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Where do you keep your iTunes library?

Hmmm... Wide Array of answers here...


Is there a lot of wear and tear on the hard drive if I skip song frequently? What if I tend to use my laptop in bed (not on a flat surface)?


Those are the reasons I kept my media on an external. Also, I have a 200gb (~180gb actual) hard drive, with 30-40gb of media. Does this seem like too much??? How much free space should I be keeping (I don't store too much else on my computer).


As for backups, I pretty much gave up with Time Capsule. I find that if something goes wrong, I like to start from scratch, so I individually back up the files I want to keep (Photos, Contacts, Calendar...). I tend to discard school work, as I don't usually need it. Although, I may re-start some time capsule updates if I choose to move my media back to my internal...
 
I got the 13" MBP and as soon as i got it i swapped the hard drive for a 500gb. they're pretty easy to install and the HD only cost $99. I suggest you just use an external drive to make a time machine backup and swap out the hardrives, reinstall OSX and restore it from a time machine backup. plus you can turn the old Hard Drive into an external drive. I keep all my music on my internal and any movies i plan on watching, i store the rest of my movies on an external i made from my old 250gb that came in my MBP, its completely filled with movies. I just made an alias od the external drive in my movies folder so i can access them all in front row too.
 
wayland1985 said:
Hmmm... Wide Array of answers here...


Is there a lot of wear and tear on the hard drive if I skip song frequently? What if I tend to use my laptop in bed (not on a flat surface)?


Those are the reasons I kept my media on an external. Also, I have a 200gb (~180gb actual) hard drive, with 30-40gb of media. Does this seem like too much??? How much free space should I be keeping (I don't store too much else on my computer).


As for backups, I pretty much gave up with Time Capsule. I find that if something goes wrong, I like to start from scratch, so I individually back up the files I want to keep (Photos, Contacts, Calendar...). I tend to discard school work, as I don't usually need it. Although, I may re-start some time capsule updates if I choose to move my media back to my internal...
Click to expand...

1) its nothing significant that will harm the hd's lifespan
2) as long as you aren't down to your last 5 gb and the os is crying then I wouldn't worry about that.
3)you can select which folders you want backed up in time machine (Timemachine Prefrences>Options)

for me, I have my library on my internal drive (its only like 5gb and I got plenty of room to spare haha), but I do keep backups of everything (music, photos, docs, etc.) on an external drive w/ timemachine
 
All of our music is on my PC Desktop computer and then it is streamed to all of the other computers.

So if your on my wireless network you can listen to my music. :D
 
My internal hard-drive. I got the first shipment of the new 13" MacBook Pro and this is my first Mac of any kind so I don't have any kind of accessories for it yet.

I do want a Time Capsule. They are expensive, though. :(
 
External 1TB drive since I store my music lossless. I really want to migrate to a RAID solution (Drobo FTW) to protect my library from a hd crash - would be a pain in the ass to have to re-encode it all over again.
 
External 1TB

Only have a 40GB internal and can't be bothered with the hassle of changing it out :eek: Had a HD crash about a month ago though, and moved music only all onto my internal to tide me over (about 15-20 gigs, something like that) and I did really like just having it on my iBook.

Don't know how big my library is now, since I lost all my movies in the crash and most of them were dvd rips that I can't be bothered redoing right now but before it was 300GB+ It's probably about 200GB now.

I've never noticed any problem with lag though :confused:
 
kkamin said:
How do you split it up like that? Keeping music on internal and movies on external?
Click to expand...

I'll 2nd this question - how to you split it up? I just switched to a MBP and have a large iTunes library of about 260GB (245GB is video)

and would like to off that to an external location....

thanks
 
Internal-songs that I want on my iPhone
External-the entire collection on my Drobo. I have approximately 1 TB reserved (out of 3.6 TB), though I've only used about 90 GB. However, I still haven't finished ripping my entire CD collection yet either.
 
So, apparently I have over 80gb of media? I'm wondering if it's all duplicates or something....


As for upgrading the HD, I was considering doing this, but I still have 2 years left on my warranty.... So I'd rather not right now, unless Apple has a decent pricing scheme (which I highly highly doubt).


I guess my external setup isn't all that bad. The lag time is something I can just keep dealing with...
 
wayland1985 said:
As for upgrading the HD, I was considering doing this, but I still have 2 years left on my warranty.... So I'd rather not right now, unless Apple has a decent pricing scheme (which I highly highly doubt).
Click to expand...

You can upgrade the internal disk drive on a macbook pro pretty easily, and it doesn't void the warranty. It would depend on which mbp you have but ifixit have some very good guides.

If you aren't confident in doing it yourself, just buy a new hard drive and have someone do it for you. The shop selling the drives will probably do it for you for a reasonable price. Get a 500GB in there and you can stop worrying about space (well, for the time being at least. :))

You can also keep your 180GB drive as another back-up. Never a bad idea.
 
need help on this one

as i can see there is a wide range of different setups..
i never thought it could be a problem for me but yesterday me external usb hd gave my the finger when i tried to add some new tunes in my library...

its official: my 250GB ext. usb drive is full of tunes!!!!

i am trying to find the next best solution and i am in between two possible approaches:
a) an external Ethernet disk drive attached to my wireless router,
b) an external Ethernet disk drive with itunes server service.

can someone who have tested both setups give me the pros and cons for each setup?

cheers
 
FW 800 Drobo which is now a little over 2TB (Not GB) of Music, Movies, and TV Shows. This is backed up to a set of external 1TB drives.

Since the Drobo is loaded with 4 1TB drives I've thought about going to either the Drobo Pro or doing the slow process of swapping in 2TB drives for my 1TB's.
 
On a server and an old dell box that I picked up. I am migrating from the server thou. Windows server software doesn't play nice with iTunes. So I am configuring a Windows XP Pro box to do the duties.
 
iTunes Library

I have two different iTunes library's, an external 1TB drive that contains all my music, currently about 250GB, and an internal on my macbook that weights in about 10GB Max at any one time.

I keep my favorite tracks and flavours of the moment on my internal drive and then when I fancy a change I add the new ones to my main library on the external and replace with them with something else.

Works well for me.
 
I have a 500GB FreeAgent Pro external hard drive that I store all my files/music/videos etc. along with my iTunes library. The only thing I use the internal harddrive for is installed programs and the operating system. Then I have another 1TB external for the Time Machine backup.
 
Music on main hard drive, Movies/Shows on external.

I wish Itunes had folder monitoring =[ So I don't have to manually add stuff.
 
droalex said:
I wish Itunes had folder monitoring =[ So I don't have to manually add stuff.
Click to expand...

I agree that would be a great feature. I have to use a script that takes a while to scan the folder to find music that isn't in my library.
 
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