Hi guys.
I've tried many different ways after consulting a ton of web pages scattered throughout the web, so instead of summarizing all that I have done, I am going to try to tell you what I want to do, and maybe some intrepid soul can tell me what I can do to achieve it. Here is my situation:
I am a recent convert from Windows, and have purchased a MacBook (loving it so far). I am also looking at the prospect of moving a lot in the next few years, and I would rather not pack and carry my 6 banana boxes (yes, six) of CDs around with me on every move. I decided to upload ALL of my music CDs onto iTunes. As you can guess, that won't fit on a MacBook, so I figured that I could get an external hard drive (1TB or 500GB).
However, as I am also planning on buying an iMac at some point, I thought it would be nice if I could:
a) share the iTunes library/files between the two computers, and
b) keep my music files on an external drive as a backup (which I will then probably also backup...you can never be too safe).
So, I rushed out and bought an Airport Extreme and a 1TB IoMega drive.
Problem #1: Apparently, these drives won't work with the Airport Extreme... I say this because my crappy lil' WD 250GB external works just fine (and I can access it from my laptop), but the 1TB drive will simply not mount.
Problem #2: I followed the instructions on this web page:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/
Everything was working fine, until the very end. After the end of the "consolidation" cycle, which took nearly 4 hours, I got the following message:
"Copying music failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."
When I checked the Advanced tab, the iTunes library had reverted to the default location. All my files are intact (phew), but apparently they did not copy over successfully (even though I can see them on the WD drive).
So....is there a way I can hook up an external drive to the Airport Extreme, and keep my iTunes library on the external....easily accessed from both my laptop and a future iMac? Without iTunes reverting to its default again and again?
I can't believe that there isn't some easy way to do this, but so far, all my attempts have failed.
If I have been unclear about something, please call me out on it, as I would really like to back up all my music before I get rid of my CDs, and time is of the essence. Thanks.
I've tried many different ways after consulting a ton of web pages scattered throughout the web, so instead of summarizing all that I have done, I am going to try to tell you what I want to do, and maybe some intrepid soul can tell me what I can do to achieve it. Here is my situation:
I am a recent convert from Windows, and have purchased a MacBook (loving it so far). I am also looking at the prospect of moving a lot in the next few years, and I would rather not pack and carry my 6 banana boxes (yes, six) of CDs around with me on every move. I decided to upload ALL of my music CDs onto iTunes. As you can guess, that won't fit on a MacBook, so I figured that I could get an external hard drive (1TB or 500GB).
However, as I am also planning on buying an iMac at some point, I thought it would be nice if I could:
a) share the iTunes library/files between the two computers, and
b) keep my music files on an external drive as a backup (which I will then probably also backup...you can never be too safe).
So, I rushed out and bought an Airport Extreme and a 1TB IoMega drive.
Problem #1: Apparently, these drives won't work with the Airport Extreme... I say this because my crappy lil' WD 250GB external works just fine (and I can access it from my laptop), but the 1TB drive will simply not mount.
Problem #2: I followed the instructions on this web page:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/
Everything was working fine, until the very end. After the end of the "consolidation" cycle, which took nearly 4 hours, I got the following message:
"Copying music failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."
When I checked the Advanced tab, the iTunes library had reverted to the default location. All my files are intact (phew), but apparently they did not copy over successfully (even though I can see them on the WD drive).
So....is there a way I can hook up an external drive to the Airport Extreme, and keep my iTunes library on the external....easily accessed from both my laptop and a future iMac? Without iTunes reverting to its default again and again?
I can't believe that there isn't some easy way to do this, but so far, all my attempts have failed.
If I have been unclear about something, please call me out on it, as I would really like to back up all my music before I get rid of my CDs, and time is of the essence. Thanks.