Freeing up space on my iMac by deleting media from iTunes?

[kat.hayes]

Not sure if this is the best place for this question.

I have a 500GB SSD 5K iMac and I copy lots of videos into iTunes to synch to my kids iPads, my iphone, etc.
I guess I do not really need to store the media on the iMac, I keep all the media on a separate external drive backed up. I am starting to run out of space on the iMac so I'm considering deleting the media from iTunes.

1. Is there a way to delete the media from iTunes without it removing the media from the iPads, iPhones when the re-synch?

2. I'm planning to format one of the devices soon, is there a way to just copy media just to the newly formatted iPad without having to copy it back to the Mac?

Thanks.

 

[hfg]

You could put your entire iTunes folder on a bus powered portable hard disk kept on the iMac stand and always connected, thus freeing up that space on your SSD. Then simply point to that database/media when you next run iTunes and that will be your new iTunes media location for that computer. Your synch will continue to work just as it always did and you won't have to delete any of your media files or rely on the iCloud to keep it safe.

You should continue to keep both the SSD and Media Disk contents backed up onto a separate external disk drive either with Time Machine or simply a clone copy of each.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Is there a way to delete the media from iTunes without it removing the media from the iPads, iPhones when the re-synch?"

Keep an external drive NOT SYNCHED to anything -- just let it be a "storage space" drive.

MANUALLY COPY the files you wish to move to that drive.

If the files are important to you, you'll have to back them up to ANOTHER drive, as well.

I recommend using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for this task.

 

[kat.hayes]

I bought a OWC Thunderbay IV that I intended to use as a RAID, though now I'm thinking I could use this for my media? Perhaps one drive for my photos and one drive for iTunes music and video, even though I don't need a separate drive for it. It uses a Thunderbolt cable. Does this seem like it will work?

Thanks.

 

[hfg]

I bought a OWC Thunderbay IV that I intended to use as a RAID, though now I'm thinking I could use this for my media? Perhaps one drive for my photos and one drive for iTunes music and video, even though I don't need a separate drive for it. It uses a Thunderbolt cable. Does this seem like it will work?

Thanks.

The ThunderBay 4 is what I use with my 5K iMac (all 1TB SSD internally) for backup and additional storage. It currently has 2 hard disks, an additional 1TB SSD, and a open drive bay. It works great, and I replaced the already quiet fan with an even quieter Noctua NF-B9 fan so it is really silent while just sitting there.

 

[kat.hayes]

I have not yet even turned on the Thunderbay.

1. Does it recognize the installed drives as separate mounted drives on the desktop instantly or do you need to do any type of configurations to make it work?

2. How do you unmount one of the drives if you need to and later remount it without having to physically take it in and out?

Thanks!

 

[hfg]

I have not yet even turned on the Thunderbay.

1. Does it recognize the installed drives as separate mounted drives on the desktop instantly or do you need to do any type of configurations to make it work?

2. How do you unmount one of the drives if you need to and later remount it without having to physically take it in and out?

Thanks!

All of the enclosed drives are separately mounted drives, and can be treated as such, including unmounting any individual drive. If you want RAID configurations, you use a software RAID in OS X, or a commercial product such as SoftRAID (which I also use on another system). You can use RAID on any number of the enclosed disks (2-4) and the remaining disks can be used separately as is. There is no hardware configuration, and that makes your drives completely transferrable to any other JBOD disk enclosure (or tower system like the cMacPro) in the event of enclosure issues.

I have 4 Thunderbay enclosures in use here and am totally satisfied with them all.

 

[hfg]

You could put your entire iTunes folder on a bus powered portable hard disk kept on the iMac stand and always connected, thus freeing up that space on your SSD. Then simply point to that database/media when you next run iTunes and that will be your new iTunes media location for that computer. Your synch will continue to work just as it always did and you won't have to delete any of your media files or rely on the iCloud to keep it safe.

You should continue to keep both the SSD and Media Disk contents backed up onto a separate external disk drive either with Time Machine or simply a clone copy of each.

I have posted this before, but here is one of my iMac computers with a Seagate 4TB RAID-0 bus powered hard disk attached to the iMac stand with adhesive velcro mounts:



Out of sight, no power additional power supply, select a size for your media library needs.

 

[kat.hayes]

Thanks for all of the help, I need to store my photos/video drive in the Thunderbay and I need at least 6TB so unfortunately the small portable drive will not work.

I just put a 4TB drive in the Thunderbay and formatted it and I want to use it for iTunes, so I just copied my entire Music folder to it.

1. Can I also copy my entire Pictures folder to it without it causing any issues with my iCloud Photos, etc.
2. There was some piece that extended from one end of the Thunderbay HD sled to the other. I unscrewed it and just screwed the HD in it. I'm guessing that this piece is not necessary?
3. Can I have two drives in it that are JBOD and somehow use the other two sleds to auto backup the JBOD drives, in some RAID configuration?

Thanks!

 

[hfg]

Thanks for all of the help, I need to store my photos/video drive in the Thunderbay and I need at least 6TB so unfortunately the small portable drive will not work.

I just put a 4TB drive in the Thunderbay and formatted it and I want to use it for iTunes, so I just copied my entire Music folder to it.

1. Can I also copy my entire Pictures folder to it without it causing any issues with my iCloud Photos, etc.
2. There was some piece that extended from one end of the Thunderbay HD sled to the other. I unscrewed it and just screwed the HD in it. I'm guessing that this piece is not necessary?
3. Can I have two drives in it that are JBOD and somehow use the other two sleds to auto backup the JBOD drives, in some RAID configuration?

Thanks!

I have the same problem on my main iMac where I need the Thunderbay for large 3.5" hard disks. I use a cheap 2.5" size adapter to mount SSDs in one of the bays.

1. Relocating your Photos folder shouldn't be a problem once you reference it by starting Photos with the "Option" key held down and select the relocated library drive.

2. The plastic spacer on the end of the drive trays is only to protect the tray-rails when no disk is installed.

3. Sure .... you can use the drives just like separate disks, because that is what they are in this enclosure. If you want to RAID-0 or -1 two of them, that can be done in OS X (Disk Utility, or Terminal for the current Sierra OS where they removed it from the DiskUtility menus). You can then point your backup (Time Machine?) to point to the RAID disk name.


This may be more information you need on managing iTunes libraries:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/


Good luck ...

 

[kat.hayes]

So for clarification, I can have my two drives in the enclosure and add a 3rd that will just back up one of my selected drives? Is this called a Raid 0 or Raid 1?

Thanks!

 

[hfg]

So for clarification, I can have my two drives in the enclosure and add a 3rd that will just back up one of my selected drives? Is this called a Raid 0 or Raid 1?

Thanks!

That isn't RAID at all .... if I understand what you are trying to say. You probably don't need RAID for your configuration. RAID-1 is simply using 2 drives to exactly mirror each other in the event 1 should fail (overkill for most users). RAID-0 uses 2 or more drives in parallel for either faster access time or for creating a larger volume than possible with existing disk sizes ... but it increases the possibility of data loss if one drive fails. You can Google RAID for more information, but you probably don't want to use it here.

If you have 2 ea. 2TB data drives in your enclosure, perhaps one is "MediaData" and the other is "MyExcessData". You want to use TimeMachine to keep an incremental historical backup of both these drives and the internal 500GB SSD drive on your iMac. So you add a third 6TB drive to the enclosure and call that "TMBackup". When you open Time Machine Preferences you will select "TMBackup" as your backup drive. Clicking on the "Options" button will bring up a list of excluded drives, and by default will include the TMBackup drive and all external drives including the two you actually want to backup (MediaData and MyExcessData). Select each of these drives and click on the " - " button below the list to remove them from the Excluded Drives ... than "Save" your selections. Your TimeMachine backup drive should be 1.5 to 2 times the size of your DATA to be saved to allow for the historical preservation for a reasonable time period.

Now, every hour you are using your computer, TimeMachine will look for new or changed files on your internal SSD and the two external data drives and put those changed files on the TMBackup drive. The older files are also maintained in case you want to go back to them. Once the initial backup is complete, these hourly updates only take a minute or so, and you won't even notice they are happening. You can find more information on Time Machine on Apple Support or Google.