ITunes Library on a NAS

If I move my entire iTunes library to my NAS. Will I be able to sync my iPhone/iPad without any problems?

Theoretically no problems. Keep your fingers crossed. There's plenty of posts on this forum about things suddenly going wrong between iTunes and NAS libraries. Make sure you have a backup.

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?

You do not "point" with preferences, you point by starting iTunes while holding down the option/alt key.

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?

You remember to always make sure it is awake before starting iTunes. If you have your entire library on the external drive and start without the external on, iTunes will warn you there is no library. You then turn on the external and try again. Or you browse the web and see if you an find and adopt an Apple script which checks for the presence of a mounted volume before starting iTunes, and always start iTunes with the Applescript. Oh, and quit iTunes before the external goes to sleep. Remember, you are walking on the edge of use intent here.

How exactly do you have your library structured? Is it just media on the NAS or the whole iTunes collection including media files, library files, artwork, etc?

iTunes does everything through a central database file (library.itl). This stores the information as to where your media files are located. If for any reason you start iTunes and it cannot find the media in the location exactly as listed in the database file you get broken links. A common thing to happen is starting iTunes before the external drive is turned on. Sleep can cause issues, as can anything that changes the identity of that drive as iTunes expects to identify it when iTunes first starts up.

From reading posts here I'd say in general that seeing issues with NAS and iTunes is not too uncommon and the situation where the glut of media outgrowing internal drive storage on the small computers people want these days is still outpacing the ability of iTunes to truly handle network storage that this glut is requiring.

What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management

What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html

Have you restarted itunes with the option key held down and guided it to the library.itl file location?

So, I have done this. Here's the recipe. What I did was use disk utility to create an image on my Drobo FS - which I called "iTunes Library". I then mounted that partition on my computer and saved the iTunes library to it. So iTunes thinks its "local" but its not.

So before I run iTunes, I just double click on a shortcut to mount that image on my computer, and then run iTunes. It works very well. It also allows my wife to run iTunes (and iPhoto as well) from her computer.

My network at home is GigE and I have jumbo frames enabled. Everything is wired, so performance is not an issue.

Last point - I store all my media on the drobo FS as well - however that is not on the image. The image is soley for the library file. The media files are just stored in a folder called "iTunes Media" on the Drobo FS. On the image, where the library is stored, all the folders there point towards the iTunes media folders on the DroboFS.

Hope this helps you solve your issue.

Btw, I get 25 Mb/s write and 70 Mb/s read to/from the Drobo FS. I can stream anything to apple tv's in the house w/o any performance issue.

OMG - you've done what I am trying to do and that is put ALL my iTunes onto a NAS....

I've spent the last three days trying to get Netgear to help me with a NV+ V2 model I purchased a couple of days ago to do just that. Sorry to say that Netgear couldn't figure out my problems bla bla Not very good service tbh. Another story though....

May I now ask what Drobo you opted for and if you have any recommendations, tips or tricks that could help me with this.

TIA

Jason

I have a Drobo FS. However, I'll sell you my Drobo FS so I can buy a Synology 1512+ or Synology 1812+.

🙂

Those two models have better write speeds.

WOW - they are the beefy ones for sure... You must have some serious amounts of data to store??

As I have a faulty Netgear unit I am returning this back to the vendor for a refund and exchange - many thanks though for your offer :-)

I was led to believe that Drobo stored the data in a Drobo factor and could therefore only be accessed by another Drobo unit? Preventing you from swapping your drives into another makers unit?

With reference to your NAS & iTunes...

Any problems?

Large library of music and films streaming without any issues?

You can sync your iPod, iPhone and iPad with the library on the NAS without any issues?

Thanks for such a quick reply btw - made my day to see something positive regarding my problems... :-)

Jason

Drobo stores the data in such a fashion that you cannot take the disks out and pop them into another NAS and be prepared to see the data. You need to copy the data off of your current disks and then back onto the Drobo. However once the Drobo is sitting on your network, any machine can see the data. We have Macs and Windows machines.

If I leave iTunes open for a while (2+ days, sometimes it loses the connection and I need to eject the iTunes library disk), otherwise no issues to date. My media folder is over 1Tb. My library folder still is tiny as remember it is just a database file.

I can sync my iDevices from any computer which has iTunes running and has the library drive mounted on the desktop.

Hello again,

You mentioned that if you leave your iTunes open for a while it sometimes loses the connection and you then need to eject the library disk.... Do you know why this is by chance? I ask as I have heard of this before and I am sure this may frustrate me over time....

I plan on using my MacMini with my NAS to feed my iTunes full time - music on the MacMini while my TV shows & Films stored on the NAS. Music is used more often in the house so I could set the NAS to power down at certain times of the day (when not in use) and have the mini full time for my music library.. :-)

Again thanks for all your help in this matter.

Jason

I have Sonos 3 which I am very happy with, I also have a Mac Book Pro and Apple TV (1). The mac Book Pro is running out of Disk space and I want to move data (Musci and video) to a NAS. I want to be able to listen to the SONOS without the MAcBook being booted up. I would also like to have the Apple TV Video stored on the NAS. I have a fairly large library of films which I would want to be able to click somewhere on to transfer them to Apple TV form the NAS rather then store them on the Mac Book

Any recommendations?

I was looking at QNAP but it looks a bit expensive compared to other NAS - Is the QNAP worth the investment?

I run my Sonos from my Time Capsule. Always online. You need to copy all of your media files to the TC (I just dragged my Itunes folder over) and point Sonos to it....

I love the idea of this, but is there any way to get iTunes to delete the files off disk when you remove them from the music libary even if they are not copied to the library? I want to clean up my collection in iTunes, but I want to remove the files altogether, not just from the library ... and I would prefer to keep iTunes set up with just the library but not it's own copies of the songs.

Not sure if that's even possible.

-Doc

Why not just delete the library files and then let iTunes rebuild them once you have cleaned up your files?

Hello,

It's a bit too daunting of a task to do it manually ... I was hoping to do it in iTunes and let it delete things off the disk as I go.

I currently have nothing in the library at all. If I had enough room on the NAS, I'd copy a chunk into the library (adding the media to the itunes folder automtically) and then delete the originals after getting the in-library copies all sorted out. I'd need to be able to have iTunes delete the unwanted files in the libray from the disk though.

-Doc

Quick questions on this particular post.

1) Do you have to create an image for iTune Library or can you just mount the NAS and have a folder that contains iTune Library files

2) Do each machine have its own iTune lib data base?

3) When you sync multiple devices, does it keep track of which device has what on the play list, apps?

4) Do each machine have its own iTune user ID (multiple users using single library source files)?

Thanks

I have a question regarding all of this.

I have a WD MyBook Duo Live NAS and want to move all my music to it.

It supports iTunes playback etc, but not sure what that means...

I assume I have two options:

1. Move the iTunes folder from my local to anywhere on the NAS. Then point iTunes to the location under advanced in iTunes. I see problems with this is that you do not get that option using iOS devices, so how would they connect to it?

2. Create Shared library - I have tried this by moving a few albums to the iTunes location on the NAS. Doing this, the music show up in the iMac under Shared folders, but am not sure how to get the music using iTunes on the iOS devices?? ( i CAN use WD2GO on the iOS, but the interface is rubbish).

I have several iPhones, ipads, mac air, imac and want to be able to do the following:

1. play music from the shared library from ALL devices,

2. copy files local for when we travel with the iPads for the kids.

3. Update the music from the iMac (use that as the main computer) as well as edit song details etc.

How can I do this?

Thanks!