iTunes Music Library spread over two (or more) drives?

tontontonton
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I have a PowerBook and a 40GB internal drive. I've set aside 25GB for my iTunes library, but it's almost full, and I want to keep letting it grow at least until I can fill up my iPod. I'll need to spread it across to my external 30GB firewire drive.



How do I do it? Can I just move some of the folders across to the other drive and make an alias of those locations?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    akumulatorakumulator Posts: 1,111member
    I would probably just move the folders to the drive, delete the old ones from iTunes and your old hard drive. Then, just drag the folder they reside in back into iTunes. If this is the place where you'll be importing all future music into, be sure to designate it in iTunes preferences. And also (in preferences) don't have iTunes copy music to music folder.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    trydtryd Posts: 143member
    I'm in the same situation, but a bit more extreme.



    I'm in the process of ripping my CD's (about 2200 of them - ripping in 192 kbps AAC) and am soon running out of space on the 250 GB external disk I use for my music library. I will need to add another disk soon. I could of course put it all on a 0,5 TB disk, but they don't exist.



    So the question stands:

    How do you spread an iTunes library over 2 disks (if you want iTunes to handle organizing it all).

    I could of course turn off the automatic handling of the library, but I would like iTunes to arrange the library for me.



    One possibility is to buy another 250 GB disk and build a 0,5 TB RAID. Any other?



    Any thoughts on how to do backups?



    And to those of you who thinks a 40 GB iPod is overkill - you don't know what you are talking about 8)
  • Reply 3 of 10
    othelloothello Posts: 1,054member
    you can't share a library across 2 disks as far as i know



    (but i would love to be proved wrong!)
  • Reply 4 of 10
    othelloothello Posts: 1,054member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    Haha I was right.



    3 steps:



    1. Copy whatever artist folders you want to a folder on your second drive.

    2. Replace those same artist folders in your music folder with aliases pointing to the artist folders on your second drive.

    3. Third step? There is no third step!



    This method preserves all playlists, doesn't produce any error messages as long as you keep the second drive mounted whenever you run iTunes, and syncs everything as normal to your iPod.



    excellent. and i don't mind admitting i was wrong!!
  • Reply 5 of 10
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tried





    I'm in the process of ripping my CD's (about 2200 of them - ripping in 192 kbps AAC)





    Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember hearing that AAC compresses better at 128 than 192, that is it sounds better, or that the difference in sound is so small that even if you had very good speakers you'd be hard pressed to hear it.



    though I could be mistaken, but if I'm not, that could save you a lot of space doing 128 kbps AAC...*shrug*



    could have just been on one song that was analyzed , ya know, compression works better on some music than others and all that.



    It would be worth looking into though, that's a lot of music you are pushing, don't want to end up with a bunch of wasted space that doesn't sound as good as it could.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember hearing that AAC compresses better at 128 than 192, that is it sounds better, or that the difference in sound is so small that even if you had very good speakers you'd be hard pressed to hear it.



    No, higher bit rate will always sound better in the same format because it provides more data for a more accurate waveform.



    You're probably thinking of how people have compared *different* formats. Many people have said a 128 kbps AAC is comparable to a 160 or 192 kbps MP3.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    idaveidave Posts: 1,283member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember hearing that AAC compresses better at 128 than 192, that is it sounds better, or that the difference in sound is so small that even if you had very good speakers you'd be hard pressed to hear it.



    As Brad says, higher bit rate will always sound slightly better. The debate goes on as to how much better and whether it's worth it, with regard to disk space. I rip to AAC at 160Kbps, only because I've heard the argument that the higher bit rate sounds better than 128, not because I can actually hear the difference myself.



    Did anyone else notice tryd has 2200 CDs?! Holy crap.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    trydtryd Posts: 143member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iDave

    As Brad says, higher bit rate will always sound slightly better. The debate goes on as to how much better and whether it's worth it, with regard to disk space. I rip to AAC at 160Kbps, only because I've heard the argument that the higher bit rate sounds better than 128, not because I can actually hear the difference myself.



    I can hear the difference on a stereo. Not on the iPod or through the computer. I only listen to the ripped songs through the iPod, never through my stereo (Conrad Johnson amplifiers and Quad electrostatic loudspeakers), so I should probably just rip at 128 kbps. But I think that 192 kbps is a compromise that will let me use the iPod on the stereo if need be without being too dissatisfied.



    Quote:

    Did anyone else notice tryd has 2200 CDs?! Holy crap.



    That's nothing. I have a friend who has more than 20 000 CDs. I know of people that have more than 100 recordings of Beethoven's 5th symphony.
Sign In or Register to comment.