iTunes/iPhoto on NAS questions

[GtotheK]

Hi all,

I wasn't able to find the answer to my questions after searching the forums, so here I go:

If I move my iTunes library to NAS, will i run into problems when syncing my iphone? I currently have all my music on my iphone.

If I buy new music, or download a digital movie, will it be automatically added to the itunes library on the NAS? or will I have to manually drag and drop it each time i add something to itunes?

Same with iPhoto, if i download a bunch of pics to iphoto, will it automatically be added to the photos library on the NAS?

Will i be able to stream movies from the NAS to apple tv? Will i have to have my macbook open and running itunes to do so?


Thanks in advance for your help! Any other tips/suggestions you may have would be great!

 

[phrehdd]

I'll just say that having a NAS (or two) and having used various means to store and handle my media files, I opted later to use the NAS for a back up only of my files and keep my iTunes Library proper on an external drive. I have set up my iTunes to use the external drive as its home (media files, db file xml etc. reside on that drive).

In short, I am suggesting you may want to consider DAS (directly attached storage) over NAS. Your computer would control the external drive(s) and if you really want a NAS as well, you can of course back up to it (and maybe give others access as desired).

NAS has some built in foibles including not staying always connected to your computer as often, the drives within may spin down when not in use for a period of times. Sadly, iTunes is impatient and if it cannot find the files, it may resort to created a local instance on the computer of a library and put new downloads there. If you are insistent on using a NAS just make sure it is fully fired up before synching your iTunes oriented devices if there is file download involved. Either way, you would still need a computer communicating with the NAS (and thus the DAS remains faster and easier at times).

 

[rhett7660]

Hi all,

I wasn't able to find the answer to my questions after searching the forums, so here I go:

If I move my iTunes library to NAS, will i run into problems when syncing my iphone? I currently have all my music on my iphone.

If I buy new music, or download a digital movie, will it be automatically added to the itunes library on the NAS? or will I have to manually drag and drop it each time i add something to itunes?

Same with iPhoto, if i download a bunch of pics to iphoto, will it automatically be added to the photos library on the NAS?

Will i be able to stream movies from the NAS to apple tv? Will i have to have my macbook open and running itunes to do so?


Thanks in advance for your help! Any other tips/suggestions you may have would be great!

I currently have all my iTunes items residing on a NAS box with three computers accessing the files. As long as you designate one of the computers as the main iTunes you shouldn't have any problems syncing content from the NAS box. I have two iPhones, two iPads, AppleTV and two iPod shuffles connected to this device and all my music is synced without a problem. I am not using wifi to access the files, I have all of my rooms hard wired. So if you are going to use Wifi, YMMV when trying to do this. This computer is a Mac Mini with a usb hub for all the devices.

Where you will run into problems if you are on one of the computers that is not the main and you try syncing. That you can't do with out first download the file to that computer and then coping it over to your device.

You can try a direct connected hard drive which will also work and you shouldn't have any problems.

I have my NAS box connected to the computer via SMB and I have not had a single issue with NAS box losing connection or dropping the connection. Again your network conditions may vary from what I have.

 

[GtotheK]

I should add that I only use a macbook (one computer) for syncing everything. How do I designate my macbook as the main itunes? The NAS will be set up as either an external hard drive connect to my netgear R6400 router via USB 3.0 or a mycloud hard drive, like the type WD makes. Is it as simple as pointing itunes library location to the NAS location where i want to move the itunes library? Will it automatically add new downloads to the NAS location of the itunes library? Is the netgear r6400 play nice with itunes (itunes server)?

 

[rhett7660]

Not so much a designation, but more of, that is where you load the files from the nas up into iTunes. If you are only using one computer, I would set it up as an external drive. The only problem being if you move the computer then you will have to make sure the drive is connected prior to firing up iTunes.

Re: pointing iTunes library to the NAS location of your iTunes files, yes.

Re: downloads. Yes. iTunes does not know the difference on where you store your library.

Re: Netgear R6400; sorry I do not know anything about it so I can't say it will or won't.

There are many things you can do when moving your library. Some people like to move, point, and go, some people like to move, reload up iTunes with content etc. Me, I do the reloading. There are quite a few "how to's" if you do a quick search.

If your iTunes library is big, I would also recommend making a backup of it. Would hate to have to re-rip all your music or movies.

 

[GtotheK]

So I was able to transfer my iTunes library to the external drive (NAS) and initially got Itunes library location to point it. I really had to fudge around with it to get it to work. But when I checked this morning, iTunes wouldn't open. And when I went to choose library and followed the path to where the NAS is located, it said the file wasn't available. Why is iTunes forgetting the location? I thought I read somewhere there's an option to "wake on LAN" or something? I chose the option to reconnect at login, but clearly that didn't do anything.

 

[phrehdd]

So I was able to transfer my iTunes library to the external drive (NAS) and initially got Itunes library location to point it. I really had to fudge around with it to get it to work. But when I checked this morning, iTunes wouldn't open. And when I went to choose library and followed the path to where the NAS is located, it said the file wasn't available. Why is iTunes forgetting the location? I thought I read somewhere there's an option to "wake on LAN" or something? I chose the option to reconnect at login, but clearly that didn't do anything.

If you open up the Finder and go to the bar at the top of your screen, you'll see a "GO' command. I suggest you start there and learn to make a connection to your NAS and in particular the location of your iTunes library. You can learn how to make this symbolic link open up when you log in to your computer.

I haven't done this in a long time but you can do a little discovery on this and not only in the end get your connection but learn a bit about how OSX handles it.