Moving my iTunes library to external drive. Suggestions on setup?

GhostMac24 · Apr 24, 2013

My iMac (just over a year old) has a reasonably large HDD of 1TB but my iTunes collections is starting to get rather large (500GB and growing) since I have starting ripping our DVDs and Blu-rays. Trying to determine what size external drive and type to get and how to set it up. FYI.....the iMac will be hardwired to the network as well as all ATVs throughout the home.

Here are a few idea I have been brainstorming:

1. External drive for iTunes library + a second external drive for backups of both the iMac HDD and the iTunes external drive.

2. Same as above except using a RAID1 setup for the iTunes.
**I don't have any reason why I would choose this over the previous setup but have read several threads about that sort of setup. I understand what RAID is and isn't but just not sure why I'd do that over a standard external drive.**

3. Something else?

Totally open to suggestions. Thanks for any advice or suggestions!

Cinephi1e · Apr 24, 2013

You have to figure out what your goals are for the iTunes library. Large drives, including those with RAID make sense if you plan to have a very large library. Here are some points to consider:

1. It is a good idea to have separate drives for iTunes and other items like backups. If possible use a fast connection for the iTunes drive, such as USB3, Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt.

2. It does not make sense to backup the iTunes drive. You should consider your original DVD's and Blu-rays as your backup.

3. Using RAID5 might make sense if you are planning a really large library with with a 4 drive enclosure. This will allow you to recover quickly if 1 drive fails. The drawback is cost. Good RAID systems, including the extra drives, are not cheap. Instead you can now get a 3 TB external drive for $120 or less.

FreakinEurekan · Apr 24, 2013

Cinephi1e said:
2. It does not make sense to backup the iTunes drive. You should consider your original DVD's and Blu-rays as your backup.

Only if you don't value your time. I'd hate to waste the hours re-ripping my collection just because I wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on a backup drive.

GhostMac24 · Apr 24, 2013

Cinephi1e said:
You have to figure out what your goals are for the iTunes library. Large drives, including those with RAID make sense if you plan to have a very large library. Here are some points to consider:

1. It is a good idea to have separate drives for iTunes and other items like backups. If possible use a fast connection for the iTunes drive, such as USB3, Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt.

2. It does not make sense to backup the iTunes drive. You should consider your original DVD's and Blu-rays as your backup.

3. Using RAID5 might make sense if you are planning a really large library with with a 4 drive enclosure. This will allow you to recover quickly if 1 drive fails. The drawback is cost. Good RAID systems, including the extra drives, are not cheap. Instead you can now get a 3 TB external drive for $120 or less.

Great input, thanks! A computer friend of mine suggested the RAID5 and said the same thing about the cost. Said it was much more worth it if you can swing the up front costs over RAID1.

FreakinEurekan said:
Only if you don't value your time. I'd hate to waste the hours re-ripping my collection just because I wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on a backup drive.

Totally agree which is why I want a backup as well. I do NOT want to spend the hundreds of hours of time doing this again.

98EXL · Apr 24, 2013

FreakinEurekan said:
Only if you don't value your time. I'd hate to waste the hours re-ripping my collection just because I wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on a backup drive.

+128963456013450345

SWMBO and I are getting a Synology DS412+, putting the slower 4TB drives (vs the faster 3TB) in for our iTunes library, Time Machine backups, and just other ****.

The actual data that we need, personal data, then gets backed up to a 3TB USB 3 drive that we can put off site (safety deposit box, family members house, etc).

I'm only re-ripping if we get hit by an EMP, not because of a hardware issue
(ok, and when I have a house full of 2160p displays I might, but that will be awhile)

idunn · Apr 26, 2013

Plan for it now

What is likely to happen is your iTunes library will shortly exceed the 1TB capacity of your internal iMac HDD. So plan now on storing iTunes video files elsewhere.

It may seem strange to unlikely, but if a library currently at 500GB (GB not MB, right?), it could relatively shortly be several terabytes. So instead of playing musical chairs with drives in incremental steps, go now for what you can afford in that you may possibly use in the next couple of years. After that point, technology will probably have superseded us all; for one thing, the standard in that affordable will probably be terabyte size SSD's instead of HDD drives. At a guess, aim for a minimum of 3 to 4TB now.

Each. As of course you'll need to duplicate whatever used with the same size backup. The exception would be if using RAID as backup. Couple reasons why you might not would be the slight bit more complexity, possibly greater cost—AND due security of the backup. Consider just how secure that is in one location with RAID and its software, versus two separate drives (with one of those possibly securely and safely tucked away against fire, flood, theft, etc.). Once up and running, RAID backup is automatic, so consider that as well, versus backing up all to two separate drives.

If separate drives, then one is in effect using RAID 0, as each drive backs up the other, but not internally so. There are a lot of external drive options at 2TB and below, and fewer options at capacities above that. But still good ones. Figure on a cost of roughly $100 per 1TB. Even USB 2.0 and that via wi-fi will deliver speeds fast enough to stream 1080p HD video. One does not need Thunderbolt to do so. Where it would be nice is in transferring files over, as this will likely be a continual process. But USB 3.0 is perfectly sufficient, and might be aimed at as a good minimum.

Per backup, it would be a good idea, and possibly in lieu of a second external drive, to do so with some off-site provider. That could provide security against loss not always possible at home. BUT only a viable option if one has truly fast broadband.

Give some thought to this now, as if starting from scratch, and one can come up with something not costing a fortune, and working smoothly into the near future.

anewman143 · Apr 26, 2013

I was in the same situation - here's what I did...perhaps overkill, but it works and I sleep well.

I move my iTunes library and my iPhoto/Aperture library to a 2TB firewire 800 drive. That is backed up daily using CCC to a 2TB usb drive.

In addition, I have a 2 other 1TB usb drives. One serves as a Time Machine backup from the iMac, the other a daily backed up CCC mirror of the iMac.

So - 4 drives...and so far so good.

In addition, another portable 1TB drive kept in a fireproof safe for the Media drive.

Whew!

GhostMac24 · Apr 27, 2013

While cost isn't a factor, I certainly don't want to overspend of buy something I don't need or isn't proper for my application. So I am definitely exploring all options so I don't have to do it all over again. I have been thinking about 3TB drives (as idunn suggested). The sweet spot right now for drives is 3TB as the jump to 4 is exponential.

Thanks again for all the input. Truly appreciate it!

Primejimbo · Apr 27, 2013

I have a Mac Mini with a external 2TB hard drive with FW800 for my iTunes. I didn't realize how fast I am running out of room, but at least start with a 2TB. Now someone said that you don't need to back up your iTunes because the DVD's and CD's are the back up, and I disagree. The hours or ripping all that, and all at once can't be good for an optical drive. I have almost 1TB with just movies and music, I can't imagine re-doing all of that again. I just starting using Crashplan for this reason.

ColdCase · Apr 27, 2013

Crashplan didn't work for me, choked on anything more than 6GB file size and many of my videos are larger.

As many have discovered, DVDs will etch/fail over time. You go back to re-rip, but find the original DVD has gone bad. I've had four or five in my collection go belly up. So now you not are not only re-ripping, but are out shopping for another DVD to rip.

If you can afford the backup drives, take advantage. Once the videos are in ripped form, they are much easier to back up and move around. And three copies (original DVD, drive 1, drive 2) leads to much better protection against faults than two.

dazed · Apr 27, 2013

I have my library attached to a Mac mini under the stairs and stream it to where its needed.

I have 3 drives in total. 1 for iTunes , 1 for Time Machine and the other I use as my local crashplan backup (which handles the mini, iMac and various laptops).

I also backup online with crashplan but i don't have any files near 6gb so haven't hit those issues that others have discussed.

AppleNewton · Apr 27, 2013

ALWAYS BACKUP.

I'd say since you have 500GB currently and are expanding with more DVD & Bluray, invest in a 2TB or 3TB drive...perhaps a RAID1 2TB drive (2x2TB with redundancy) and a larger drive say 3-4TB for a time machine backup for both your Mac and newly created iTunes library.

GhostMac24 · Apr 27, 2013

I was thinking a 6TB (2x3TB) RAID1 with another 4TB external drive that is the iMac and RAID backup. I'm just not sure about the RAID1 over just a single 3TB drive. Maybe I just don't understand the RAID1 advantage over a single drive.

Primejimbo · Apr 27, 2013

ColdCase said:
Crashplan didn't work for me, choked on anything more than 6GB file size and many of my videos are larger.

Was that backing up or restoring from Crashplan?

ROGERWILCO357 · Apr 30, 2013

backing up

i was thinking of going drobo or other nas type of setup I have tons of pics to store in Raw format

Michael CM1 · Apr 30, 2013

I've done the same thing. I honestly can't remember which external drives my stuff is on, but all of my iTunes stuff is external.

Pretend that all of this is on one drive, because it really doesn't matter. I moved the iTunes folder there so anything new downloaded goes there. Music is fine there, but I try to eventually move movies and TV shows to my movie & TV show folders on the drive.

For movies, I just put the files in that folder. For TV shows, I create folders for each show and then folders for each season.

I think my drives are 2TB and 1.5TB, but they also hold other stuff. I'm worried that my iPhoto library is about to eat up the rest of my free space, but I do NOT want to move that thing external because of how SLOOOOOWWWW it would be.

Panch0 · May 1, 2013

GhostMac24 said:
I was thinking a 6TB (2x3TB) RAID1 with another 4TB external drive that is the iMac and RAID backup. I'm just not sure about the RAID1 over just a single 3TB drive. Maybe I just don't understand the RAID1 advantage over a single drive.

IMO, RAID1 would just be a waste of 3TB in your case, plus RAID enclosures are more expensive.

2x3TB RAID1 = 3TB usable, not 6TB. I think that is a typo in your post because you mention 3TB later...
RAID1 is for situations where you can not allow ANY downtime due to a drive failure. This is for stuff like mission critical servers, not Media Libraries.

2x3TB RAID0 = 6TB usable
RAID0 is for situations where you need the fastest possible read/write, like a scratch disk or maybe a database log drive. Again, not needed for Media Library. RAID0 actually increases the likelihood of data loss since if one drive fails you lose the whole array.

2x3GB JBOD (or Spanned) = 6TB Usable
I use JBOD for my media library to make 2 smaller drives appear as one large volume. The only advantage to this is that it appears to OS X and to me as a single drive. There may be a very small drop in performance as there is at least a little logic being performed in placing files on one disk or the other. If I lose a drive, I lose only the files that were physically on that drive, so about half.

In addition, I have a second set of spanned drives that I use to clone my library (weekly) using CCC.

So why JBOD instead of a single Drive? Because I had 4 1TB 2.5" drives sitting around and I wanted to use them. My Library is slightly larger than 1TB and I didn't really want to split it across volumes, so JBOD worked perfectly for me. If I had been buying a new setup, I would have probably just gone with larger single drives. On the other hand, I like using laptop drives because they are quiet, can be bus powered (no wall-wart) and can generally be cooled without a fan. I hate a noisy drive - YMMV...

GhostMac24 · May 1, 2013

Great input, thank you!

What are your thoughts on RAID5?

Panch0 said:
IMO, RAID1 would just be a waste of 3TB in your case, plus RAID enclosures are more expensive.

2x3TB RAID1 = 3TB usable, not 6TB. I think that is a typo in your post because you mention 3TB later...
RAID1 is for situations where you can not allow ANY downtime due to a drive failure. This is for stuff like mission critical servers, not Media Libraries.

2x3TB RAID0 = 6TB usable
RAID0 is for situations where you need the fastest possible read/write, like a scratch disk or maybe a database log drive. Again, not needed for Media Library. RAID0 actually increases the likelihood of data loss since if one drive fails you lose the whole array.

2x3GB JBOD (or Spanned) = 6TB Usable
I use JBOD for my media library to make 2 smaller drives appear as one large volume. The only advantage to this is that it appears to OS X and to me as a single drive. There may be a very small drop in performance as there is at least a little logic being performed in placing files on one disk or the other. If I lose a drive, I lose only the files that were physically on that drive, so about half.

In addition, I have a second set of spanned drives that I use to clone my library (weekly) using CCC.

So why JBOD instead of a single Drive? Because I had 4 1TB 2.5" drives sitting around and I wanted to use them. My Library is slightly larger than 1TB and I didn't really want to split it across volumes, so JBOD worked perfectly for me. If I had been buying a new setup, I would have probably just gone with larger single drives. On the other hand, I like using laptop drives because they are quiet, can be bus powered (no wall-wart) and can generally be cooled without a fan. I hate a noisy drive - YMMV...

Cinephi1e · May 1, 2013

RAID5 is what I use, but it makes sense only for really large libraries. Mine is 4x4TB RAID5, which means 12TB of usable space. If you lose 1 drive at a time, you are fine. Replacing that drive allows the system to rebuild everything to where it was before failure. If you lose more than 1 drive at a time, you lose everything. The recommended approach is to have a spare drive on hand in case of failure.

In my opinion RAID5 is the right level of risk protection for media libraries. As Panch0 mentioned anything better than this makes sense only for mission critical servers. As I mentioned earlier, you will already have another backup in the form of the original DVD's and blu-ray's (or iTunes files in iCloud). Of course you can spend a lot more for greater protection (multiple backups, RAID1, Crashplan, etc.), but somewhere you have to draw the line between peace of mind and cost. Needless to say, this will be different for each of us.

98EXL · May 1, 2013

Cinephi1e said:
RAID5 is what I use, but it makes sense only for really large libraries. Mine is 4x4TB RAID5, which means 12TB of usable space. If you lose 1 drive at a time, you are fine. Replacing that drive allows the system to rebuild everything to where it was before failure. If you lose more than 1 drive at a time, you lose everything. The recommended approach is to have a spare drive on hand in case of failure.

In my opinion RAID5 is the right level of risk protection for media libraries. As Panch0 mentioned anything better than this makes sense only for mission critical servers. As I mentioned earlier, you will already have another backup in the form of the original DVD's and blu-ray's (or iTunes files in iCloud). Of course you can spend a lot more for greater protection (multiple backups, RAID1, Crashplan, etc.), but somewhere you have to draw the line between peace of mind and cost. Needless to say, this will be different for each of us.

just curious, you have 4x4TB in RAID 5, if you had 5x4TB would you do RAID 6?

upping the RAID to give better data protection at the cost of $200 for a drive? I'm not familiar with enclosure price differences, but I'm sure it's on par with the drive.

Panch0 · May 1, 2013

GhostMac24 said:
Great input, thank you!

What are your thoughts on RAID5?

RAID5 is the sweet-spot for consumer RAID. It protects you from a Single drive failure (same as RAID1) without sucking up 50% of your total storage (better than RAID1). In a consumer/pro-sumer device it may have a small speed advantage over a single drive but is probably performance neutral. You get one big volume presented to the OS with good performance and some protection from a drive failure.

Things seem to be shifting from RAID5 to RAID6 (protection from two drive failures), but with most affordable enclosures being 4 or 5 bays you're back to 40-50% of total space given up for redundancy.

I use RAID5 on my Synology DS411slim NAS. It's the sweet spot for a 4 Bay device. If I were going to use a RAID system for media, it would be RAID5, or possibly Drobo's BeyondRAID.

No form of RAID is a replacement for Backup. For my Media Library, I feel better with my non RAID setup with a scheduled clone through CCC.

GhostMac24 · May 1, 2013

Wow, more great input. Thanks again all!

Cinephi1e · May 3, 2013

98EXL said:
just curious, you have 4x4TB in RAID 5, if you had 5x4TB would you do RAID 6?

upping the RAID to give better data protection at the cost of $200 for a drive? I'm not familiar with enclosure price differences, but I'm sure it's on par with the drive.

I considered it, but 5 bay enclosures were significantly more expensive and the choices were very limited when I was in the market. I don't think the situation has changed all that much today.

Paul Chown · May 3, 2013

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1563959/

My move to a Sinology NAS works great, the good thing is that i can expand the volume some i'm unlikely to run out of hard disk space. i have 3 spare drive bays to which i can add 3 x 4TB drives to the same volume.

I run my whole iTunes folder on the NAS rather than having the databases local and the media on the NAS. The reason is that you will never have any broken links if you keep the iTunes together

It works perfectly without any performance issues that perhaps used to happen in the past.

Uofmtiger · May 3, 2013

I may buy a NAS this year, but right now I have a 3tb drive connected to an AirPort Extreme that I use for my iTunes library. Once a week CarbonCopy Cloner copies the changed files to a drive I have connected to a Mac Mini.

My main issue with a NAS is questions about future Mac security updates that could lock it out..I have had issues with an older Buffalo NAS that will not be updated to fix a similar issue with Mountain Lion. Also, the price is high for what it does. That being said, I am still thinking about getting one. I have so many external drives now ( in addition to the itunes drives i mentioned) that it is getting hard to manage.

I also use Crashplan, but I do not currently use it for movies. I used their "seed" service to save months of copying files. I copied every lossless audio file (20,000+) every photo, and three macs to the drive and now I just have to backup changes. I may eventually backup my movies, but they aren't as critical as my other data. The best part is they can send you a 3.5 terabyte drive for a restore rather than downloading terabytes of information over several months if you have a catastrophe.

Moving my iTunes library to external drive. Suggestions on setup?

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