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iPod massive library, what do you do?

donga

donga

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 16, 2005
841
1
AZ
so i've been deleting music that i've had in my collection to make space on my pbook 100gb HD. kept going down to under 400mb free space, then back up to 3gb, and back, etc.

would it be smart to just put music and photos on an external to free up massive amounts of laptop hd space? how would i do that keeping all the playlists, ratings, settings, etc. in itunes (and iphoto) intact? the issue with keeping it on an external is when the laptop moves, the music doesn't move with it?

what do yall do about this?
 
Get an external, and keep all of your music on there, you can move it by copying the iTunes library folder to your external. then to have it with you when you go get an iPod and have it all with you or if you get a smaller one you can have just what you need with you all the time.
 
peeaanuut said:
external is the best way to go. I have 3 drives for iTunes. 1 for music, 1 for movies and 1 for TV shows. It really works great.
Click to expand...

Not trying to hijack the thread, but how do you specify where movies, music, etc. are stored? I thought there was only the option to specify where THE ENTIRE library is located.
 
coryetzkorn said:
Not trying to hijack the thread, but how do you specify where movies, music, etc. are stored? I thought there was only the option to specify where THE ENTIRE library is located.
Click to expand...

yeah, i was wondering this too. looked at the Preferences > Advanced> General > iTunes Music folder location

didn't seem to have a separate option for movies, music vids, etc.
 
donga said:
yeah, i was wondering this too. looked at the Preferences > Advanced> General > iTunes Music folder location

didn't seem to have a separate option for movies, music vids, etc.
Click to expand...

My guess is that peeaanuut manually organizes his library rather than letting iTunes do it.
 
I keep my music on the internal and movies on external.

Just point the library to the internal in iTunes' preferences.

When you have a movie you want to add, first drag it to the external, where it will reside. Then, once the movie is on the external, open iTunes and drag to the library.

iTunes will add the movie to the library while keeping a reference as to where it is located.

This works for me because my music is only 50GB, while my movies are 150GB.

Oh, and make sure that "copy to library" is unchecked in preferences.
 
That's a similar situation to me and good advice, thanks.

When you add new music, do you do it manually? Or do you turn "copy to library" back on briefly?
 
sunfast said:
When you add new music, do you do it manually? Or do you turn "copy to library" back on briefly?
Click to expand...

Yes, I do - I let iTunes copy new music to my local library, make changes as necessary, copy the files to the external HD and then manually add them to the "external" library. That way I am able to spread the library over as many external drives as I want. At the moment, I use two 400GB drives for my music, and I haven't even started adding movies and TV shows to my library.
 
Ok....that all makes sense. Still seems that Apple should add the option to specify where different types of media are stored - especially with them pushing video so much.
 
LaCie makes some great mobile harddrives that are powered off the USB bus, so they might even be convenient enough to take with you wherever you go. I have a 250GB LaCie that has my iTunes folder on it, so I have to be at home for music. Which is why I got a 250GB internal for the MBP. I don't know about the PB's design, but if it's easy enough to upgrade its internal harddrive, I would consider that if I was you. I got my 250GB HDD for about 100€.
 
I've just been dealing with this problem. I have over 5000 CDs, and I've ripped over half to an external hard drive, a 500GB one. I keep all my music files (iTunes Library folder) on the external drive, but I keep the database file on my mac mini (to which the external drive is attached). I also cloned the 500GB external drive to another backup 500GB drive (if one drive conks out, I do NOT want to start over again ripping thousands of CDs!!!). I listen to music through my mac mini hooked directly to my stereo. Great solution :)

You can find more about my set up and the questions I asked and answers I got here - I think this will answer a lot of your questions too:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/405451/
 
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