Using external hard drive for itunes from mac to windows

Hello, I have an external hard drive for my itunes music connected to a G4. I just bought a laptop (windows) and would like to connect the external drive to it so it will read my music from the external hard drive. How can i do that?
Thanks,
M

You will lose all data when you reformat so you must copy it elsewhere temporarily, as for the format go to: Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>Erase, in the format dropdown select MSDOS (FAT) and in the name dropdown, type a name.
Copy your data back to it and it will be accessible to windows and osx

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How to use external hard drive and iTunes together?

how to use external hard drive and iTunes together?

Yes I did get to that part.... I went trough external to retrive itunes folder... When I selected the folder, it said that it was locked, choose another folder... I then went to my external again to my itunes folder and and used command I to see if folder was locked and it wasn't.... it was suggested on another forum to reboot.. which I did and still same problem... All I want to do is link my external hard drive that has my itunes playlist from another Mac to my new one.. and to also use the external as the main source for adding new songs to my playlist...

First time using external hard drive for backup of computer....

First time using external hard drive for backup of computer....it asks "Do do you want to erase disk?" In order to proceed, I have to say "yes" ... is that what I want to do? ...Seems like I'm skipping a step...

To use Disk Utilities, attach the drive, open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities and then highlight the LaCie drive in the left panel of the DU window. In the right panel, choose the Partition button top center of the pane. Then decide how many partitions you want on the drive, one is just fine.
Then choose the format, the default is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) which is prefered.
Then name the partition or drive.
Then choose the partition table, the default is GUID which is prefered.
Then Apply and you will get to confirm that you want to erase and format the drive.
Quit DU and you are ready to go.

Using Multiple Hard Drives for iTunes Storage

I am running out of room on my current hard drive and want to use a new external hard drive to add space. My problem is I want to use both hard drives for storage (not the same music). Is this possible as I have only been able to direct iTunes to one hard drive? Thank you.
Dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 400GB Raid set

When you change the location in iTunes preferences what you are doing is telling iTunes where ripped music should be put. It isn't changing where iTunes should look for music that is already in the library. So go ahead and change the location to where you want music to be stored from now on. iTunes won't lose the other music. (At one times my iTunes library was spread over 4 drives.)

Using External Hard Drive For Time Machine

Hi. I will be buying a new iMac and plan to use an external hard drive by Lacie for Time Machine backups. I haven't used an external hard drive for this purpose before -- previously I've always used Apple's Time Capsule. So, I don't know if I can leave the Lacie hard drive unejected and powered on even when I've shut the computer down. The Time Capsule never needs ejecting from the desktop and is always on, but I'm not sure if the same can be done with an external hard drive when using it for time machine backups.
So, I just need to know if, when using an external hard drive such as a Lacie for Time Machine backups, I can 1. leave it unejected even when I shut down the computer? and 2. Can I also leave the hard drive powered on even when I shut the computer down? It would be good if I could do this because then it would just always be on and ready for hourly time machine backups without my having to remember to turn it on and the eject it when it's finished for the day.
I'd appreciate any advice or information.
Thanks in advance.
John

pulp3au wrote:
1. leave it unejected even when I shut down the computer?
What are you referring with "unejected"? You should know that LaCie drives have got three modes: "On" (permanently turned on), "Auto" (when you turn off your computer, your external disk turns off or you unmount it) and "Off". Choose the one you want.
pulp3au wrote:
2. Can I also leave the hard drive powered on even when I shut the computer down? It would be good if I could do this because then it would just always be on and ready for hourly time machine backups without my having to remember to turn it on and the eject it when it's finished for the day.
Of course. You can leave the external disk turned on when your Mac is turned off without any problem. In "Auto" mode you won't have to do anything in order to turn it on again

Using portable hard drive for iTunes

I have windows 8 and am having a hard time figuring out how to use my portable hard drive for iTunes. I have all my media on the portable hard drive in a folder named iTunes. When I change it in iTunes to use that folder none of the media I have in there shows up on iTunes. Can someone please help me out?

I dragged the folder to iTunes and Its "adding files now". Isn't that putting all the media on the PC? I don't want any of my iTunes media on the PC. I want iTunes to use the portable hard drive to get my media.

Use same external drive for itunes in mac and windows?

Hi,
I have a Macbook Air that has bootcamp and I use 99% of my time under Windows 7.
All of my music and movies are on an external hard drive and I have a problem using
it for iTunes under Windows and the Mac at the same time.
Is it possible to have both versions point to the same external drive?
I tried almost everything but it fails as the file paths are stored once and for all in
the iTunes library file.
When booting under OS/X and opening iTunes, it loads the .itl file and shows all music
but of course it doesn't see anything since the path under OS/X has nothing to do with
the one under Windows.
My iTunes lib was created under Windows and all files are stored in a variation of:
J:\Private\My Music\iTunes[Rock | Classical | Soundtracks]
Under OS/X of course the path is totally different:
/Volumes/DRIVE_J/Private/My Music/iTunes/[Rock | Classical | Soundtracks]
Now if I reimport everything in iTunes for OS/X it will change all the paths and then
Windows will not be able to fetch the files.
Isn't there a way to have relative paths so both the OS/X and Windows versions
of iTunes work flawlessly without caring at all about which OS is running?
This is driving me nuts.
I'm not talking about Sharing an iTunes library over a network. I want to share the
same physical folder between Windows and OS/X
Thanks for any help.
Steve

Anyone?

How do I use External Hard Drive for my iTunes Library?

I have a Mac Mini that my iTunes Library has outgrown. I want to use my Mac Air as my primary iTunes "sync" computer using an external hard drive. How do I move my iTunes library to the external hard drive? How do I get MacBook Air to sync iDevices?

Easy method 1:
Move or Copy entire working library from current location to the root of your external drive. Press & hold down shift (option on a Mac) as you click the icon to start iTunes. Click Choose when prompted, then browse to ..\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl on the external. If you copied the library across then test your new library works properly after renaming the original folder, before deleting the original folder to recover space.
Easy method 2:
If you haven't really started to build your library. Press & hold down shift as you click the icon to start iTunes. Click Create. Browse to the root of the external drive. Drag your media into ..\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes.
Complex method:
Required if you've already tried other things and now have media & library scattered around. See the post make a split library portable.
tt2

Using an external hard drive for iTunes

My laptop is running out of space. I have an external hard drive that I've loaded a bunch of my CD's into but I'm not sure how to get those into my iPod without having them take up more space on my laptop hard drive. Any thoughts? thanks

just add them to your library. Change the setting in preferences so that iTunes does not make a copy of the file on your laptop.
Note that if you do not have your XHD attached you will get an ! next to teh songs in the libary.

External Hard Drives and iTunes, on Mac Book Pro and PC?

If you transfer your iTunes library from PC to an external hard drive, can you use itunes, from the external hard drive when you plug it into Mac Book Pro?
I'm very confused about this!
All my music is on PC and I want to save it to my external hard drive. But I will no longer be using that PC afterwards.
I would like to use itunes on my Mac but it only has 128 Gb, not enough storage for my iTunes library.
So, can you use your transfered itunes library from the PC to external drive on your Mac?
Another question I have is, when your itunes is on your external hardrive can you still sync, make playlists and add new songs?
I don't know very much about external hard drives, but I need the space.

No. Likely the drive is presently formatted NTFS which is no good on a Mac unless you want to buy spcial software to enable it (given your scenario it is not worth it). The best format for Mac use is MacExtended, but your PC cannot write files to that. The intermediate solution is to reformat the drive to DOS FAT, but as I already said this isn't ideal.
If it were me I would:
1) With the PC copy the entire iTunes folder to the current external, presumably formatted as NTFS.
2) Buy the new second drive I know I will need for backing up both my computer and my old external drive. Format it as Mac extended. In the long run you want to configure this for use with Time Machine but I can't help you with that because I can't run TM. For the time being you are using it to temporarily store files.
3) Using the Mac make sure the new drive is formatted to Mac extended.
4) On the Mac copy the entire iTunes folder from the old drive to the new.
5) With the Mac reformat the old drive to Mac extended.
6) With the Mac copy the entire iTunes folder from the new drive to the old one which is now in the Mac friendly format. Start iTunes with the option key held down as described earlier.
Others may be able to help with some details on formatting drives because I use an older system. I know with my system version when you reformat or partition you lose all files on a drive which is why you have to have somewhere to temporarily store your library. I think they did some changes but I am not sure of the details.

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...

How to use external hard drive as itunes library

Just bought a new external hard drive (passport) for mac and would like to know how to use it as my itunes library? thanks

Drag it there from the Music item of the Finder's sidebar, launch iTunes with the Option key held down, click on Choose Library, and navigate to that instance of the library.
(81903)

Kernel panic when using external hard drive for library

I have been using an external hard drive to manage my iTunes library for over a year. As of today, I have had three kernel panics when trying to use iTunes. I was downloading a purchase from the music store and the first panic occurred. Subsequent panics occurred immediately on startup of iTunes. Using the guest account (with default internal drive library settings), everything works fine. Both drives have been verified by Disk Utility and all software is up-to-date. No clue how to proceed.

Yes, but you need to have the external drive on and mounted when starting iTunes. You can add the external HD to your log in items list in System Preferences -> Accounts to handle this.
This explains how to move your files: iTunes for Mac-Moving your iTunes music folder: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

External hard drive for PC and Mac, how to format?

Hi
I have 3 laptops at home which I use for different roles:
1. A recent Macbook Pro with Leopard;
2. PC with Windows XP SP2;
3. PC with Windows Vista.
I have just ordered a powerful external drive (actually four drives of 1TB each in one enclosure, configured into the fastest RAID 0 for my work and storage needs.
I will need to edit High Definition movies directly from that hard drive, so I need to have very fast access to all files (up to 100MB/s - have eSATA connections sorted).
Now my question is how should I format the hard drive so it is read and write accessible by all three computers?
FAT32 is not an option because it has performance issues (and I need my HDD to be really fast) and wouldn't support files larger than 4GB (many of my videos are larger)...
I probably also cannot create 2 separate partitions as I need to use the same files with both Mac and Windows systems (not at the same time but e.g. download a 10GB file with my Vista computer while I am away, later edit it with MBP, then maybe record it onto a blu-ray in my Windows XP machine.)
I am sure there are many people out there with both Macs and PCs that need fast external hard drive where FAT32 is not good, so how do you format it?
Many thanks!

Hi,
if what you are looking for is a 4-disk-raid NAS with e-sata connection, you are looking at US$1000 (without drives) for something like the Allnet ALL6700 or the QNAP TS509pro which can use a 5th disk for raid-5 redundancy. (With a 4-disk-raid-0, the chance of losing ALL data is 4 times higher than when storing on a single disk)
With many NAS-devices, you don't have to worry about the format/file system - as capaho wrote, the box does it for You (don't take my word for it for a specific model). My DLink Nas ist Ext3-formatted and runs fine with OS X and/or XP - but can only be connected via LAN.
If you have connected it to a switch/router and you are accessing it via LAN, don't expect a transfer rate of more than 20MByte/s (Gigabit-Lan) unless using professional equipment.

Using external hard drive - moving music from desktop to laptop

I wish to use an external hard drive to move my library from my desktop to my laptop. However, I do not wish to load the library onto my laptop, I would like to keep the library stored on the external hard drive. Here is what I have done so far:
- I followed the directions on this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364
- I downloaded the current version of iTunes onto my laptop and authorized this computer.
- I connected the external hard drive to my laptop and turned it on. I opened iTunes > Edit > Preferences > Advanced and change the music folder location to the folder location on the external hard drive.
None of my library has shown up in iTunes. I am positive that the library is on the external hard drive.
What have I missed or what do I need to do to resolve this issue and run iTunes through the external hard drive on my laptop?
Thank you so much for you help!
Brian

*Of course I am slightly confused by a few of the folders.....iTunes Library Extras, iTunes Library Genius, iTunes Library*
None of those are folders, they are files. The iTunes Library is the main database file that contains the information on what you have added to you library, songs, locations, playlists etc: What are the iTunes library files?
*There are still other files I am not sure about. They are:, Temp File.tmp 13.0MB, Temp File 6.00MB, Previous iTunes Libraries 75.9MB, iTunes Music (larger than 6.23GB), iTunes Music Library 20.9MB, (XML Document), Album Artwork 212MB*
Apart from the ones obviously labelled File, the rest of these are folders
Temp Files (no idea what they are temporary files of but they were created by Windows)
Previous iTunes Libraries (a folder of libraries created by earlier versions of iTunes, can be used to roll back a version of iTunes when a particular new installation doesn't work)
iTunes Music (the folder that your music and other media files, songs movies etc. are kept in)
iTunes Music LIbrary.xml (a file that contains some of the information contained in the main library file and is used by other programs which interface with iTunes)
Album Artwork (a folder that contains artwork downloaded from the iTunes Store)
You'll get more information including the Folder/File structure in this article: What are the iTunes library files?

Using external hard drive for itunes from mac to windows

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