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Mallrat · Oct 31, 2003, 01:33 AM

I only have a 10GB HD on my computer and it is full... I was thinking of getting an external HD for all of my music, so I could put every Cd I have on this external drive.

Right now I have it set up so my external drive is just my 15GB iPod, but it would be nice to have a backup and when I'm home be able to play any song I have in my collection at the click of a button.

Anyone else do this?

I mean I think I might have 300 CD's at most if that, so i dont' need that big of an external drive.

The 40GB iPod are crazy! But cool. Don't need to get much bigger than htat.

How much HD do you think I shoudl get?

zigzag · Oct 31, 2003, 02:07 AM

I kept my iTunes library on a FW drive for a while and it worked fine. You just go into Preferences>Advanced and change the location.

A typical CD ripped at 128 AAC will be 45-75 MB, so 300 CDs would require a 20 GB drive at the very least, but I don't think they even sell 20GB drives anymore - might as well get a 30-40GB. Besides, your collection will grow - get the biggest drive you can afford. Keep an eye on dealmac.com for rebate deals.

Freeflyer · Oct 31, 2003, 10:14 AM

I have a 45Gb itunes library on an external 120Gb firewire drive. Works fine, and keeps my powerbook drive a bit cleaner.

J.

::maroma:: · Oct 31, 2003, 01:24 PM

I've got my collection on an internal drive, but separate from my boot drive. All that's on the drive is music (and it's nearly full). Works well. I like to think that it helps speed things up as while I'm listening to iTunes, it isn't accessing the music off the boot drive.

jamez bond · Oct 31, 2003, 06:09 PM

I have all my music (or most of it...been lazy ripping my new cds lately...) on an external Lacie FW drive, 200GB.
Works fine, but is a bit of a pain when I am moving about and have no music with me.
You can burn a cd with your mp3s and then make a playlist for that cd if you like... I have not done this yet, but it is on my list of stuff to do ..

Wet Jimmy · Nov 1, 2003, 03:34 AM

My music library is on an external 2.5 inch 40GB HD in a bus-powered Firewire enclosure (Sarotech Cutie) and it works a treat. Whenever I'm at a desk and working I've got my Cutie attached so accesing my music isn't a problem, and when I'm on the road, I can still access the songs thanks to the portable bus-powered enclosure.

Rockin'.

rhull89040 · Nov 5, 2003, 06:00 PM

I keep my iTunes library on 2 external 80 GB drives. One drive is full and the other has about 20GB on it. I also use Deja Vu to backup my library to an external 160 GB drive on a weekly basis. All of my music is either from my own CD collection or the iTunes Music Store. I got the backup drive after investing hours in adding artwork and adding tag info. I previously backed up to CD or DVD, but I find the hard drive solution a lot easier.

xylon · Nov 5, 2003, 11:58 PM

Yup, I keep my 15 GB iTunes library on my 160 GB Maxtor external drive. Works nicely and, as someone pointed out, it keeps your internal drive a little neater and a lot lighter.

My only problem though is that when the drive spins down and I want to access a song on it the spin up time isn't the greatest. System hangs for a couple of seconds before resuming business as normal. Not that big of a deal, but it is something to think about.

cdhostage · Nov 6, 2003, 01:47 AM

Definietly get a bigger internal drive if you're going to buy anything. I used to keep my entire collection of AIFF files (yay, 54 gigs of CD-quality audio I can't hear the difference between it and 192kbps AAC) on a big honkin lacie drive.

Problems with external drive : plugin / turnon time, spinup time, one more thing on the desktop and two more wires, slower access to music (tiny difference), higher chance of data corruption / loss due to local electric and magnetic effects and physical damage .
Also, it's more expensive than a new internal drive. Of course, you'd have to install a new HD or pay somone else to.
Having all of your data on one drive, and having a clone of it in a safe place, is the best solution.

macndave · Nov 11, 2003, 05:30 PM

Originally posted by Freeflyer:
I have a 45Gb itunes library on an external 120Gb firewire drive. Works fine, and keeps my powerbook drive a bit cleaner.
J.

How do you manage your music when you are away from the Firewire drive. I've a PowerBook and 17 gigs of music in my iTunes Library. I've a 160 gig FW drive in an external case. I would like use FW drive for a much larger collection (I've over 500 CDs and would like to convert them to AAC) of music when at home, but still have a large (~18 to 20 gigs) on the PowerBook.

Is there software that would allow one to manage separate libraries, sort of a "location" manager feature that would allow me to set "Home" for the firewire drive and "travel" for the PowerBook hard drive. Based on the locatoin chosen, the appropriate music would be available.

m2bored · Nov 11, 2003, 09:46 PM

I have a linux box on wifi that holds all my media (160GB maxtor HD..and no thats not all for music...I do some video editing.)

MickS · Nov 12, 2003, 09:18 AM

I have all of my music stored on a Sun server accessed via NFS (nice fibre channel disk array). If I need to take music with me I put it on my iPod.

The shared music store is used from 4-5 Macs in my house. The only problem we've had with this approach was when someone had the iTunes folder as the NFS mount point and had 'keep music folder organised' checked. This made a real mess of the directory structure and took a while to sort out.

The other thing to look out for is the 'copy music to iTunes folder' import option. If you leave this unchecked you can store your music anywhere. If the disk isn't present iTunes lets you know that it can't find the file but there's no bad effects.

Freeflyer · Nov 12, 2003, 11:37 AM

Originally posted by macndave:
How do you manage your music when you are away from the Firewire drive.

ipod. I load up 10Gb of whatever I fancy and take the ipod with me. That generally takes care of music for as long as I'll be away from home.

{QUOTE}Is there software that would allow one to manage separate libraries, sort of a "location" manager feature that would allow me to set "Home" for the firewire drive and "travel" for the PowerBook hard drive. Based on the locatoin chosen, the appropriate music would be available. [/B][/QUOTE]

itunes library manager

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/i...ymanager.shtml

is an apple script that allows you to have multiple libraries (only two if you use it for free, unlimited if you pay the shareware fee ($5) you get unlimited libraries). I think you could have one on the powerbook and one on the external, but I'm not certain as I haven't tried this.

Hope this helps.

J.