls:-
1. The Time Capsule is a little on the noisy side and depending on the quality of your playback equipment, your choice of music, ambient noise and your values of "satisfactory" you may want to put your Capsule or HDD in another room. This seems OK for generic playback, but in my experience wireless is not a good way to go for streaming content.
2. iTunes v8.0.2 has a preferences capability to allow you to redirect it's archive to the Time Capsule. However, even if you leave the Capsule switched on it goes into a "sleep" mode. Rip a new CD and iTunes won't tell you this; instead it will silently reconfigure itself to store on your local hard drive and then you're left with the challenge of moving your collection piecemeal if you want it in one location, followed by manually updating iTunes to "point" it to the new location of the music.
One nice thing about the Capsule is that it does allow other connection types. I have mine networked to a PC running Ubuntu Linux and a music player called Amarok and I am able to stream the Mac-Ripped lossless files and play them over Linux perfectly... Works very well. Apparently you can do this with a Windows client and iTunes for Windows, but I don't run Windows as a matter of principle and can't validate that.
My 1Tb Time Capsule runs hot, too. Not dangerously so, but hot to the touch. There are no cooling fans, but you might want to think about placement; it needs plenty of fresh air circulating around it.
For what it's worth [ and I appreciate this is going beyond your question ] I also wanted my setup to be able to store and retrieve recorded TV. I have Elgato EyeTV and a USB Freeview decoder. I quickly learned that despite claims to the contrary the performance of the wireless connection just isn't up to streaming video content. So I went out and purchased a pair of Ethernet-over-mains adapters from Zyxel that are absolutely perfect for the job.
Yes, the Capsule is a little pricey for what is little more than a Hard Drive in a box, but it does work very well.
Beware the timeout disconnections and the silently re-configuring iTunes thought...

Random library storage after "upgrading" iTunes library

I recently upgraded my library and found that some of the upgraded songs were stored in proper location in the iTunes library whiles others were stored in the parent folder. Something must be forcing that selection because I even deleted the files from the library and reintalled them and they were again stored in the parent folder rather than the iTunes library. I haven't changed the preference location and most of the upgraded music was stored properly. Indeed, the random storage issue affected some songs in an upgraded album but not all.
Mac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

John Kilcar wrote:
This evening after upgrading to 10.2 (34), when I restarted my iTunes my library and playlists are empty, has anybody else encountered this or have a solution?
The files are still present on the external HDD
Thanks,
John
Restore that backup you take regularly... Ah, OK.
*Empty library after upgrade/crash*
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the *Previous iTunes Libraries* folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename *iTunes Library* as *iTunes Library (Empty)* and then rename the restored file as *iTunes Library*. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See Music Folder Files Not Added and Super Remove Dead Tracks for clean-up tools , if required.
tt2

Storage Advice for iTunes Library

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