iPod Questions about external drives and airport extreme...

[jedirunner]

Hi,

(copied this from the Apple TV forums, in case someone here may have some answers)...

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My Equipment:
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Apple TV
Airport Extreme Base Station
4 ipods
1 iPhone
iMac with a 500 GB external drive for itunes storage
MacBook Pro with a 500 GB external drive for its own time machine backups


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Current Setup:
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Currently, there is a small external drive on the imac which holds the itunes storage, and is used to synch all the ipods and the apple tv.

The macbook pro has all the music copied from the imac's itunes repository, and is used to synch the iPhone.

There is no network sharing, though I'd really love to have a network share.

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What I'd like to do:
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1- Get a 1TB usb drive hooked up to the airport extreme base station
2- Move the itunes collection from the imac's external drive to the new base station external drive
3- Have both computers use this new networked drive as their itunes storage (I know it wouldn't be available on the MBP when not at home -- that's ok)
4- Have both computers synch to their respective ipods/iphone from the same external drive
5- Have the apple tv synch through one of the computers (probably the macbook pro) from the networked drive on the base station
6- Take the current 500GB drive attached to the imac and start using it as a time machine backup device.

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The questions:
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1. Does that all make sense?
2. Are there any potential problems with this setup?
3. Can both machines use the same folder on this shared network drive as their itunes collections?
4. If I get a TimeCapsule device, I assume both machines can share it to do their own time machine backups, is this correct?
5. If I get a TimeCapsule, then I can share the new 1TB external drive through the USB still, right?
6. Is there any way to make the apple tv go straight to the networked drive rather than through itunes on one of the machines?

Thanks very much!

 

[seamuskrat]

I am looking for the same info with nearly the same set up.

 

[Tomorrow]

I don't have an ATV, so I can't speak for step 5 - but I'm doing 1-4 and 6 myself and it works fine. You will have to do one of the following on each iMac:

(1) Have the volume with the iTunes music and library automatically map at startup, or
(2) Manually connect to the shared volume each time you start iTunes, which I felt like was a pain.

Good luck!