How to share music files from a Windows 7 box (reliably)?

[haoest]

This proves much harder than I had anticipated. I spent the entire weekend and monday trying to get it to work on my own but now I have to surrender.

I have about 20GB of music on my windows 7 box, which I would like to have shared to my new Mac Mini without having them being copied.

I turned on File Sharing on my Windows Machine, and use SMB on the Mac to get to the mp3 files, then I can drag the files into Itunes on Mac. This works okay but I don't know what the limitation is, Itunes freezes when either the library gets too big, or when a single mp3 file exceeds a certain size; I am suspecting it is the stability of the samba protocol.

I also tried the Home Sharing feature within Itunes between the PC and Mac, but then I can't seem to be able to sync to Iphone/Ipod from the mac.

Everywhere I turn they all seem to be dead corners. It has been an extremely frustrating first time experience with a Mac. Please give me some tips on how I can share my music between a PC and a Mac.

Thanks,

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Don't, ever, ever, ever, expect OS X to play nicely with Windows when it comes to file sharing. I recall when Leopard first came out, spending over an hour on the phone with Applecare, trying to reliably see a windows PC in finder - ultimately we all gave up.

Anecdotal, yes, but it should give you some insight into what you're trying to do, and how futile it is.

 

[maflynn]

I don't try to share my music with my windows partition. I just have a copy of my music in windows.

 

[garybUK]

Networking or (SMB Networking) is pretty flaky in OSX, but i don't have any problems with shared music folders on a Windows box to OSX on my laptop.

What connection are you using between your Mac and the Windows machine? if it's wireless i.e 2.4ghz, any interference can cause SMB mounts in OSX to 'drop out' and OSX isn't very nice at recovering from SMB disconnects.... it's a pain in the back side.

One other thing to try might be to turn on Sharing in Windows Media Player, then get a DLNA client for OSX, something like VLC

Or, this isn't a great solution but.... install iTunes on the windows box and share music that way.

 

[satcomer]

I do this with my Windows 7 partition. On Windows 7 I installed MacDrive. Then I got an Drobo (you could any Raid that uses USB or Ethernet) and formatted HFS+ and moved My iTunes Library to that (connected to my Time Capsule USB port). Then on all my Macs and the Windows 7 iTunes are pointed the proper way to use that iTunes Library on the Drobo. Now Windows 7 can read write to that iTunes Library (on the Drobo after I iTunes authorized it.

 

[deus ex machina]

I have the same problem (though a far larger music library), and was considering a NAS for sharing the files. The MacBook can see and play any individual song from the Win7 box, however itunes chokes when so many songs are being loaded. Itunes is wretchedly slow on win boxes, I thought they would do better with the Mac.

 

[Ubuntu]

Are you doing it wirelessly or via ethernet? I had to move 30GBs of data from my PC to my sister's macbook and I used an ethernet cable. The mac wouldn't pick up the PC (nor my netbook so I imagine it was the mac at fault) but I simply went to Finder, then Go in the menubar, Connect to Server and then smb://192.169.x.x. This was the fastest method and it took about 20 minutes.

To find out your IP address on your PC, run cmd and then type ipconfig.

 

[deus ex machina]

Are you doing it wirelessly or via ethernet? I had to move 30GBs of data from my PC to my sister's macbook and I used an ethernet cable. The mac wouldn't pick up the PC (nor my netbook so I imagine it was the mac at fault) but I simply went to Finder, then Go in the menubar, Connect to Server and then smb://192.169.x.x. This was the fastest method and it took about 20 minutes.

To find out your IP address on your PC, run cmd and then type ipconfig.

In my case, I am not trying to move the music to the Macbook Pro, just access it from the win7 box. Does Mac ITunes scan the entire song before adding it to the library?