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Question

Need help pls- locating iTunes/iPhoto with 2 external drives

Jan 22, 2013 10:32PM PST

Hi,
I've got a Macbook running Mac OS X10.5 and until recently had one external hard drive backing it up. I was constantly having problems losing songs on iTunes although they were still located on the drive. I would tell the library where to locate the song and I just seemed to go round in circles. I finally wondered if the problem might be because everytime I backed up Time Machine created a new folder, so all the songs were spread across many folders. This is probably wrong! But anyway I decided to try to make one single iTunes library. To make things easier I bought a second hard drive as I needed one anyway, I now have a lot of pics (in iPhoto) very precious to me so I thought I could do with two backups.
Before I started moving songs around I backed up my whole system as well as the iPhoto library located on the original hard drive. However now when I try to tell iPhoto to look at the new drive I get an error along the lines of not having write privileges!
This is really frustrating me as I have spent time copying half of the songs on the original drive to one location before I even bought the second drive.
Can anyone please shed some light on where I should locate the iTunes and iPhoto libraries, or why I might be having problems with read/writing?
Thanks in advance and sorry for being long-winded.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
So you purchased a new drive and when you plugged it in
Jan 23, 2013 7:27AM PST

it just worked.
Mounted on the desktop and everything. Great stuff.

Seems to be only one problem, you cannot write to the new drive. When we see this happen, it is usually because the drive is formatted as NTFS (Windows format). While the Mac can read an NTFS formatted drive, it cannot write to it without the use of third party software.
If you are planning on using this drive only on a Mac, then use Disk Utility to reformat it to Mac OS X Extended(journaled).
CAUTION: EVERYTHING on the drive will be destroyed during this process.

Now to the Libraries.
iTunes: The best place to have your library stored is on the internal drive, however, if you do not have enough room on there, then a larger external becomes the place for it.
To make the move easier, you need to do some housework first. With iTunes running, choose File, Library, Organize Library and then Consolidate Library.
This moves all your tracks INTO the iTunes library.
Now open iTunes preferences, Advanced and put a check mark in both of the top boxes. Keep media folder organized and Copy file to media folder.
From the sounds of things, it would appear that you have been digging around inside the iTunes library, probably to organize things in there. DON'T. Leave it all alone. Just ignore the inside of that Library Folder.
No need to move songs around, just let iTunes manage the whole lot.

Once you have everything inside iTunes, it is a simple matter to drag the entire iTunes folder to an external drive.
All the tracks will move with it, as long as you have Consolidated the Library, then go back to iTunes preferences, Advanced and choose the new location of the iTunes Library. At next launch, that is where iTunes will look for the library.

iPhoto: Drag the Entire iPhoto Folder to the External. No Consolidation with this one. Once moved, launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and iPhoto will ask you for the location of the Library. Show it and it will continue to go there.

Backups: Let Time Machine take care of all that too. It makes only one folder, usually the name of your Mac, and makes the first FULL backup inside that folder. All subsequent, INCREMENTAL, backups are placed inside their own folders inside the main one.
No need to go messing in there either. Digging in there is NOT the way to restore missing files. There is a Time Machine App in the dock, just designed for that very purpose.

I would suggest that you leave Time Machine on the drive it is on and use the new drive for the two libraries.
Remember to configure Time Machine to back up the drive with the libraries on.

Hope that helps

P

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Thanks!!!
Jan 23, 2013 7:47AM PST

Aaaaah OK this makes a lot of sense, and that is a fantastic suggestion, thanks very much. I also have a feeling this might be the case with my first external drive (not NTFS formatted) but I think I might have to just leave that one for the moment to be sure I have it all backed up first so I don't lose anything.

One last question, when I consolidate the iTunes library, where should I have it located? It is too large now to have it on my computer, so once the new drive is formatted should I make an iTunes folder on the new drive, select Preference in iTunes and direct it there, so that all the new music is consolidated into that new folder?

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Once you have Consolidated the current iTunes Library,
Jan 23, 2013 8:53PM PST

the one on the internal, just drag the entire folder to the external and tell iTunes where it is.

Because you set the Consolidate and Organize options in Preferences, all new music will be sucked into the Library on the external.

P