Went wireless with my iTunes Library

[Boyd01]

I just got a 2TB Time Capsule and have moved my 350gb iTunes library to it. It works great and is going to give me the space I need to rip the remainder of my large DVD library (the 512gb SSD on my MBA was starting to fill up).

I used the method described at Apple Support as well as this article http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/ and everything went smoothly (took about 6.5 hours to do the move over AC wifi).

I have only noticed one problem. Have left a subset of the original library in the default location on my SSD and when I turn off wifi, I can still access those movies with no problem. But if I click on an item that is no longer in the onboard library, iTunes hangs with the spinning pinwheel until I force quit. From what I've read, Itunes should just tell me that the item isn't available and shouldn't hang.

What is going on here? Is it just a bug? Or maybe I just didn't wait long enough before force quitting? After 30 seconds or so of the spinning pinwheel, I gave up....

 

[Dunk the Lunk]

Sounds great - just remember to back up your library somewhere else - if the time capsule HDD fails you'll lose your entire library.

 

[Boyd01]

Yeah, I will back it up regularly to a thunderbolt drive. I already backed up the library before I moved it.

But I'm still curious as to why it hangs when the wireless drive isn't available if I try to play a movie that isn't stored locally.

 

[Dunk the Lunk]

Yeah, I will back it up regularly to a thunderbolt drive. I already backed up the library before I moved it.

But I'm still curious as to why it hangs when the wireless drive isn't available if I try to play a movie that isn't stored locally.

Good stuff. Fraid I can't help you with your problem though as I never went for that setup in the end - sorry

 

[marzer]

What is going on here? Is it just a bug? Or maybe I just didn't wait long enough before force quitting? After 30 seconds or so of the spinning pinwheel, I gave up....

It's not a bug, iTunes like many simple database applications is not intended for use with intermittently available resources. So the response you get to an anomalous situation, no matter how inconvenient, is just the response you get.

I would recommend creating two separate libraries, one subset on the local disk and a complete library on the network drive. Use the ALT+open option to switch between the two. Drag and drop files from the network library to populate the subset as needed.

 

[Boyd01]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. Was just surprised that several articles I've read said that iTunes would simply display an exclamation point next to unavailable content instead of hanging.

 

[marzer]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. Was just surprised that several articles I've read said that iTunes would simply display an exclamation point next to unavailable content instead of hanging.

I would guess the difference is between not finding the file on the existing source drive (flagged with an exclamation point) versus not being able to find the source drive (program hanging up).

 

[Boyd01]

Makes sense. I noticed that if I simply unmount the network drive (instead of turning off wifi), iTunes automatically re-mounts it on startup.

I will delete everything from the old (local) library, then switch back to it and add the things I want as you suggest.