One iTunes Library on MacHD and WinHD

[mojirah]

Hey guys,

I'm using MacDrive7 to see HFS partitions in Vista on my MacBook Pro. I've got my 500GB Western Digital partitioned into two drives: Macintosh HD and a much smaller Windows HD. I've got all my stuff on my Mac partition, including 40+ GBs of music and my iPhone apps, etc.

I have successfully pointed my Windows iTunes to my Macintosh HD iTunes Library folder and can access music through iTunes on my Macintosh HD. I can even add music in iTunes on Windows and it will move the music to my Macintosh HD. So what's the problem you ask? Nothing big:

I just want to have one iTunes Library file; I want my Windows iTunes to use the files in my Mac partition's iTunes folder. Right now every time I delete the files in my iTunes folder on my Windows partition it just recreates them when I relaunch iTunes. I want it to use the stuff on my Mac partition so I can sync my iPhone through Windows and then be able to go into Leopard and have it be the same library and sync.

So, basically, how do I point my Windows iTunes to use the files on my Macintosh partition (and not just the library folder, which I have already done easily through the iTunes preferences).

I tried to be specific, but I understand if this is confusing--I may have not explained my issue properly. Let me know if I'm not making sense.

Thanks,
Mo

EDIT: Oh yeah, I tried the whole consolidate library thing, but that didn't do it for me because I think that feature is made for moving a library on the same drive. So it doesn't know to use or move the other iTunes files and not just redirect the iTunes Music folder path or whatever it's doing. Maybe I'm not doing it right.

 

[i.shaun]

I believe you can hold Shift while launching the iTunes program and tell it to "choose existing library". you then point it to the library file located on the mac.


Assuming it's always connected to the mac, it should use that same library for everything. I'm not sure how iPhone syncing would go because of the filesystem differences between Windows and OS X. I know older iPods need to be formatted for one or the other.


If it loses it's connection to the mac, I would assume (not sure as mine isn't pointed to a network or external drive) it would use the default location in your "Music" folder on VISTA. It would have to re-create the library files, but be blank (new library). Either that or it would just come up with an error, but based on what you say I think it's the former.


If you can hook the 2 to an external HDD holding the library, it might work a little better. Even if the HDD can only accept one connection at a time, you use it on the mac, then plug it into windows, and make sure it's mounted before opening the iTunes application. iTunes would then launch, and look for the library, which would be in the same place, with whatever updates that were done to it on the mac.

 

[BlueRevolution]

If that doesn't work, I suspect creating a symlink might. I'll take a look and get back to you.

 

[mojirah]

Thanks guys. I'll try doing that.

I do want to mention for future reference, that I tried using TweakVI to change the default location of my Vista Music folder to my MacHD partition's music folder and it worked perfectly. It was using the library and music on my MacHD. The only problem was again it would not let me do anything with iPhone applications, and I noticed that when I tried to sync my iPhone a few of my songs went missing. So either MacDrive7 is buggy (I hear it is), or you're right about the different ways that Leopard and Vista write files.