Best iTunes Set Up & Library Transfer

[vbilly]

I am hoping to lean on the experience of every one here and thanks in advance for any help.

I am 99% sure that I am about to do the best thing for my set up, but before I do I want to throw it out there and see if anybody has any better suggestions, things to avoid, etc.

My current set up is this:
We have 2 Apple TV's
An iMac (mine)
A Mini Mac (wife's)
A Macbook (mine)
2 iPhones (one each)
and plan on getting another macbook soon for my wife.

We have a very large itunes library, about 1.8TB. I spent the better part of a year ripping our personal DVD library (over 800 titles including many tv seasons) to our itunes library.

Currently the library runs off a 2TB firewire 800 drive on my iMac. We sync both iphones to my iMac and we stream from my iMac to both Apple TV's.

So far this works pretty well.

However we have two issues:
1.) My wife wants to take over management of the itunes library
2.) We are close to running out of room on our firewire drive and may need to add another one soon.

For now my plan is to move the itunes library to my wife's computer.

I figure I could do this by simply unplugging the firewire from my computer and plugging into hers. And then exporting the library from my imac and loading it on her mini mac?

Would that work? I really don't want to put a years worth of dubbing my dvd's to risk.

Any better ideas?

I would like to still access the library from my computer (I like to listen to music on my headsets while working) but figure I can do that using the itunes home sharing abilities.

It would be cool if we could take movies with us easily on the laptops when we go on vacations. I am not sure of the best way to do this currently, and do not do it...but if any solutions make this easiest I would really be open to those.

Going forward as we need to add another Firewire drive for more storage what is the best way to span the library over two disks?

I should mention that there are also music, and movies and shows purchased from itunes on this disk, so I am not sure what issues we may have with that being authorized to play once we move things.

Thanks again in advance.

-Billy

 

[soLoredd]

The only answer I have for the movies thing is to sync your iPhones before you go on vacation and put a few movies on there. My wife and I have a similar setup as you but I haven't yet come up with a workable solution for the movies on our MacBooks. You could always connect the Macs via ethernet to the library computer and copy over the movies to a folder on your desktop and just play them that way but it is pretty cumbersome.

 

[ChrisA]

For now my plan is to move the itunes library to my wife's computer.

I figure I could do this by simply unplugging the firewire from my computer and plugging into hers. And then exporting the library from my imac and loading it on her mini mac?
...

If the library is on the external drive then all you need to do is move the drive.

However if you have almost filled the drive may be now is the time to buy a Drobo. It will allow for mostly painless expansion in the future. Then you could put the current external to use as a backup device

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

I trust you have a home network? If so I would say the following:

1. Go Drobo. I have one and can highly recommend it. I have now expanded it to have two 1 TB drives with two 2 TB drives. You are currently in grave risk of a hard drive failing and potentially loosing ALL YOUR CONTENT.

2. Attach the Drobo to the Mac Mini and use it as a media server for the home network.

3. Share and stream from the mini to all the other computers in the house.

4. Create additional iTunes libraries on the other computers where you can store movies/ music etc for when you go on holidays. You will have duplicate copes, but it is the only way that I know of for taking content mobile.

5. The only question that I can't answer, and it is a question that I just sent off to Brian Tong at CNET, is how to separate my iphone content from my current library (attached to the mini) and put the iPhone content on my iMac so that I can sync the phone from there. When I have an answer, I'll let you know.

Best wishes.

 

[instaxgirl]

If the library is on the external drive then all you need to do is move the drive.

However if you have almost filled the drive may be now is the time to buy a Drobo. It will allow for mostly painless expansion in the future. Then you could put the current external to use as a backup device

I also HIGHLY recommend you back up. Right now. Really. I lost almost a TB of ripped video this Summer. Bad times. (I back up photos, music and personal videos but not movies etc.)

As for moving the library to your wife's mini, that's simple. Plug the drives in and hold down option as you click on the iTunes logo, choose your library.

Just copy your movies from the drives to the laptops when you go away. You could even just copy the files straight to the desktop and cut out iTunes.

 

[vbilly]

Thanks for the tip on moving it to my wife's computer, Iam going to give that a try now.

As for the copy, I should mention that I do have a copy. I have bought some cheap 1TB USB drives and copied all movies to one and all music and tv shows to another.

But I am not sure how the library copies, so the one thing I worry about is that even though I have a copy of all the files I would need to re-import it all into iTunes. Not as bad a task as re-dubbing everything to the hard drive, but not fun either.