Syncing iTunes folder over 2 computers using DropBox with different OS?

[iRobby]

Hello,

I currently own a PC running Windows XP. I will be purchasing an iMac running Mac OS X. I want to be able to use DropBox and sync my music from the PC to the new iMac. I did some research I found the following article describing how tricky it is but pointed out how to overcome the problems:

How to Sync iTunes Across All Your Computers with Dropbox

I understand most of it but have a question about the 2 paragraphs below:

Find your iTunes Library folder and move it to your Dropbox. So long as it's in your Dropbox, you can put it wherever you want. The important thing is that it is in the exact same place on all your machines, otherwise iTunes can get confused So long as your Dropbox location doesn't vary from machine to machine, you should be just fine.

After... syncing iTunes to the cloud With that out of the way, you need to tell every copy of iTunes—on every one of your machines—where to look for its library. The easiest way to ensure you don't run into any issues is launch iTunes and immediately hold down the alt/option key (or the shift key on Windows). Doing this will prompt iTunes to ask you to choose your iTunes library. Do this and select the newly synced iTunes library inside of your Dropbox. Be careful to make sure you select the exact same location on all machines or you can expect trouble. This should be easy enough to do, but it never hurts to double check as your music library will get very disorganized if these locations are not exact.

This is where my problem comes in. Since my two computers will be having two different Operating Systems the directories won't be exact. Therefore not be in the same exact location like this article talks about.
I'm not sure at the moment if I would want to continue syncing the music via DropBox once it is moved over or not. Doesn't sound like I can if I chose to do so.

So would my only solution be when putting the iTunes folder in my DropBox folder in the PC to transfer it be to NOT MOVE but COPY the iTunes folder in my DropBox folder therefore getting the files to sync to the new machine but keeping i the original files where they were and the PC iTunes knows their location. ?

If I did this then once the files are synced to the iMac then I can move them to wherever i want iTunes to find them on the iMac.

However, if there is a way to be able to keep the music in the DropBox folder on both the PC and iMac as well as the Web that would be the ideal situation. Did I miss something and that can be done?

Either way, What would be my best way to sync these files to the new iMac via DropBox? any help would be very appreciated

thank you

 

[asdfx3]

I haven't tried this, but I did a little searching around. Apparently the problem is that the iTunes Library uses absolute paths for the directories which like you said doesn't work between operating systems. Instead, you could keep the library where it is by default, and set the iTunes Media Folder location to be within Dropbox.

This way both computers would look in the same place for media but keep track of it separately. The consequence of this is that what you add to iTunes on one computer may not be automatically picked up by the other (the file will be there, but since it's not in the library on the other computer it doesn't know it), so you might have to periodically tell them to import from the media folder.

Again, I haven't tried this so no guarantees, but I hope it helps.

 

[iRobby]

I haven't tried this, but I did a little searching around. Apparently the problem is that the iTunes Library uses absolute paths for the directories which like you said doesn't work between operating systems. Instead, you could keep the library where it is by default, and set the iTunes Media Folder location to be within Dropbox.

This way both computers would look in the same place for media but keep track of it separately. The consequence of this is that what you add to iTunes on one computer may not be automatically picked up by the other (the file will be there, but since it's not in the library on the other computer it doesn't know it), so you might have to periodically tell them to import from the media folder.

Again, I haven't tried this so no guarantees, but I hope it helps.

thank you for your help. Yeah it doesn't look like I'll be able to do it. Even though if I put it in the DropBox Folder that folder is located in different file paths and folder names due to the different OS.