iTunes correct set up with NAS

[SeeGeeAitch]

Hey all.

I have my entire iTunes library on a WD Mycloud Home. The "iTunes Library.itl" file and others are all on the NAS along with the "iTunes Media" and "Album Artwork" folders.

The "iTunes Media" contains folders of the artists. I'm wondering if there should be folders named Music, Podcasts, TV, etc....? I only use iTunes for music.

Aside from that, when playing music through iTunes on my 2019 MBP, iTunes freezes and I get the spinning coloured wheel for a long time.... I mean it can be 30 seconds to a couple of minutes... really annoying.

As i have a 256GB internal storage MBP and a far larger music library (not interested in using icloud) an external drive is essential and I understand that there will be a slight delay due to streaming over wifi from the NAS but this never happened when I was using iTunes on Windows 10.

I am thinking of creating a backup of all my music on another drive then set up a new iTunes library consisting of 1 or 2 albums on the MBP internal storage.
Once that's done, move that library to the NAS in the correct manner as detailed on various websites.
Then I can move all the other files from the backup into the new library.
Would that be a good idea - kinda starting from fresh?

Another question is - is it better to only have the media files on the NAS and keep the library files on the MBP local storage?

Cheers

 

[jagooch]

Which NAS do you have? I had some speed problems with my Synology. The problem turned out that the Synology was used SMB v1 instead of SMB v3. That's a setting specific to your NAS software. Mojave supports SMB v3 so do that if you can for NAS hosted files.

About where to host your library, I recently decided to move mine off of the NAS onto and external 2TB SSD drive. Faster access to music files is one advantage. Also, that lets both Time Machine and Backblaze backup my music library. I put a ton of work into it and would never want to lose it!

You can back up your NAS of course, but I found it to be too much extra work. Also, offsite backup subscription for NAS's ( like B2 or Crashplan ) are expensive !

So , it may cost more initially to get an external drive, but it will save time and frustration in the long run.

 

[SeeGeeAitch]

I have a WD MyCloud Home - had been using it since the PC days with no issues - even set up the same way with iTunes.

I've been reading that it's not a great NAS, built in Plex server etc.
Strange that it worked perfectly well with iTunes on PC.

Using a different USB drive attached to router now. All is working fine but would rather use the NAS drive.

I was looking at a basic Synology NAS.... I'll keep reading up...

Thanks for you reply @jagooch

 

[HDFan]

I was looking at a basic Synology NAS..

If it's in your price range the QNAP TS-453bt3 has more features/$ than the equivalent Synology.

 

[SeeGeeAitch]

Hmm, seems using airplay to my Samsung TV (with airplay/apple tv etc built in) slows things down too - especially when selecting next song while one is already playing...

 

[SeeGeeAitch]

Yep defo something to do with having wifi NAS streaming to iTunes on MBP which is then airplaying to the TV.... browsing while playing is slow and often get song micro pauses and the rainbow wheel. Too much network traffic?

Doesn't seem to be an issue when media is stored locally or on a USB Drive connected directly to the MBP.