iTunes maxing out start up drive (from outboard drive?)

[kenreau]

I recently made the switch from PC & slim server music folder to a 2009 mac mini with iTunes for all my music files. I have roughly 600GB of a mix of flac and wav files on an outboard Oyen 1TB drive. I have started transcoding to AIF using XLD and have ran into a road block I could use help with.

 

Using the XLD program, I've been going through the alphabit of albums, converting the FLAC & wav files to AIF in blocks. As I go through a few blocks of albums and they become AIF files, I delete the original wav files to free up space. I made it through the A's and B's and part way through the C's. I am now getting a warning message that the Start up drive (on the mac mini?) has run out of memory. It appears to be at capcity and is no longer able to save changes.

 

The Oyen 1TB drive shows about 650GBs used. The internal mac mini hard drive is an 80GB SSD. The SSD appears to be maxed out. I looked at its folders/files to delete any unused items, deleted some photos and emptied the trash. That help for a few more albums, but it quickly maxed out again. The mac mini is a relatively new install and doesn't have any other files stored on it. I can't imagine the handbrake and few other items & apps I have installed recently would eat up that much space.

 

For some reason, it appears the iTunes library is not running or saving files strictly on the outboard Oyen 1TB drive, but saving some files to both the Oyen and internal SSD. I went back into iTunes preferences and checked that the library is referencing the outboard Oyen drive and it is.

 

Is this an iTunes setup issue? or possibly in XLD as it is doing the transcoding?

 

Thanks

Kenreau

 

[earther]

You can list the folders on your startup disk by size to see what all the space is being filled by. Also, in your iTunes advanced prefs, make sure that "Copy Files to iTunes Media folder" is not checked.

 

[kenreau]

Thanks earther. I will make sure that is not checked. I apparently still need to clear out whatever files were being replicated on the internal drive that is now maxed out.

 

Through Finder I looked at the system folders on the mac mini drive and most were not indicating the folder "size"... I may need to alter the "view" information set up. I did try to click on the folders to display properties / sizes and can't recall if successful (it was getting late last night)

 

Question - with the iTunes library linked to the outboard HD, does the OS also always keep a similar set of iTunes related storage folders on the internal HD? I attempted to locate them on the internal drive and was not successful.

 

Another friend offered "I'd guess XLD is the culprit. Use the "consolidate libray instructions to copy all the music to the outboard drive, then manually empty out the itunes music folder" (once I locate it)

 

I have to wonder if I may have a conflict with how I set up XLD and iTunes preferences with the above functions?

 

Thanks again

Kenreau

 

 

 

 

[earther]

your iTunes folder is located in users/name/Music/iTunes/iTunesMusic.

 

for getting folder sizes, if you click on your main drive in a finder window and then go View/as list (cmd-2), then View/Show View Options: Calculate all Sizes (cmd-j)... this will then generate all the folder sizes.

 

You also might want to dig around in the XLD preferences to find out where it's outputting all its aiff files to.

 

Generally, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the preferences for any given application in OSX. All programs will have a preference window and the first thing i do when using any app for the first time, is open that and set everything up!

 

 

[kenreau]

Thanks, earther, that was very helpful

Kenreau