Trying to understand iTunes Library placement?

[compaudio1]

I am trying to understand my iTunes set-up better. Anyone who can help in enlightening my understanding I would greatly appreciate it.

 

When I launch Finder a window appears with the following options to choose from: Devices, Places & Search For. When I choose Places I am given a number of choices, in which one of them is Music. Choosing Music gives me my iTunes Folder, which appears to the right of the Places column. I have attached a screenshot of my iTunes Folder with a list of items that are in it or not.

 

I have a FW Drobo attached to my iBook in which my iTunes music folder resides. You can see by the attached screenshot that there is a folder titled iTunes Music in the iTunes folder (which resides on my iBook), but the iTunes Music folder on the iBook is empty. Would it be better to have the iTunes folder (which holds the iTunes Library) placed in the Drobo along with the music folder that are already in the Drobo?

 

[jtwrace]

You want everything on the Drobo. The music files and the library files.

 

I just went crazy trying to figure this out and our very own Chris C helped me out. If you have the library on the local disk it will fill up after getting the artwork. That's what happened to me when I switched external drives.

 

This is a copy from Chris to me:

Close iTunes

 

 

Drag the iTunes folder from the Mini HD to the External drive.

 

 

Browse to the External drive and open the file named iTunes Library and you're done. Probably located in a folder like this - ExternaliTunesiTunes Library

 

 

Once you do this you can delete the iTunes folder from your Mini HD.

 

[bixby]

and of course you should have your path in itunes also pointed to the folder on the drobo. itunes has installed a folder on your imac because that's what it does by default. You should have no problem playing music from the external drive once you point itunes to it.

 

Also be sure to uncheck the option in itunes to have everything mirrored into the media folder which is also on your imac. That just tends to muck things up long term.

 

good luck!

 

[compaudio1]

Thanks jtwrace. I'm going to wait to see if there are any more opinions before I attempt to do this (& do a bit more research). There is over 1 TB of music on the Drobo & I like to "measure twice & cut only once" to use a common carpentry metaphor. I do not have a clear clue as to where my artwork is. I have artwork on my songs, because this shows up when playing iTunes. But, I don't seem to have a single folder that holds this artwork. As you can see by the screenshot I attached to the original post in my iTunes folder (which is on the iBook G4 disk) there is a folder labeled Artwork (Get Info says this folder has 3.5 GB on it), yet it hasn't been modified since Sept. 2008 & I have been importing CDs, etc. weekly. There is a Cache folder (Get Info says there is 2.76 GB on it) in the Artwork folder which last was modified in March 2010. I do not have any folders labeled Artwork on the Drobo. Anyone have a clue where my artwork is being stored?

 

[Russell_L]

The following article/tutorial from ilounge might be of help:

 

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

 

Russell

 

[compaudio1]

bixby, thanks for the input. I've attached a screenshot of the Advanced settings from iTunes Preferences & this is how I've had things set up since moving music folders to the FW Drobo a couple of years ago. Are you saying that I should uncheck the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"? or is there another place in Preferences to "uncheck the option in itunes to have everything mirrored in the media folder"?