Assigning network drive path to external drive??

[dpriest]

I'm going to try to ask my question a different way in hoping someone can help me. All of my video and movie files are on a network drive and iTunes has that location stored in the iTunes folder that is in my local iMac Music folder. I want to transfer iTunes and all of the media files to a different Mac. I would like it set up the same way where the iTunes folder and all my music files are on the local Mac drive in the music folder and all my video and movie files are now on an external hard drive.



How can I do this so when I open iTunes on the new Mac all my video and movie files are recognized and the path name is the same between my network drive attached to my iMac and the external drive on my new Mac?

 

[priitv8]

How did you make your current setup work? And why can this process not be repeated on new Mac?

In your iTunes home folder on the new mac, I would replace the movie and tv show folders
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies and
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/TV Shows
with symbolic links that point to respective folders on the network drive.

I personally have my iTunes set up in a way, that all media folder resides on external drive.
If you want to keep Music files on local drive, then there is no official way to split the media folder into two physical locations. Hence the symlinks. Make Alias in Finder may or may not work for this. Hence I would go to command line.

 

[dpriest]

How did you make your current setup work? And why can this process not be repeated on new Mac?

In your iTunes home folder on the new mac, I would replace the movie and tv show folders
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies and
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/TV Shows
with symbolic links that point to respective folders on the network drive.

I personally have my iTunes set up in a way, that all media folder resides on external drive.
If you want to keep Music files on local drive, then there is no official way to split the media folder into two physical locations. Hence the symlinks. Make Alias in Finder may or may not work for this. Hence I would go to command line.

I have been doing this on the PC side for years and now want to do all this with the Mac. With the PC side it was very simple:

I would copy my iTunes folder from one computer to the other. In Windows, I would assign the letter X to my Network drive. Then on my other PC I would assign the letter X to the external hard drive. When I added new videos to my iTunes library, iTunes would locate the file on my "X" drive and so keeping one PC synced with the other regarding iTunes was a breeze.

I think I found a solution for the Mac side but have not tried it yet. In iTunes, the file location is showing the directory /Volumes/Main Directory/Family Videos/2017 Summer Vacation.mp4 for example. I named the NAS folder "Main Directory". If I name my external hard drive on my other Mac "Main Directory" and copy the Family Videos folder onto the external drive and then copy my iTunes folder to my new Mac and open iTunes, won't everything be there as with my other Mac?

 

[Boyd01]

Be careful putting your iTunes library on a network drive. If you do this, you should also put the iTunes database on the network drive. The database normally defaults to your startup disk on the Mac, and if the network drive isn't accessible when you open iTunes (if you're away from home for example), then the database can be corrupted. This happened to me and was a pain to fix. But if the database is also on the network drive, then the worst that can happen is an error message (the library won't be corrupted because it isn't accessible).

See this article, I found it very helpful with regard to moving your library between drives and operating systems. It also covers moving the library database: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

 

[dpriest]

Be careful putting your iTunes library on a network drive. If you do this, you should also put the iTunes database on the network drive. The database normally defaults to your startup disk on the Mac, and if the network drive isn't accessible when you open iTunes (if you're away from home for example), then the database can be corrupted. This happened to me and was a pain to fix. But if the database is also on the network drive, then the worst that can happen is an error message (the library won't be corrupted because it isn't accessible).

See this article, I found it very helpful with regard to moving your library between drives and operating systems. It also covers moving the library database: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

I hear you Boyd01. I am using my old MacBook Pro as a media server at another house (Summer house) for my Apple TV. I am going to set everything up identically to my iMac at my regular house where my iTunes library is going to be on the local drive of my MBP along with all my music. All of my video files will be on the external drive and I will set it that when I power my MacBook Pro on, it opens my network drive and iTunes automatically.

In terms of my original question, if I name my external hard drive that will be connected to my MBP "Main Directory" and copy the Family Videos folder onto the external drive and then copy my iTunes folder to my new Mac and open iTunes, will everything be there as with my other Mac when I open iTunes?

 

[Boyd01]

In terms of my original question, if I name my external hard drive that will be connected to my MBP "Main Directory" and copy the Family Videos folder onto the external drive and then copy my iTunes folder to my new Mac and open iTunes, will everything be there as with my other Mac when I open iTunes?

Sorry, I haven’t completely followed you. I suggest you read the article that I linked to, it is pretty thorough in explaining how to move iTunes libraries around. Of course, if you really want the iMac to be identical to the MacBook Pro, you could use Carbon Copy Cloner, or make a time machine backup and use the Migration Assistant to move things to the iMac. Personally, I don’t like the idea of splitting an iTunes library between two disks. IMO, iTunes was really designed to have all your files on the internal drive although they provide a way to point it to an external disk. Anything beyond that is sort of a “kludge” that may or may not be reliable.

Just my personal experience, I’m sure others will have their own opinions.

 

[dpriest]

Sorry, I haven’t completely followed you. I suggest you read the article that I linked to, it is pretty thorough in explaining how to move iTunes libraries around. Of course, if you really want the iMac to be identical to the MacBook Pro, you could use Carbon Copy Cloner, or make a time machine backup and use the Migration Assistant to move things to the iMac. Personally, I don’t like the idea of splitting an iTunes library between two disks. IMO, iTunes was really designed to have all your files on the internal drive although they provide a way to point it to an external disk. Anything beyond that is sort of a “kludge” that may or may not be reliable.

Just my personal experience, I’m sure others will have their own opinions.

As someone who has split the library the way I do, I have never had any issues with my PC as well as with my iMac. I also don't like to have iTunes keep my media organized because I like to be more in control. To each his own. I guess my real question was trying to understand the Mac file and folder system when it came to labeling or identifying a hard drive because if I can name my external drive the same as my NAS, then everything will work flawlessly with my MBP. When my iTunes library changes with my iMac and I either remove, modify or add media files, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do an incremental backup to the external drive.

 

[priitv8]

In Unix, you don't think in drive letters or -names. Everything is a file and you access also external and network volumes as simply folders mounted somewhere in the local file system.
Now, on a second thought, you could also mount your ext/net drive directly into the iTunes folder structure as a folder.
You just need to go to command line for that, I know of no way of doing it in Finder.
https://www.howtogeek.com/137096/6-...em-is-different-from-the-windows-file-system/
http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/13/mount-unmount-drives-from-the-command-line-in-mac-os-x/

Technically, when macOS mounts a external storage device or network file system, it:

1. creates a folder with the drive name as folder name under /Volumes (eg /Volumes/MyExtDrive)
2. mounts the external filesystem to that folder. From now on you see your external simply as contents of folder /Volumes/MyExtDrive

When you eject such drive, everything happens in reverse order:

1. Unmount the external filesystem
2. erase the folder from /Volumes

You can mount your external drive manually to /iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies for example. From command line.
NB! There are limitations, of course, mainly that you can not mount same device more than once and from the top level (root) directory only.

PS You will never want to make two computers use same iTunes library concurrently! iTunes was and is a single-user system and should only be updated by a single instance of running iTunes app!

 

[dpriest]

In Unix, you don't think in drive letters or -names. Everything is a file and you access also external and network volumes as simply folders mounted somewhere in the local file system.
Now, on a second thought, you could also mount your ext/net drive directly into the iTunes folder structure as a folder.
You just need to go to command line for that, I know of no way of doing it in Finder.
https://www.howtogeek.com/137096/6-...em-is-different-from-the-windows-file-system/
http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/13/mount-unmount-drives-from-the-command-line-in-mac-os-x/

Technically, when macOS mounts a external storage device or network file system, it:

1. creates a folder with the drive name as folder name under /Volumes (eg /Volumes/MyExtDrive)
2. mounts the external filesystem to that folder. From now on you see your external simply as contents of folder /Volumes/MyExtDrive

When you eject such drive, everything happens in reverse order:

1. Unmount the external filesystem
2. erase the folder from /Volumes

You can mount your external drive manually to /iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies for example. From command line.
NB! There are limitations, of course, mainly that you can not mount same device more than once and from the top level (root) directory only.

PS You will never want to make two computers use same iTunes library concurrently! iTunes was and is a single-user system and should only be updated by a single instance of running iTunes app!

OK. This is getting a little confusing for me in terms of file system. What you are saying makes sense with my Synology NAS which is in the house where my iMac is. On my iMac, it shows up as "Diskstation" in Finder. When I click on Diskstation, there is a folder that says "Main Directory" and when I open that folder all of my home videos are in a folder called Home Videos. iTunes confirms this location as /Volumes/Main Directory/Family Videos when I click on Get Info for a video file.

In my second house, the setup will be the slave meaning that any changes to my iTunes library and change of media files will always happen on my iMac which I will call the master. When I get to my second house, I simply replace the iTunes.XML file with the updated one and update any changes in media files. This system has worked flawlessly for me on the PC side and now I want to do the same things with Macs.

Having said that, can I have my external hard drive be recognized as the same path as my Synology NAS either with Disk utility or finder so I do not have to mess with iTunes at all? I thought Macs were supposed to be much easier than PC's. That has certainly been my experience over the last 7 years and that is why I want to switch all of this over to Macs.

 

[dpriest]

I appreciate everyone's feedback. After actually trying this, it is as simple as renaming the external hard the same name as the NAS and copying the iTunes library to the other Mac. I did not have to go into the command line or do anything else. Everything works flawlessly when opening iTunes and the Apple TV.