iPod Transferring large library off internal drive

[Rich1963]

I'm looking for a vote of confidence. I'm about to transfer my entire library (300 GB of mostly movies) off of my internal iMac drive onto an external drive. I will be using iTunes to migrate the entire library over. 3 things-

-To anyone who has done this before, how long will it take? I am tranferring it from my internal hard drive to a firewire 800 Drobo.

-Anything to know other than not to turn off the computer, and just for safeties sake, shutdown all processes and pretty much walk away from the computer?

-To anyone who has used the Drobo, if I initially select 2TB as my drive size, and later have 4 1TB drives in there, does the drobo automatically change that initial size selection to compensate for the additional space? And, if so, what's the point of initially selecting a hypothetical drive size at all?

Thanks in advance.

 

[adversecamber]

300GB will prbably take about 6-8hrs

 

[TEG]

It should take between 60 and 120 minutes. If you are not moving your entire library, use Finder to move the files, delete them from iTunes, turn off the Keep Library Organized, and re import them into iTunes, if you wish to still use them in iTunes.

And as Ron Popeil says... Set it and forget it.

TEG

 

[adversecamber]

My 80GB iTunes folder took just under 2hrs via FW800. But I guess I'm wrong.

 

[TEG]

I'm just going by the speed of the transfer, and it takes me about 30 minutes to transfer 20GB over Wi-Fi(G), so I'm just extrapolating.

TEG

 

[Rich1963]

TEG -

If I'm understanding you right, you don't use iTunes to keep your stuff organized. Any reason why not? I just assumed that was the easiest way to do it, provided you had one storage volume large enough to handle it all (thus, the Drobo). What I was more curious about with this post was, without sounding like a pansy, has anyone encountered problems moving that much information and using iTunes to transfer it all? I'm looking for a vote of confidence. I've done this before using the FAT32 file system under Windows XP, and lets just say that the phrase 'try, and try again' was more apt than the Ron Popiel slogan.

 

[alphaod]

Make sure iTunes is closed; then move your entire library. When you start iTunes it will says no library found which you browse to the new location.

 

[yg17]

-To anyone who has used the Drobo, if I initially select 2TB as my drive size, and later have 4 1TB drives in there, does the drobo automatically change that initial size selection to compensate for the additional space? And, if so, what's the point of initially selecting a hypothetical drive size at all?

Thanks in advance.

You don't select the 2TB size, that's just what it is. If you add 4 1TB hard drives, you will have 2 2TB volumes show up on your desktop rather than 1 4TB. From what I understand, this is because USB doesn't allow hard drives over 2TB, so that's the route they take.

Keep in mind that 4 1TB drives will get you 3TB of actual usable storage on the Drobo.

 

[Alrescha]

You don't select the 2TB size, that's just what it is. If you add 4 1TB hard drives, you will have 2 2TB volumes show up on your desktop rather than 1 4TB. From what I understand, this is because USB doesn't allow hard drives over 2TB, so that's the route they take.

This is out of date. The Drobo now supports filesystems up to 16TB in size.

A.

(re: the original question, I just let iTunes manage my files. I tell it a new location and go to bed. It's done in the morning)

 

[yg17]

This is out of date. The Drobo now supports filesystems up to 16TB in size.

Mine shows as a 2TB volume though? What happens if I put in 4 1TB drives?

 

[Alrescha]

Mine shows as a 2TB volume though? What happens if I put in 4 1TB drives?

On a Drobo formatted with a 2TB volume, you will get multiple 2TB volumes.

On the new Drobo, you select the volume size at install time. This feature was made available to the previous Drobo via a firmware upgrade. It is necessary to erase and reformat in order to change the volume size.

A.

 

[Rich1963]

So to clarify, even if you initially only have 2 1TB drives installed, you would still select your anticipated maximum size when initially installing and formatting?

Thanks ahead of time.

 

[Alrescha]

So to clarify, even if you initially only have 2 1TB drives installed, you would still select your anticipated maximum size when initially installing and formatting?

Yes. You could install a 1TB drive and select a 16TB volume size. A strange 'feature' of the Drobo is that it will appear to your OS as a 16TB volume, even though there is really less than 1TB available (I don't know how Time Machine could deal well with this).

There is some trade-off in selecting a large volume size, as the Drobo's startup time apparently increases as the volume size increases. As long as you don't power it off a lot I would imagine it's not a big deal.

disclosure: I don't have my Drobo yet, but I've read everything I can find about them.

A.

 

[Rich1963]

Don't suppose you've found a way onto their protected forum without the serial number off of a brodo? Pretty lousy that they only let you read on the forum once you've purchased a Drobo.