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Sweet bootcamp Dual iTunes Solution

amjustice

amjustice

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
370
23
Naperville, IL
So I am sure my problem is somewhat unique but I figured I would share unless anyone is looking for a similar solution. I just got my new MBP 2.6 this week and is is sweet. I am an IT consultant and work in a windows world, so I used bootcamp to dual boot my machine so I can use Vista for work and OS X for personal stuff. My only problem is I wanted to be able to only have one iTunes library and keep my music on the Mac side.

In searching for a way to do this I put together a hybrid solution that works great. I saw this article on how to host your iTunes library on a network store and share it between PCs and Macs:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070424081346722

However I wanted it to stay on the same machine. I followed most of their steps such as renaming the library in OS X. I used Macdrive on my windows partition to be able to access the iTunes library and music on the mac side. I then followed their instructions and pointed my Windows iTunes to the library I created on the Mac side.

The benefits of this are great, I can update my iPhone on the Windows side (so I can get outlook contacts and meetings, at least until 2.0). I can buy music when I am at work and booted into windows, and listen to my music on the mac side. Let me know if you have any questions about how I did this, I highly recommend it to anyone who is spending a lot of time in both OSs.
 
I doubt your problem is unique.. I'm sure there are tons of people who would love to have itunes on both partitions without using twice the disk space.

Great post! If I do bootcamp I may need to look into that myself :)
 
Security?

Thanks for the post. I am interested in using this setup with a fat32 formatted xp drive to read 10.5.7 while in bootcamp. My question is will using MacDrive compromise the security of my mac files? I guess the convenience may be worth the risk, especially if I am backing up files.
 
3rd partition?

Or alternately, did you experiment with creating a third fat32 partition for itunes for both windows and mac to use? any disadvantages of this that you know?
 
Wouldn't it be much easier if you just use Parallels or Fusion to run Vista? then you should run iTunes normally on OS X. I'm pretty sure you have enough power on your MBP for this. I do this on my 1,5 year old MBP with 4Gb RAM and it runs Vista on a Virtual machine, fast enough for what I need (I'm on .NET Dev).

Actually, the only reason I see on using Bootcamp is for playing games... maybe you are a Game developer or something? :D
 
i've run fusion before on an old machine and was fairly happy with it but i wanted to try parallels now to take advantage of all the machine's power for 3d applications as i will be doing a fair amount of cad work and rendering. also sticking with xp because of compatibility issues with rhino. just purchased macdrive 8 with student discount. hopefully the setup works well. thanks for the input.
 
ok, so i have followed the instructions for adding .itl onto the itunes library file on the mac side, and i installed itunes and macdrive on my bootcamp drive, pointed itunes on the windows side to the library file on the mac side, etc.

itunes now allows me to play my music on the mac or windows side. however, now everytime i open itunes on either side it goes through an updating library process that takes about 5 minutes. from what i understand, it is converting the library file format back and forth and incorporating changes made on the other system. it is a pain to wait for and i am wondering if there is anyway around this. any help would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
joe
 
one final update for now:

to avoid the library update process (and converting library file back and forth) each time i open itunes from windows or mac sides, i restored the original itunes library file using time machine to not include the .itl extension (and to start the process over). then i copied the itunes library file and added the .itl extension. then i directed the windows itunes program to the "itunes library copy.itl" file. from what i understand, the windows itunes and mac itunes will not be synced now, and i plan to use the mac itunes as my master copy where i will do importing, deleting, etc. and then if i want an updated library for the windows itunes i will re-do the process again, copy the itunes library file, add .itl extension and relink windows itunes.

still, one downside of sharing itunes music in this way is that you have to leave macdrive's read-only option for all mac drives unchecked, which makes mac files more vulnerable to security threats.

if anyone has a more streamlined solution for this, i would appreciate advice.
 
Thanks for taking the time to post this. It is a useful thing to be able to do and not necessarily all that obvious. Kudos. :cool:
 
step by step?

amjustice said:
So I am sure my problem is somewhat unique but I figured I would share unless anyone is looking for a similar solution. I just got my new MBP 2.6 this week and is is sweet. I am an IT consultant and work in a windows world, so I used bootcamp to dual boot my machine so I can use Vista for work and OS X for personal stuff. My only problem is I wanted to be able to only have one iTunes library and keep my music on the Mac side.

In searching for a way to do this I put together a hybrid solution that works great. I saw this article on how to host your iTunes library on a network store and share it between PCs and Macs:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070424081346722

However I wanted it to stay on the same machine. I followed most of their steps such as renaming the library in OS X. I used Macdrive on my windows partition to be able to access the iTunes library and music on the mac side. I then followed their instructions and pointed my Windows iTunes to the library I created on the Mac side.

The benefits of this are great, I can update my iPhone on the Windows side (so I can get outlook contacts and meetings, at least until 2.0). I can buy music when I am at work and booted into windows, and listen to my music on the mac side. Let me know if you have any questions about how I did this, I highly recommend it to anyone who is spending a lot of time in both OSs.
Click to expand...



can i get a step by step on how to do this please?
 
I've been using this method for a while now. I just made an alias/shortcut of the itunes library folder from my mac on the bootcamp desktop. And whenever I want to listen to some music and I remember having added some new music in the mac. I open the mac itunes library folder and copy

iTunes Library (you have to add .itl in windows)
iTunes Library Extras.itdb
iTunes Library Genius.itdb
iTunes Music Library.xml

to the Windows itunes library folder (on Win7 C:/Users/<you>/My Music/iTunes/ - if I remember correctly) and overwrite whatever was there before.

My only problem is that whenever I startup the Windows iTunes it says all my sogns that have non-english characters are missing. And iTunes asks me if I want to locate them, and there they are in their usual place. But are left out from the beginning.

That means all songs that have any accented characters like áéúíóö. And not to mention all the icelandic characters þýðæö. Is there any way of manipulating the mac iTunes to change the name of the source files, drop out the accented letters? I don't care what the name of the file in finder is, I just want to have the name as it's supposed to be in iTunes, with accents or whatever.
 
Last edited:
Wolverine83 said:
I've been using this method for a while now. I just made an alias/shortcut of the itunes library folder from my mac on the bootcamp desktop. And whenever I want to listen to some music and I remember having added some new music in the mac. I open the mac itunes library folder and copy

iTunes Library (you have to add .itl in windows)
iTunes Library Extras.itdb
iTunes Library Genius.itdb
iTunes Music Library.xml

to the Windows itunes library folder (on Win7 C:/Users/<you>/My Music/iTunes/ - if I remember correctly) and overwrite whatever was there before.

My only problem is that whenever I startup the Windows iTunes it says all my sogns that have non-english characters are missing. And iTunes asks me if I want to locate them, and there they are in their usual place. But are left out from the beginning.

That means all songs that have any accented characters like áéúíóö. And not to mention all the icelandic characters þýðæö. Is there any way of manipulating the mac iTunes to change the name of the source files, drop out the accented letters? I don't care what the name of the file in finder is, I just want to have the name as it's supposed to be in iTunes, with accents or whatever.
Click to expand...

None of this is relevant with bootcamp 3.0.... don't bring old post up.
 
Yeah I was going to ask the same question, any reason you're not running vista virtually?
 
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