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storage reached

T

Tech198

Cancelled
Original poster
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,152
Hi all...

To what extent can i share the iTunes Library on the Mac mini ?

My every growing iTunes Library has topped 1TB, and adding a external to the mix won't do any good, since libraries cannot be split...

What are my options here ? since 2.5-inch only go as high as 1TB, in order to keep everything intact, i would just just moving trouble over to the external..

And since the Mac mini also uses 2.5' i can'' upgrade this either to any larger..

Ideally, i would add 4TB, but i would need to have a USB to SATA dongle with power (this adapter i have, but it would look ugly)

Is there any other resolution here? Its well within my 14-day period so i could send it back to Apple, and go for Mac mini server with two drives, but i'm only prolonging the issue.

It would have been better with either the mini uses 3.5' drives (which is not psychically possible internally), or iTunes libraries can be shared amount external.... this way, my 1.5TB could live on internal, while 500Gig on external, but to iTunes it would appear still as one library...

Since this is not an option. anything i can do here?

Removing feasible here is not an option as its shared library..


I'm guess you guys would have faced the same issue. how do you handle this ?
 
2.5" drives do not top at 1TB here are two examples:

HGST (available now)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/HGST/0J28001/

Samsung: (not yet available but supposedly soon, as it is already shipping to OEM)
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-samsung-hdd-spinpoint-m9t,24997.html
Although you can buy this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152415
which has the Spinpoint M9T drive, just rip open the enclosure and take out the drive :D

This way if you buy two Spinpoint M9T's and the OWC data doubler kit you can have up to 4TB in your mini :D
 
Tech198 said:
Hi all...

To what extent can i share the iTunes Library on the Mac mini ?

My every growing iTunes Library has topped 1TB, and adding a external to the mix won't do any good, since libraries cannot be split...
Click to expand...

You do realize you can set a setting in iTunes that allows you to keep your Media on whatever drive they reside on and still show up in iTunes as one library right? Right now I have multiple hard drives supplying my Videos and Music with no issues. They are all still in the same "library" but I have the option selected that does not force iTunes to copy it to any one given drive.

In my case I have the following:
3TB of Storage for all my Movies
3TB of Storage for all my TV Shows
1.5TB of Storage for all my Music

I just drop them into iTunes and it loads them up and plays them from which ever drive they reside on. Since we haven't gotten to 8TB drives yet, this works just fine for me....
 
Just to reinforce what paulrbeers has said, you do not need to store all of your songs on one drive to have them playable and viewable in iTunes. Back when drives were max 500gb, I had four drives in my MacPro for my iTunes library with no problem. The only thing that you don't want to do is when you identify the drive in which new tunes will be added is to try to consolidate the library to the one drive. Don't know what might happen, but I suspect you will mess things up.
 
scbond said:
Move it all to an external instead of splitting it.
Click to expand...

There's no harm in splitting it, and that may be more prudent, especially if there is a limitation in available memory on any particular drive.
 
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