Moving iTunes library to new external drive

[Narked Diver]

Hi,

Currently my iTunes library is on a 1tb external drive that is steadily approaching full capacity so I am going to buy a new 2tb drive and I have a few questions

1) I have the option of buying a 2tb drive or two 1tb drives and raiding them - will I notice the speed improvement of the raid solution when watching movies / adding new files or would it be better to go with a 2tb drive?

I will continue to back up my iTunes library to my time machine so if one of the drives goes pop in the raid scenario I guess I would be able to create a new, empty raid with a new drive and then restore back from the time machine

2) what is the best way to copy the data across?

I was thinking about quitting iTunes, renaming the current volume from iTunes library to old iTunes, renaming the new volume to iTunes libray and then copying the contents of old iTunes to iTunes library - would this work or is it too simple (or just plain wrong )

I guess I would temporarily have to stop the iTunes library from being backed up to my time machine before I start this process

Thanks in advance

 

[Pudlo]

Hi,

Currently my iTunes library is on a 1tb external drive that is steadily approaching full capacity so I am going to buy a new 2tb drive and I have a few questions

1) I have the option of buying a 2tb drive or two 1tb drives and raiding them - will I notice the speed improvement of the raid solution when watching movies / adding new files or would it be better to go with a 2tb drive?

I will continue to back up my iTunes library to my time machine so if one of the drives goes pop in the raid scenario I guess I would be able to create a new, empty raid with a new drive and then restore back from the time machine

2) what is the best way to copy the data across?

I was thinking about quitting iTunes, renaming the current volume from iTunes library to old iTunes, renaming the new volume to iTunes libray and then copying the contents of old iTunes to iTunes library - would this work or is it too simple (or just plain wrong )

I guess I would temporarily have to stop the iTunes library from being backed up to my time machine before I start this process

Thanks in advance

ad 1.
hmmm you should consider security vs speed

fastest one
two drives in striped raid, the speed increase depends on your connection (usb, thunderbolt) but if one drive dies...you lose all data form both (more or less)

normal one
2 tb drive...no problems...and you can use your old 1 tb drive to backup most important stuff

most secure
two drives in clone mode, you always have two copies of all your stuff, but you have half of the size (only 1 tb when using two 1tb drives) so for 2 tb storage you need two 2tb drives

And still for raid you need some base like LaCie stuff. It's kind of expensive.

For daily use 2tb drive with 1tb backup is enough i think.

ps. You really need speed for watching movies? are they stuttering or what?


For itunes:
just remove all music from library (without deleting files) go to settings and set the new iTunes folder, then copy all your music into "add to iTunes" inside the new music folder and you're Gucci

 

[Narked Diver]

The video playback is fine so I'll grab a single 2tb disk

One area where I'd like to improve the performance though is the 'checking iTunes library' I get from time to time after a reboot - seems like it takes 5 minutes to complete - I'm guessing this is due to the number of songs and videos in the library

 

[Pudlo]

Maybe try to eject your external drive before restarting. And important thing is to not start iTunes without your drive connected. So before restarting you should quit iTunes then disconnect drive then restart (or without disconnecting). Just don't let iTunes work without drive. And i'm pretty sure you won't have to rescan.

cheerz

ps. And i don't know if you are a cover freak or not. But moving library probably will delete iTunes cover cache. Best way to prevent that is to add covers to files (when you add cover using get info in iTunes it adds to file, when you use automatic cover download in iTunes it adds to cache not files) Best way with huge library is to use some app like Coverscout to add all covers. When you do so, after reinstalling your OS X, or connecting your drive to other Mac, you will get all covers from beginning.