ITunes Library on a NAS

@BemApo you are describing my issue exactly.... right down to The Talking Heads. My library is messed up, though I'd prefer to use stronger language when talking about it. 😉 I'll click one song and another will play. Some videos have turned into podcasts, music, etc. In many cases actual files have moved. The songs on an album will be contained in one folder and the rest in another random folder. It's extremely upsetting considering how OCD I have always been about my music library. It was immaculate. I'd REALLY like to solve this problem without having to generate a new library so I can preserve my 10 year old ratings and play counts. Fingers crossed.

I had thought it was an iTunes Match issue. I've been blaming that, without any real proof. In doing some more digging I read one suggestion that it might be a permissions issue on the NAS. I thought about consolidating my library and bringing the files back to my local machine, but now my internal drive doesn't have the space for it. It is a somewhat recent thing (at least that I've noticed). Maybe a bug with a newer version of iTunes? I'm not 100% certain, but the timing may line up with the release of Mavericks. Media files live on my Synology. The library file lives on my MBP. I always mount the music volume on my Synology before launching iTunes. This set up worked for my for a time until these issues started to occur. And they seem to be getting worse.

Were you able to get it sorted out? Do you use iTunes Match? Anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

This is worse than I thought. I just made space and brought back all of my music from the NAS to my laptop. After only 5 minutes of digging I'm still finding actual files that have been renamed and placed elsewhere. It's at the file level as opposed to the iTunes database level. A song file in the Weezer folder and named a Weezer song is actually a Hum song.

Devasted.

I also despair...

I imported thousands of tracks (mainly mp3) on my NAS (WD MyBook Live 2Tb) by importing them via iTunes and letting it organise the files/folders.

It took hours. It worked for a while....

Days later, iTunes declared that it cannot use the library file despite my configuring the NAS to be re-mounted automatically - which is a clunky process in itself. I then re-imported the tracks overnight - then iTunes announced that it cannot save the library file. AAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!! I have read many other posts that claim to offer some kind of obtuse workaround but Apple should make a product that is intuitive and, above all, WORKS.

The infuriating thing is that nothing changed between iTunes being able to use the NAS library then not.

Furthermore it doesn't play FLAC files, which is mad. After trying different formats, I have decided to re-rip all my music onto FLAC because my other audio devices play FLAC (but not Apple Lossless) so unless Apple improve iTunes I shall abandon iOS devices because my iPhone/iPad are due for renewal about now.

It is not good enough that I have to waste hours upon hours on this badly-designed product.

If you look at other products like MediaMonkey on Windows, it is a piece of cake to connect to different libraries/NAS's.

Come on Apple! iTunes is infuriating and unreliable. Please sort it out.

Okay I would like to also move my entire iTunes Library onto my NAS as well. Including, apps, audiobooks, ringtones, music, movies, tv shows, etc. I have a Synology NAS. Currently I have my iTunes Library on my iMac and I use this to sync my iPhone/iPad. If I move my entire iTunes library to my NAS. Will I be able to sync my iPhone/iPad without any problems?

If so, what's the proper way to do this. Do I just copy the entire iTunes folder from my iMac to my NAS, and then when launching iTunes from my computer point it to the location on my NAS?

But I sort of remember that when I tried to do this last time, it didn't exactly work out. Because whenever I restart my iMac, and load up iTunes, it wouldn't be able to connect to my iTunes folder on the NAS because it wasn't connected to or mounted. So how do you guys get around that?

I'm looking at replacing my old Firewire Drobo (2nd gen) that was connected to an old Mac Mini, so have been looking at NAS and DAS.

I've done a little digging around and found the following talked about ....

It seems that any NAS that claims to be an "iTunes Server" should be avoided, as the app is 3rd party which might have been "broken" by the current incarnation of "Home Share". So it's better to access the library via local iTunes or AppleTV onto iTunes running with Home Share on, rather than assume you'll be able to access your iTunes library on the NAS running an "iTunes Server app".

If this is the case, then running a NAS or a DAS, both talking to iTunes running on a Mac Mini as a minimum, would probably run exactly the same, with the only major difference being connection method (Gigabit Ethernet vs Thunderbolt/Thunderbolt2).

Any thoughts?

I'd appreciate any advice but I haven't seen specific answers to my situation yet.

I've got Windows 7, iTunes 12.2.X, Netgear Stora (NAS) and I have Sonos and Control 4 in the house.

iTunes points to the NAS drive shared music folder just fine and I can play iTunes music through the Control 4 system but when I try to sync and iPod to my iTunes library I run into a showstopper issue.

The "House icon" below "File" points to "This Computer" but won't let me change to point to "Stora:iTunes". The House Icon shows both "This Computer" and "Stora:iTunes" when one clicks on it.

What steps am I missing?

Thanks to anyone who can help, I'm on the verge of going into see the Genius guys,

Mark

I have a PC and a macbook pro. I have "My music" library on my PC but every time it sleeps my sonos of course loses the connection. Sonos suggested I use a NAS drive and now I'm trying to import my iTunes library so I can access those playlists rather than use the terrible playlist system on sonos.

How did you backup to your NAS drive and how do you get the sonos library to update automatically?

Jealous.

Thank you for any tips.

LIMNOS - Thanks! I've struggled with this since moving iTunes from my Mac to my DS 415+ (new) - your 'hold down option key' worked perfectly. iTunes now opens with the iTunes on the Synology and shows all my music files. Many thanks. Would have though that Synology would make a fix known? As an aside - DS 415+ brilliant!!!

I have a 4-bay Synology array and I'm an advanced user.

Don't run your iTunes library from a NAS.

I've experimented with a number of different variables: SMB vs. SMB 3 vs. AFP; different versions of iTunes; iCloud Match vs. no iCloud Match; procedural things like making sure and testing the connection to the NAS before launching iTunes; having iTunes manage the files vs. not; having the .itl file on the NAS vs. not; symbolic links; and a few other things. In every permutation, I experienced very dangerous and irreversible corruption to the underlying music file and the data in the .itl and album art. Honestly I've spent at least 12 hours restoring my music collection earlier this year and again had it get corrupted yesterday.

At this time iTunes just isn't designed to run with the media files on a NAS. It might work for you for a little amount of time, but eventually you will start having corruption issues. If you don't believe me, spend some time looking at the posts within the Apple forums and elsewhere.

I use an Apple Time Capsule. I just need to mount it before launching iTunes.

He's right, you know.

I am also an "advanced" iTunes user. The best way is to use a disk attached storage. USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt or large internal drive that doesn't have your OS on it.

The entire iTunes managed folder must be located on a non boot drive. I.e. NOT your OS X drive.

I use twin WD MyBook 8TB drives ( 4X 4TB WD RED Drives). I run RAID 0 on both. The first is the music drive. The second is the TimeMachine Back-up of the music drive. Thunderbolt and USB 2.0/3.0 connector versions work "all the same" for Music. Of course Thunderbolt is the better.

Why RAID 0, because I want speed, and I don't need 100% uptime/redundancy, just back up. Keep it simple.

I paid about $700 this Feb for these drives, no issues.

I subscribe 100%. Don't run your itunes library from a NAS (I have synology as wel).

I have suffered these problems. And worse (you are maybe also suffering them but don't know it... yet)

More Specifically:

1 - Tracks linked to wrong files in itunes (can't update them in any way, thanks Apple), in some cases they link to the wrong MP3, in others they link to an album or artis folder (argh!) and itunes doesn't even see the difference.

2 - Itunes changed the names of tracks and moved them to wrong folders. When you play them in itunes another track plays instead.

I.e. you play Help by the Beatles, and you get "woman i love" by Barbra Streisand, but the file shown in the finder resides in the Beatles/Help folder, and is titled Help.mp3. Interestingly, when you play it in VLC the metadata displays correctly Barbra Streisand... The bad thing is that when you rename the file to "Woman in Love" put it in the right folder (under Barbra Streisand) and import it again, itunes shows it as "Help" by The Beatles until you actually locate it in itunes, double click on it and Bam: it transforms itself to Woman in Love (with album art and all). Duh?

3 - Complete folders relocated as tracks in another artist/album folder.

For instance I was missing all my Duke Ellington (22 albums) and after long searches I eventually found that the track "Back In Black" by ACDC had become a folder aptly called "Back in Black" and within it I could find all my Elington Albums. Unfortunatley these included a few tracks affected by problem 2 that would not import correctly. The file BackinBlack.mp3 is lost forever. In the itunes library the track Back in Black does not play, but itunes doesn't see the difference (duh?).

I managed to export the XML library to excel to analyse it: 58885 tracks... after running a few routines for the most obvious consistency checks (file name to song name, artist in path to artist in XML tag etc) I found that I had:

a - 33 tracks that were turned into folders (case 3). When exploring these in the library I could see that these led to a lump amount of 127 album folders, whose location was lost in the itunes library. That's 127 albums that itunes lost without noticing it!

b - 355 tracks misplaced (whereas they were moved into the wrong location) - randomly testing some of them I found that a few did not play the matching song (case 2 above). But they retain the appropriate MP3 tags. The others simply need to be imported again.

Unfortunately Excel doesn't give me the tools to check the consistency between track name and the actual music it plays, but for the rest it gave quite a solid appreciation of the terrible job itunes is doing. I wish I could extract the MP3 tags from the files to compare them with Itunes library information and run the last consistency checks.

While cases 1 and 3 are quite 'easy' to spot (but long to manually correct), I don't see any way to systematically track cases 2. Any help would be appreciated.

Now, all this happened for one single reason: I am hosting my music library on a NAS and obviously itunes hates this, but when your library reaches the size of 400 Gb, how can you consider keeping it local? I cannot express how angry this is making me. I don't see any solution to correct this, unless there is a way to reimport everything forcing itunes to read the MP3 tags, and not the itunes data it has embedded in the file. I can't even start to imagine how long this would take (on a network drives things can be quite slow...) and I wonder if itunes would be able to handle that at all! Frankly, after what I saw in the xml file... I doubt it.

Well after initial joy it turned to chaos! I ended up dumping my whole iTunes library off the NAS and off my Mac and rebuilding it from my non-NAS backup. iTunes does NOT WORK when stored on a (Synology 415+) NAS - the above comments are accurate - DON'T DO IT!

Just want to clarify.

• NAS (Network Attached Storage) is generic term for a storage on a network that uses a variety of protocols for communication.
• The brands listed here use a variety protocols. The default protocols may not be compatible with iTunes's file management.

Solutions:

• Use Thunderbolt - seriously!
• Use an iSCSI initator - which is a preferred protocol in this instance. Apple compatible product: http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/globalsan-iscsi-initiator/
• Most NAS systems support iSCSI

What I use, which is technically a NAS with iTunes:

Server:

iMac 12,1 -16GB RAM

256GB SSD

OS X 10.11.2

iTunes 12

Globalsan iSCSI Initiator

Network:

Apple TimeCapsule

Apple Airport Express

Apple Airport Extreme

AppleTV

Cat 6e Ethernet cables

NAS:

Core i5 PC -16GB RAM

4 X 6TB WD RED Hard Drives

OS: FreeNAS (with RAIDZ2- ~10TiB effective)

enabled iSCSI service.

enabled AFP service.

@o0OBillO0o

You can't compare your solution with the effort and investment of purchasing a simple NAS. I have tried and used the Synology series (that do a great job alltogether) and the WD MyCloud series (that are really extremely easy to setup, even easier than the Synology, but has less functionalities). The config you have is about four times more expensive I'd say. Only the iSCSI licences is 89$, for each Apple computer that will access the NAS? This may be a good professional solution, but not for a family network.

The examples I provide are cheap, plug and play solutions for home networks, that available for anyone, easy to setup and to use.

But stupid Itunes always loses the network drive. This is the error #1 that's at the core of so many issues. Also stupid Itunes always recreates a library when it sees one is missing. This is error source #2 (because after you eventually notice it you need to 'consolidate library', another major source of writing errors). The combination of these two errors gives us horror stories, just because stupid itunes always tries to proceed, regardless of the missing drive. One does not understand why Itunes is not designed to ask where is the missing drive while stopping all tasks, rather than trying to patch it up regardless of the missing drive and messing up the library consistency instead. This is obviously bad design.

One can also reasonably wonder why Apple has not designed the Timecapsule (which is 'only' double the price of a comparable size NAS: Synology or WD MyCloud, but it is still 'affordable') to host the Itunes library. Also Apple does not specify anywhere that you are about to enter a world of pain and frustration if you start using a NAS with itunes. So please don't give forum users the wrong impression. Globally speaking the statement remains: using itunes with a (normal/basic/reasonably priced) NAS solution is a nightmare.

BTW: After trial and error I have found that if you manually manage the files (i.e. store them at the appropriate location on the NAS yourself) and untick the box 'keep the library organised' you reduce risk errors, because you don't allow itunes to write to the NAS (except for writing some tags to the files such as cover art - but it will not create folders on the NAS and move files around). This mitigates a lot of issues, but is not a satisfying solution.