Itunes library on external drive?

[PeterBonnar]

I've tried searching for the anwser to this before but got very confused so here we go again...

I'm quickly finidng my iMacs 80 gig hardrive is filling up with my iTunes library. I'm about to convert around 500+ hours of .Mod to .ACC. The iMac is in no way going to handle this but i do have an external maxtor one touch with 160 gig of space and two firwire ports.

So can i hook this up and put my iTunes library on this and has it as an external library, and how?

Heres the tricky bit, As for the Dell, Could i (if the maxtor was formated to be read by winblows) have the second firwire port up to the pc and have iTunes on the Pc and iMac share this single library?

 

[melchior]

Simple answer, yes, then no. Yes you may have your itunes library on an external drive, no probs with that. but no you could not have it connected to your pc and mac concurrently. probably the only solution for you is to share the itunes folder over your network and have the windows itunes point there.

as well, you could format the drive as fat32 then when you unplug it from your mac you can plug it into windows.

it is even possible to share the same ratings and playcounts between windows and mac itunes in these siuations. just copy the itune library.xml to whichever, as long as you have set itunes to point to the appropriate folder it will sort itself out. nice and easy =)


p.s. in case you hadn't noticed, the appropriate settings for changing the itunes library folder are preferences, advanced. if you set 'copy music to library' then itunes will move it all over for you, nice and easy =)

I've tried searching for the anwser to this before but got very confused so here we go again...

I'm quickly finidng my iMacs 80 gig hardrive is filling up with my iTunes library. I'm about to convert around 500+ hours of .Mod to .ACC. The iMac is in no way going to handle this but i do have an external maxtor one touch with 160 gig of space and two firwire ports.

So can i hook this up and put my iTunes library on this and has it as an external library, and how?

Heres the tricky bit, As for the Dell, Could i (if the maxtor was formated to be read by winblows) have the second firwire port up to the pc and have iTunes on the Pc and iMac share this single library?

 

[PeterBonnar]

sorry i seem to be alittle confused about you answer. Are you saying i could ahve them both point to the same libray, but not be open at the same time? or that the pc can view the library if it is shared my teh mac and just update the most played and my ratings?

 

[melchior]

ok. first of all, there are going to be no problems with both windows and os x itunes pointing to your itunes library at the same time. (this assumes a network share, not directly connected to the drive)

initially you could copy all your itunes library info from your mac to your pc. this is in the .xml file, it's the same format for both. of course, however, there is no way to merge these so any ratings, additions or playcounts that occur on say your pc, will not translate over to your mac.

what would, probably, be possible (though I haven't tried it) is you could have a shortcut in place on your pc that would point to the .xml file on your mac. i'd want to test this thoroughly before settling with it however. everything else is straightford without danger of loss or whatever...

am i being clear? sorry if i'm not.. sleepy.

sorry i seem to be alittle confused about you answer. Are you saying i could ahve them both point to the same libray, but not be open at the same time? or that the pc can view the library if it is shared my teh mac and just update the most played and my ratings?

 

[PeterBonnar]

so your saying i can share the drive as a network drive and have the PC connect to the library that way?

how is this differnt from both computers directly accessing the one drive?

Or do you mean i should continue to share the itunes library and connect to it that was fromt eh PC?

 

[melchior]

you should connect your fw drive to whichever computer you wish to have direct access.

unfortunately, it is not possible to connect a fw drive to two cinouters at the same time. interesting idea, if one were mounted as read-only...

 

[PeterBonnar]

Ok i get you know! its a drive problem!

O.k. great i'll give sharing hte volume ago!, Now all i have to do is convet 500+ hours of .mod files....... there goes my weekend