iTunes and iPhoto libraries over Airport Extreme Hard Drive

[kmarketing]

Hi,

I just bought an external hard drive for our airport extreme. Would it be a good idea to have our iphoto and itunes libraries on that hard drive, so that the various computers that we are using can access the libraries wirelessly?

If you think it is a good idea, how would you go about moving the itunes library? I think it's easy enough for iphoto, but itunes seems a bit more complicated?

If you don't think this is that efficient, do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks so much!

 

[LtRammstein]

Hmmm... Interesting. Something I was thinking about doing with my Music files.

I'll give you a few pros and cons do doing it that way.

Pros:
1) Everyone gets to share, as long as the files are setup in a such a way that all users have read/write access to it.

2) You know the location it's in.

Cons:
1) If Airport Extreme dies, and takes those files with it.

2) Bandwidth is going to be huge! If your pictures are in a +4 megapixel resolution, your internet connectivity will drop.

3) The Airport Extreme's HD may/may not be accessible like an external drive.

I hope these help. Also, knowing the Internet, a Google search on a tutorial for that would be the best way to start.

Hope this helps.

 

[aristobrat]

AFAIK, iPhoto and iTunes libraries can't be used by multiple computers at the same time, even if they are on common storage.

The speed of a wireless network is typically a lot slower than an internal (or even a USB/firewire attached external) drive. iTunes would probably still act OK, but I can't imagine iPhoto would be a lot of fun to use (speed wise) in a wireless situation.

Give it a shot. To be safe, I'd COPY (not move) your iPhoto and iTunes libraries over to the external. That way if you screw them up, you still have the original copies on your computer.

You probably already know this, but hold the OPTION key down when you launch iPhoto and iTunes to point them to the location of the wireless library.

If you copy the whole iTunes folder from your Music folder to the new drive, that should be the entire library.