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iPod Using External Drive for Music Storage, for 2 computers

S

sunkentheory

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2007
16
0
I am going to be transferring all my music from my Windows PC, to my external hard drive. Is it possible to install itunes on the external drive. Or is it possible to plug the ex drive to each PC and apple macbook and for the itunes to work on both?

Brian
 
i doubt you'll find a usb/fw drive that will work with two host systems. a NAS drive would give u shared access, but you'd still need to maintain two library files, and the two machines may fight over things when a song is renamed/updated.

could u setup itunes sharing on one and then use the other to access it (assuming you need access from both?)
 
1) You cannot have a hard drive which is simultaneously attached by USB or FW to two CPUs.

The way to do that is to make the drive a network-shareable volume. You do this either by
a) attaching it to a computer (the stationary PC would be the obvious choice), and using File Sharing to share that volume out to the other computer over the network
or b) buying a NAS (Network attached storage) hard drive that has its own tiny server and ethernet connection built in, and acts as a stand-alone server.

2) iTunes is run on the computer, not 'on' the data drive, so installing iTunes on a shared drive is not helpful. It may be you meant, install the iTunes libraries on a shared drive.
 
What about having iTunes installed onto the external drive and running it from there, that way 1 library, 1 set of music. Or will OS X give you and error "Program in use" by another user?

I also am trying to find a solution to this. I want to get rid of my Winblows machine that has been hosting my music as well. I was thinking of using a mac mini. I have a MBP that is my primary machine now and use it for email, ical and syncing my iPhone. I just hate having the space wasted on gigs of mp3s that could be put to better use.
 
The lack of ease to set up a network library is one of my big peeves about iTunes, it's so very behind the times. In fact, you should be able to set up a network share accessible on the internet so that you can use your iTunes library at work as if you were at home.
 
Black Belt said:
The lack of ease to set up a network library is one of my big peeves about iTunes, it's so very behind the times. In fact, you should be able to set up a network share accessible on the internet so that you can use your iTunes library at work as if you were at home.
Click to expand...


I agree, especially on the first point. didn't itunes 4 (or some early version) allow internet sharing? the problem being that the music cos. shut it down.
 
no i dont want to plug it in to two computers at the same time. I just want to be able to plug it into my PC...play the songs on the hard drive...and then a few weeks later, plug it into my MAC and have no trouble with playlists/etc.
 
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