Hi - my first post to the form! I have some questions about what I think is proabably a very common ask for most households trying to standardise music storage and access on iTunes but strangely there is not as much info about pitfalls and how to do it properly. Here is what I have and doing:
1/ MacBook Pro has our entire music, photo and document library and has 1 gig of space remaining;
2/ Sony Vaio server running XP Media Centre as well as iTunes
3/ HP Laptop running Vista
* All machines are on the same network and can share files.
* I am buying a Buffalo NAS 1 TB RAID storage drive to become the external drive for all music, photos etc - it hasn't arrived yet so am trying to test this configuration with the music library on the Vaio to service the two laptops and the Vaio.
When I hit shift or alt and click iTunes to choose the library I have copied onto the Vaio, I notice that it does things like "update the iTunes library" and that there is also an "iTunes Media location" - do I have to just select the library on the Vaio or do I also have to update other files as well?
Are there any other preferences/settings I have to configure to make this work?
Are there any fundamental issues connecting iTunes on different operating systems (eg OS and Vista) to the same iTunes library?
When I add Music to the library on the Vaio will any local PC or mac files be updated to reflect the addition of the music?
Finally if I want to maintain a local copy of music on the mac or HP, is there a way to keep multiple libraries in sync so it can be portable?
I think those are my questions.
Thank you so much in advance for any help.
Michelle
1/ MacBook Pro has our entire music, photo and document library and has 1 gig of space remaining;
2/ Sony Vaio server running XP Media Centre as well as iTunes
3/ HP Laptop running Vista
* All machines are on the same network and can share files.
* I am buying a Buffalo NAS 1 TB RAID storage drive to become the external drive for all music, photos etc - it hasn't arrived yet so am trying to test this configuration with the music library on the Vaio to service the two laptops and the Vaio.
When I hit shift or alt and click iTunes to choose the library I have copied onto the Vaio, I notice that it does things like "update the iTunes library" and that there is also an "iTunes Media location" - do I have to just select the library on the Vaio or do I also have to update other files as well?
Are there any other preferences/settings I have to configure to make this work?
Are there any fundamental issues connecting iTunes on different operating systems (eg OS and Vista) to the same iTunes library?
When I add Music to the library on the Vaio will any local PC or mac files be updated to reflect the addition of the music?
Finally if I want to maintain a local copy of music on the mac or HP, is there a way to keep multiple libraries in sync so it can be portable?
I think those are my questions.
Thank you so much in advance for any help.
Michelle