iPod How to Share Itune Music Folder with 2 Computers

[kevhui]

Hi,

Originally I have a ITune Music folder in the internal HD of my iMac, and I copied the whole folder to a NAS as a backup.

Recently I bought a new PC (actually a Mac Mini but I just want to run Windows XP) so I would like to have both computer accessing the same songs, so I changed the iTune Library to point the the iTune Music folder in the NAS.

In may iMac, I did:

1. Selected all the songs in iTune Library and deleteed them
2. in the Preference->Advanced, changed the iTune Music Folder to the NAS location.
3. In File -> Add to Library, selected the NAS folder

Should I do the same with my Mac Mini? If later I rip CDs with my iMac, songs will be added to the NAS, but how to reflect or sync this change so my Mac Mini's iTune library also has the new songs ripped from those CDs? Is there a way to refresh the iTune library of my Mac Mini?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Quasiperfectto]

I Use Bluetooth

it takes a while, but i recently transfered my entire itunes library from my imac to my mac book.

 

[Malbone]

I have a similar setup -- one set of music files on a network HD connected to a Mac; both the Mac and the WinXP machine are on an Ethernet network through a router. The Mac's iTunes uses library database files stored on the network HD; the WinXP machine has these files in the local My Documents / My Music folder, but I set the preferences of iTunes to use the music files on the network HD. The Windows menu item "Tools --> Map Network Drive" is a handy way of giving the network drive a Win XP letter.

I had a lot of problems trying to point both machines to the same library files. I try to use only the Mac to download and add music to iTunes, but both machines would download podcasts and iPhone apps, resulting in duplicate files. Even apart from that, iTunes for Windows would truncate very long filenames, which also resulted in duplicate files.

My solution is a bit low-tech but works a lot better. After updating podcasts and apps on the Mac, I manually copy the database files from the Mac to the PC. (These are all the individual files in the "iTunes" folder, such as "iTunes Library.itl", plus the "Album Artwork" folder.) I then start iTunes on the WinXp machine. After updating the library, it shows ALL the files as "orphaned" (there is an icon next to the checkbox column). That's scary -- but I just close iTunes and start it again, and all is well.

This method also has the advantage of copying all my smart playlists; the library looks and functions exactly the same as it does on the Mac.

I suppose you could do this on non-networked computers by copying the files to a flash drive and recopying them to the other machine. The external HD could then be switched from one machine to the other. Just make sure it is connected before starting iTunes on that computer.

I would advise making an archive (ZIP or RAR) copy of these files on both machines before doing the copy the first time, just in case it needs to be undone.

By the way, I am using iTunes 10.6 on a Mac G4 and iTunes 11.0 on the PC, with no problems.

Hi,

Originally I have a ITune Music folder in the internal HD of my iMac, and I copied the whole folder to a NAS as a backup.

Recently I bought a new PC (actually a Mac Mini but I just want to run Windows XP) so I would like to have both computer accessing the same songs, so I changed the iTune Library to point the the iTunes Music folder in the NAS.

In may iMac, I did:

1. Selected all the songs in iTune Library and deleteed them
2. in the Preference->Advanced, changed the iTune Music Folder to the NAS location.
3. In File -> Add to Library, selected the NAS folder

Should I do the same with my Mac Mini? If later I rip CDs with my iMac, songs will be added to the NAS, but how to reflect or sync this change so my Mac Mini's iTune library also has the new songs ripped from those CDs? Is there a way to refresh the iTune library of my Mac Mini?

Thanks for your help.