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Level 1

5 points

iTunes library on WD MyCloud

Hi All,

I'll start from the beginning: I own an iMac which has mavericks installed, an iPhone5s, iPad, Apple TV and both my wife & daughter also have iPhones.

Due to all three of us owning iDevices our family iMac (which I also use for web design) is drastically running out of storage space! I currently use time machine to backup all data on to a external hard drive and want to keep that drive for that purpose only.

I purchased a WD MyCloud Hard Drive at the weekend with the idea of moving our iTunes and also iPhoto libraries onto it. This would leave us with an iMac that is no longer running out of storage space. This device is a 3tb network enabled cloud storage drive.

Basically I understand what I need to do in order to get my libraries onto the drive, I'm just really looking for assurance that it'll work and whether or not people have done this before.

I want to be able to still purchase music, movies and apps with iTunes, sync our iDevices and use my Apple TV still - will this all work?

Also when I backup to my external hard drive will the MyCloud device be included? As this will house my iTunes and iPhoto libraries...?

Appreciate any advice and help!

Thanks LiamS

iMac, iPhone, iPod, iPad and Apple

Posted on Mar 17, 2014 12:31 AM

Best reply

Limnos

Level 10

411,259 points

Posted on Mar 17, 2014 6:10 AM

To make sure you do understand how to move your libraries, you do not do it in preferences. You do it by copying the whole iTunes folder and then starting iTunes with the option key held down and guiding it to the new location of the library.itl file on the external.

You will need to reformat the drive to a Mac compatible format first.

The drive will always have to be on and mounted before using iTunes.

Your backup should include your external as long as you have it all correctly configured. It's too nebulous at this stage to comment on specifics.

In theory all should work as planned. In reality you would have to hope somebody who uses the exact same device as yours in the same way comes by the forum and responds. Sometimes problems with external devices are not so much related to iTunes use as general network or Mac compatibility problems and you'll likely see more posts on that in other forums or even other support sites (such as for the manufacturer's site).

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17 replies

zero7404

Level 3

812 points

Jan 21, 2016 1:34 PM in response to Limnos

Limnos,

I also have a my cloud and i've done what you suggested some time ago. unfortunately, loading itunes from a fresh start of the program takes 2-3 minutes. I am not sure why it's getting slowed down, I don't have QoS enabled on my router and so all traffic should be treated equally. Perhaps the drive is slow to respond ?

itunes server is enabled in the NAS, however it doesn't appear to work. I don't know if that would make my content load up faster in itunes - for whatever reason I cannot get a check mark next to WDMyCloud in the Home drop down icon. It's always "My Computer" which is checked. is there some sharing access setting which I need to change in itunes in order to get it to connect to the NAS's itunes server ?

I have itunes currently setup so that the media folder and library files all reside on the NAS. Perhaps if I had the library files only locally on the computer that itunes is installed, that would speed things up ?

I've been thinking about that but i want to make sure I do it correctly.

zero7404

Level 3

812 points

Feb 4, 2016 1:00 PM in response to zero7404

the my cloud was connecting to my mac using afp, for the shares i have connected to.

after i changed that to smb, itunes takes less time to loaf the library. also thr shares mount quicker and open folders much faster after i did this.

there is still a little lag, maybe a minute waiting for itunes to fully load the library and metadata. but its much better compared to waiting 2-3 mins before.

iTunes library on WD MyCloud