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Help With iTunes Library

DocStone

DocStone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 27, 2006
194
18
Republic of Texas
Ok, so I have this growing problem and I am not sure how to solve it. I have seen many ideas online, but none seem to have that "Apple Touch" to them. Perhaps you can help.

I have a MBP with 500g hard drive. On this, my only computer, I have downloaded tons of iTunes content including albums, movies and more. Anyhow, my iTunes library is about 300g and now I don't have much left on my hard drive. I want to be able to move this content too another drive and yet still access it on my AppleTV. It would also be nice to move a few movies over to the MBP when I am traveling or whatnot.

I have yet to find a good solution for this. I want my MBP to have a free hard drive, but still want my content. What do you suggest and can I still purchase movies in the future and use this system? It seems like Apple would create a easy solution for this. Maybe they have and I am just in the dark.

Thanks.
 
I have my iTunes library split over my internal and external drive. The content that I always want with me when I travel, I leave on my internal drive. The rest I leave on the external drive, so I access that content only when I'm home, or take that drive with me. It's all in one iTunes library, so I always know everything I have, but the files themselves reside in two different places. It works great for me.
 
You can store all your media on an external hard drive. If you need a hand setting this up correctly then take a look at this guide.

You will just have to attach it to your Mac whenever you want access to your media.
 
GGJstudios said:
I have my iTunes library split over my internal and external drive. The content that I always want with me when I travel, I leave on my internal drive. The rest I leave on the external drive, so I access that content only when I'm home, or take that drive with me. It's all in one iTunes library, so I always know everything I have, but the files themselves reside in two different places. It works great for me.
Click to expand...

stridemat said:
You can store all your media on an external hard drive. If you need a hand setting this up correctly then take a look at this guide.

You will just have to attach it to your Mac whenever you want access to your media.
Click to expand...


Thank you both for your help. I will check out that article. I guess I am a bit paranoid of dumping content forever! Thanks again.
 
If you have some spare money available, have you considered a Network Attached Storage solution?
 
DocStone said:
What do you suggest?
Click to expand...

Thinking about it, it may not be such a great idea. Apple TV only knows where your media is when connecting to your 'source' computer's iTunes account. It is much more cost effective to buy an external drive, and use that.
 
GGJstudios said:
I have my iTunes library split over my internal and external drive. The content that I always want with me when I travel, I leave on my internal drive. The rest I leave on the external drive, so I access that content only when I'm home, or take that drive with me. It's all in one iTunes library, so I always know everything I have, but the files themselves reside in two different places. It works great for me.
Click to expand...

how do u actually do that? I mean, I have quite a medium sized library on my macbook, but it's starting to be a pain since I still have only 2GB of free space on my internal har drive... and I already have an external one... that I use half of it for time machine and the other half for storing misc files and old documents and stuf....
but my question is, I have the "copy to itunes library" option turned on, I like it that way, it organizes the folders on its own... how will I be able to store the files in two different places having that option on?
 
ThE.MeSsEnGeR said:
...my question is, I have the "copy to itunes library" option turned on, I like it that way, it organizes the folders on its own... how will I be able to store the files in two different places having that option on?
Click to expand...
You can't. You have to turn that option off to do what I described.
 
I agree it is a very inelegant situation. Small harddrives in MBP, leads to using externals and the computer needs to be on to stream to the ATV because the ATV HD is too small (or non existent depending on the model you have).

When the ATV was launched it was said to "free you from the computer" (or words to that effect. Well thats a load of crap because it ties you to it even more so. Anyway I'm getting off topic somewhat.

My MBP has a 1TB external I have to attach if I want to watch anything on my ATV. If you want to move your library from once place to another simply drag the library folder wherever you want and then when you next launch iTunes hold down 'alt' and navigate to the library in its new place and thats it really.

By the way I tried putting my library on my TimeCapsule and it ran very slow as the TC would go to sleep and take ages to wake then I believe the files were being streamed twice because it was coming from the TC to the MBP then to the ATV. HD files would rarely work and I often got 'format not recognised' errors. Just some insight for you.
 
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