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itunes libraries, seperate drives for media type? or 1 itunes library on one drive?

S

Sossity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 12, 2010
1,358
31
Right now, I have been using itunes mainly for just music, the only reason I began to use itunes at all was because I have an ipod.

I do notice that itunes can also store & buy movies, tv shows & books.

I keep my itunes library on an external hard drive, & it is mostly music, with a few apps, & maybe a book.

If in the future I get movies or TV shows from itunes, would I be better to add these to my existing itunes library that has mostly music?

or can I have separate hard drives for each media type? ie I would get a separate hard drive for an separate itunes library with movies & TV shows.

which of the itunes library types out of music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, itunes U, books , app, and tones would have the largest file sizes?

what ever I do, I want my external hard drive to be able to be flexible with changes, to my itunes library.

which is best? a single itunes library for all library types? or separate drives for different content?
 
S

Sossity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 12, 2010
1,358
31
I guess nobody has ever wanted to manage their itunes libraries, & before someone comes back with a link to Google, I have done this, but would like to some input from users here.
 
F

flynz4

macrumors 68040
Aug 9, 2009
3,244
127
Portland, OR
The easiest thing to do is keep your iTunes library on your local boot drive... but relocate the media file to your external disk. You will get good performance of your library database, but the media will be stored externally.
By selecting:

- Keep iTunes Media folder organized
- Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library

Will keep it all managed for you.

/Jim
 

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bobright

macrumors 601
Jun 29, 2010
4,813
33
flynz4 said:
The easiest thing to do is keep your iTunes library on your local boot drive... but relocate the media file to your external disk. You will get good performance of your library database, but the media will be stored externally.
By selecting:

- Keep iTunes Media folder organized
- Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library

Will keep it all managed for you.

/Jim
Click to expand...
I agree with Jim have it on your main drive, and then as always an external with everything backed up. I'm going to CCC the whole thing as well as have the files by themselves on a drive somewhere. On your other question I don't have all my video in my iTunes library my 1TB Fusion would be nearly full lol

If I didn't have a lot of video I'd have them on their though its all up to you.
 
raziel101

raziel101

macrumors regular
Sep 20, 2010
176
165
Vancouver, Canada
I currently use Lion and iTunes 11 and have my iTunes Folder stored on an external drive (the folder contains my library database as well as my media content). I just bought a new Mac and a larger capacity external drive.

I would like to move all my Media content to the new external drive, but I would like the library database file to be stored locally on the internal drive of my new iMac as you mentioned earlier. How do I go about doing this? I’m not too concerned about the original database file that’s on my current external drive – I don’t mind re-creating my playlists and settings.

I was thinking it’s best to launch iTunes 11 on my new iMac so that it creates the database file locally on the internal drive. I would then delete the old library file on my old external drive (keeping only the iTunes Media folder), move the media folder to the new drive and go into Advance Settings in iTunes 11 and change the media folder location to the one located on the new external drive. Is this correct?
 
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