Apple TV, Itunes, External Hard drive

[bsf31392]

I have been going through hell trying to consolidate and move my 200 GB Itunes media to a larger external hard drive. I finally got it all moved over and my media is streaming fine to Apple TV. I only have one question...

Since I had so much to move, I hooked the HD to Firewire 800 for faster transfer. Now I want to take that same drive and mount it to my Airport Extreme Base Station. My question will Itunes be able to find my files? I don't want to go to the process of copying them all over again, this time skipping the firewire and using wired ethernet. It would take at least 20 hrs.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[Alrescha]

I have been going through hell trying to consolidate and move my 200 GB Itunes media to a larger external hard drive.

Why was it hell? (iTunes Preferences/Advanced/General/iTunes Music Location/Change, iTunes Menu/Advanced/Consolidate Library).

Now I want to take that same drive and mount it to my Airport Extreme Base Station. My question will Itunes be able to find my files?

If you move the drive, iTunes won't know where to find the files unless you tell it. You can use the Change Location Preference as described above, then use iTunes Menu/Add to Library and 'Add' your new location. iTunes won't re-copy everything, but it will 'process' all the files. You might lose some metadata like 'Date Added'.

If you are one of those folks who turn off the 'Copy to iTunes Library' preference, then I imagine you can just use the 'Add to Library' menu choice. I don't happen to operate that way.

A.

 

[bsf31392]

Alrescha-

It was frustrating transferring through ethernet because the ethernet kept saying the server dropped. Plus I wanted to benefit from the Firewire 800. It made a huge difference.

Here's what happened-

I shutdown itunes, ejected the LACIE HD from the desktop, attached the drive by USB to my AEBS, reset the LACIE and the AEBS. When I reopened itunes, I was surpised to see that it found the drive immediately!! I was so pleased as I had spent quite a few hours manually adding metadata to all 150 of my movies and tv shows and would have been crushed if I had to redo it.

 

[Alrescha]

I shutdown itunes, ejected the LACIE HD from the desktop, attached the drive by USB to my AEBS, reset the LACIE and the AEBS. When I reopened itunes, I was surpised to see that it found the drive immediately!!

I hadn't thought of that. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense (same volume name, same mount point in OS X).

A.

 

[Cave Man]

Since I had so much to move, I hooked the HD to Firewire 800 for faster transfer. Now I want to take that same drive and mount it to my Airport Extreme Base Station. My question will Itunes be able to find my files? I don't want to go to the process of copying them all over again, this time skipping the firewire and using wired ethernet. It would take at least 20 hrs.

I would strongly suggest you avoid using AEBS Disk Sharing. It has been broken since the Leopard and 10.5.1-10.5.4 have not fixed it. You will be plagued by dropped sharing, requiring a restart (that won't always work). Your best bet is to keep the media drive connected directly to your Mac. (BTW - FW800 probably does not matter since your bottle neck is the transmission to the ATV - either 802.11n or 100kbs ethernet.)

In addition, if you're streaming Mac is not connected to your AEBS by ethernet cable, you will have slower performance because you will have to stream content to your Mac from the AEBS, then to your Apple TV.

And yes, "redirecting" iTunes is a pain in the rear. Surely Apple could come up with a better way a managing the movement of a library. The consolidation route requires keeping all your iTunes files on the same drive. Not very friendly to those who have large libraries.