iTunes Library on Network Drive?

[munckee]

I'm looking to pick up a NAS external drive soon to make my backing up, etc. easier. I currently keep my iTunes library on an external (and I'm considering moving my iPhoto library soon as well) to keep things clean on my internal drive.

Will that work with the NAS drive, or will iTunes not recognize the location? Or will it just play choppy?

 

[mad jew]

iTunes will recognise it for sure. Whether or not it'll be choppy depends on how good your network connection is.

 

[combatcolin]

Unless your using the library with another machine, 360 etc, i would stay with a normal FW/USB external drive.

Gigabit Ethernet may be OK, but its still more hassle than a local drive,

 

[Phil A.]

I tried putting my iTunes library onto a Gigabit NAS and it was noticeably slower - coverflow was particularly bad. Nothing can beat the internal SATA drive for iTunes!

 

[munckee]

Thanks guys. Sounds like it'll be staying on the external but not networked. Guess I have to figure out whether its worth getting the network drive now.

 

[saxman]

For what it's worth, I run my iTunes library off an AEBS attached hard drive with my powerbook and ibook accessing it. Coverflow works okay, and I don't do video in iTunes. It runs without a problem over my 802.11g network. Even streams to an APEX without really any problems

Edit: Also, my library is around 95GB with 15,000+ tracks

 

[combatcolin]

On the plus side, if you have a big proper iPod and your hard drive storing your hard drive dies, you can always copy the iPod back over to you Hard Drive after you've fixed said hard Drive.

Worked for me once, did take a while though.