How to offload your iTunes library to a NAS | Ars Technica
Free up your local disks by shoving that iTunes library onto external storage.
iTunes is something a whole lot of folks tolerate. It's never been the best at any particular thing (except perhaps activating and syncing your iPhone or iPad, where it's the only official game in town), but it certainly does a lot of stuff. Sometimes slow, sometimes crashy, and perpetually gaining features, it's the app we use every day but rarely with any joy. One of its more frustrating aspects is its lack of an officially supported server component—Apple seems stubbornly unwilling to provide a real iTunes server, and so folks who would otherwise happily centrally locate a media library on a perfectly suitable NAS are stuck with islands of music.
Building a central multi-user iTunes server that works consistently and well— that's also easy to configure and maintain without needing remote administration tools or command line hackery—is annoyingly difficult. However, it is relatively easy to take your iTunes library and simply move it to a NAS. It's not the house iTunes server we wish we had, but it does get your data off of your computer's local hard disk drive.
Why would you want to do this? The reason that pushed me down this path is solid state disks. As iTunes libraries go, mine's middle of the road—about 50GB, made up of a mixture of music, audiobooks, and iOS apps but lacking movies, TV, and podcasts. Still, that's 50GB of SSD space that would be taken up by files which, frankly, don't particularly benefit from being on an SSD. I could relocate them to an external drive, but I don't have any spare external drives with enough capacity. What I do have, though, is a
with plenty of space on it.
So, I chucked my library onto my NAS. The process was both far easier and far more difficult than I figured it would be.
What we're not doing
Let's be clear going in: this is not a guide on how to set up an iTunes server. We're not going to describe how to get your music centrally situated and available as an attached library for all your iTunes clients. There are lots of ways to do this, but they just don't stand up over time. Regardless of the method, there are drawbacks and caveats galore. Even third-party tools which automate some of the annoyances are at the mercy of iTunes updates breaking everything.
We're not going to talk through any of that stuff—not in this article, anyway. We're focusing only on taking your iTunes library and relocating it out of your home directory and onto a NAS (though the instructions will work mostly the same with a direct-attached external drive).
Prerequisites
One thing that you do need to have turned on is iTunes' library management function. This option has gone by many names in past versions of iTunes, but as of version 11 it's in the "Advanced" tab of the iTunes preference pane. It reads "Keep iTunes Media folder organized."
This option gives iTunes control over where your media files live. When enabled, iTunes takes care of the file names and folder structure of your media library. This is an anathema to some folks, especially music collectors with their music carefully organized into expertly curated deep folder structures, but it's a requirement for this process. The movement of the library is an automated thing, and it relies on iTunes being able to automatically place the files where they need to be placed. If you've never toggled on that option, you'll need to do so in order to play along here.
Also, you need a NAS, or at least another computer with an available network share. You can follow along with an external drive, though not all of the steps will be applicable.
Why not just copy the files yourself?
Excellent question! The answer is that you totally can, but you'll lose metadata—play counts, ratings, last-played dates, and everything else that iTunes keeps in its database won't survive a manual copy. If you don't care about that stuff, then you don't need to do anything in this guide at all—leave the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" option set to off, remove all your files from iTunes (taking care not to actually delete them!), copy them to their new location, and re-add them to iTunes. Done!
However, if you've got a whole mess of ratings and other metadata you'd like to preserve, keep reading.
Getting started
To start, make sure the network share you want to use is mounted, and that you've got the correct permissions on it. Create a target directory inside the share, so that you have a specific folder to point iTunes at.
/ The share on my NAS where I'll be keeping my library. Lee Hutchinson
I've got a share on my Synology NAS called "Music", and inside that I've created a folder named "NAS iTunes".
Next, pop into iTunes, open the application preferences pane, and click the "Advanced" tab. The very first thing in the window is the "iTunes Media folder location" box. Click the "Change" button next to the box. You'll get a file picker dialog box, which you should point at the network folder you've previously created.
Specifying a network location for iTunes. Lee Hutchinson
When you click "OK" to close the Preferences pane, iTunes will ask you if you want to move and rename files in the new location to match the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" preference— say yes.
Now to actually move the files. This is easy, but it's also where my trouble started. Select File & Library & "Organize Library." This will start what could be a very long file copy, and if the copy completes successfully, you're probably done!
Ready, aim, fire—this will kick off a big copy job.
It might not complete successfully, though. I had several issues.
Dealing with trouble
Almost immediately, the copy job failed with a cryptic, absolutely unhelpful error message that said, simply, "Copying files failed. An unknown error occurred (-50)." Googling the error led to a large number of results but no clear solution: it appeared that error -50 is iTunes simply throwing up its hands in frustration and crying out for help. Worse, the location of all my iTunes music had been altered in the library, so a quick perusal of iTunes showed that every single item in my library was now listed as missing.
However, the problem actually turned out to be not entirely iTunes' fault. The library consolidation failed when iTunes attempted to copy a song with a very, very long file name (for the curious, it was a song by
titled "Sonic the Hedgehog 1 - Green Hill Zone, Stage Complete Theme, Labyrinth Zone, Marble Zone, Sonic Drowning Theme, Game Over Theme, Starlight Zone, Chaos Emerald Theme, Scrap Brain Zone, Spring Yard Zone, Game Over Theme, Extra Life Theme, and Ending Theme"). This bumped right into the 255-character filename limit on the Synology's ext3 file system, and the entire copy job aborted.
So, lesson one: know your target filesystem.
After shortening the file name, I ran into the second problem: re-selecting File & Library & "Organize Library" no longer did anything. The first thing iTunes did before even starting the copy was update its internal library so that all its contents' locations were set to the new Library location, so as far as iTunes was concerned, everything was already copied. I had to manually copy my library to the new location.
This led to a third problem. The Synology NAS's ext3 file system, unlike the HFS+ on my local disk, is case-sensitive. A huge number of files in my library were suddenly showing up as missing, even though a spot check showed that the files were actually right where they were supposed to be. Manually re-linking them caused iTunes to automatically reorganize them to folders and file names that exactly reflected the files' metadata, leading to situations like this:
/ A case-sensitive NAS leads to potential issues with capitalization. Lee Hutchinson
Notice that there are two "The Best of " folders, one with a capitalized "Of" and the other with a lowercase. Fixing this required quite a bit of song tag editing. Fortunately, the automatic library organization actually worked for me here, handling the deletion of extraneous folders after I'd fixed the song names. In the example listed above, once I'd found the one single song in the upper-case "The Best Of " folder and modified its album metadata with a lowercase "of," iTunes moved the song to the correct folder and deleted the uppercase one. Still, tracking down all the exceptions took several hours.
Lesson two: know your target filesystem.
The third and final issue I had was due to my library's age. I've been using iTunes since about the time it was released for PC near the end of 2003. My poor library has been with me since, surviving version upgrades from 4.1 to 11, even going through a platform switch from Windows to OS X near the end of 2007 when I converted. As iTunes has gained features, it's directory layout had changed, and as a result I've got crufty extra directories and files stored all willy-nilly behind the scenes.
For example, underneath the iTunes Music directory is...another iTunes music directory, with a bunch of orphaned files in it.
/ The detritus of a much-migrated library. Lee Hutchinson
That directory also contains a huge number of folders with more music.
/ iTunes has not aged gracefully, spilling folders everywhere. Lee Hutchinson
And, inside of that, there's yet another Music folder, with, you guessed it, more orphaned music:
/ Layers within layers within layers. We're going to have to go deeper. BWAAAAH. Lee Hutchinson
When iTunes attempted to consolidate my library to the NAS and the copy aborted, it also looks like it attempted to clean all of this up, fixing the iTunes database so that in the new location, everything was located where it should be in the current iTunes automatic organizational scheme—in album-named subdirectories under a single top-level folder. Because of the failed copy job, this didn't happen.
Because of the scattered state of my aged library, I had to then spend about another hour going through the library, re-linking missing files. This wouldn't have happened if the initial copy hadn't failed, which wouldn't have happened if I'd not had that one tremendously long file name.
Lesson three: For the love of all that is good and holy, know your target filesystem.
Auto-mount network shares
One final thing needs be done: with your library on a network share, it's important for that share to be mounted before iTunes starts up. For Windows users, this means that it's a good idea to assign your "Music" NAS share a drive letter and set it to auto- OS X users can do the same thing by adding your Music volume to the "Login Items" section of your account under the Users & Groups system preference panel. If you start iTunes without having its NAS share mounted, it will freak out and say all of your library files are missing.
/ Auto-mounting our network share under OS X. Lee Hutchinson
Eventual success
After quite a bit of clean-up, the end result works quite well. The actual iTunes library file with its metadata is still on my local HDD, but all of my songs, iOS apps, and audiobooks are safely on my NAS. New files dragged-and-dropped into the library or new iOS apps downloaded from the app store are all automatically stored on the NAS in the library location. Now that the initial work is done, the system is self-maintaining.
Folks with small iTunes libraries won't see much benefit from this, but if you've got a tremendous amount of stuff in your iTunes library along with some external space to store it, this is an excellent way to give you back a whole bunch of space on your boot volume.
This method works well with local disks, too, so if you have a big USB or Firewire external drive and you want to put your media on that, simply setting it as the library location in iTunes should do the trick—you won't even have to deal with the file system issues I had, since a locally attached external disk will almost certainly be formatted with the same filesystem as your source volume.
It's not a whole-house iTunes server for multiple users, but it's a step closer. Stay tuned, though: we'll look at some methods for achieving a full-on iTunes server in the near future.
/ Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.iTunes U on the App Store on iTunes
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The iTunes U app gives you access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools — plus the world’s largest digital catalog of free education content — right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Whether you’re majoring in molecular biology at a university, taking Spanish in high school, or just interested in European history, you now have a valuable tool to help you learn anytime, anywhere.Features:Let the discussion begino Students participating in private courses can pose questions on the course or any post or assignmento Other students in the class can jump into the discussion and ask more questions or provide answerso Teachers and students can keep up with the conversation when they receive push notifications as the discussion progressesFree courses in a wide array of subjectso Take free courses created and taught by instructors from leading universities and other schoolso See all assignments and updates from the instructor in one place, and check off assignments as you complete themo Take notes and highlight text in iBooks and see them consolidated for easy reviewing in the iTunes U appo Take course notes in class, or while playing audio or video lectures inside of iTunes Uo Access course materials, including audio, video, books, documents & presentations, apps, and iBooks textbookso Share your favorite courses with friends using Twitter, Facebook, Mail, and MessagesThe world’s largest catalog of free education contento Choose from more than 750,000 free lectures, videos, books, and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoologyo Browse collections from education and cultural institutions in 30 countries — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, LaTrobe University, University of Tokyo, MoMA, the New York Public Library, and the Library of CongressCreate courses on iPado Teachers can now create and update their courses using the iTunes U app on their iPad—getting started is fast, simple, and completely freeo Provide every student a course outline, write posts, distribute assignments, upload class materials, easily track participating students, and much moreo Take advantage of the built in camera on iPad to easily capture photos or videos and upload them for course assignmentso Create materials using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—or other apps from the App Store—and add them to your course by using "Open in iTunes U" from within each appo Teachers affiliated with qualified institutions have the option to publish their courses to the iTunes U Catalog—making them available to everyone for freeRequirements:o Participating in courses require iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 7 or latero Creating courses require iPad with iOS 7 or latero An Apple ID set up for use on the iTunes Storeo iTunes 10.5.2 or later is required to sync with a computer
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This app very nicely organizes materials and provides a host of features for the user.
It would be much-improved if it remembered where a user left off.
Unfortunately, every time you close the app for an extended period, you must start again at the beginning: digging into your selected class, lesson, material—and in the case of video, scrubbing to where you left off.
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and discover new iTunes Radio Stations and the music we love.IPHONE4新手，请简洁明了地告诉我：intunes和cydia还有app store是什么。都是有什么用？？_百度知道
IPHONE4新手，请简洁明了地告诉我：intunes和cydia还有app store是什么。都是有什么用？？
我买的的已越狱版的港版IP4，他帮我安装了很多。0.请简洁明了地告诉我：itunes和cydia还有app stor憨畅封堆莩瞪凤缺脯画e是什么。都是有什么用？？1.我现在CYDIA 里面有6个要更新的，可以更新吗？能在电脑上更新吗？
2.我想问：CYDIA里面下载的是什么？那itunes下载的是什么？3.听说最好别在Cydia上下载？为啥呢？因为要收费吗？4.同步助手和ifunbox是什么？ 类似CYDIA？/我在电脑上要用什么软件来下载破解文件？
真的很垃圾！！！！！！看他回我的就知道了。唉，可悲的人，连好朋友也不信，然后说我的是假货。有验证是正品了，他居然也憨畅封堆莩瞪凤缺脯画要亏别人，这种人我看他一辈子都没朋友！祝福他这辈子孤苦伶仃~~
（那种人固执不灵活，没有一点好印象，还说什么“好人难当”。）
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其他3条回答
如果LZ的机已经越狱的话里面应该会有同步推或者91同步助手，用这两个下东西都免费的。ITUNES是用来给你的IP装东西，比如歌之类的，反正只要你想放进IP的东西都要用ITUNES放。CYD憨畅封堆莩瞪凤缺脯画IA要更新的话最好别更新，有些软件更新是要钱的，收的钱是你银行卡的钱，不是话费，要说更新的话最好用91同步助手或同步推，因为CYDIA和他们两个类似，效果一样，但有些更新要收钱。至于IFUNBOX可以说没用，因为你在电脑上下载的破解文件都可以直接用ITUNES放。
你好，你楼上的垃圾真的是什么都不懂，还半夜来这里跟人狡辩。。唉。还是你比较实在！！问问题本来就是要回答的。楼上那垃圾什么都不回答，还来乱。。
没办法啊上威锋网的一般都很喜欢装13，感觉自己好像啥都懂似的，不过威锋网的资料和信息都挺齐全的，留网址：
唉，很感谢你。LS的垃圾，觉得自己很有钱。。就来亏别人说已越狱的就是假的。。无聊啊。。百度知道有多少和我一样是买已越狱的新手。可能他看到都去亏说是假的咯。。
最近实实在在回答问题的人真少，还是像你一样回答问题的，最好。
一向都实实在在回答问题的说～帮人什么的还是挺开心的～～
要越狱，然后进威锋的Cydia源装一个IPA补丁，这样才能装论坛里的盗版游戏 先越狱吧 在威锋网上有详细教程 到4.3.2版的都能够越狱 就是现在的最新
你买了二手货或者翻新。 不是越狱版港版ip4。
你怎么知道。。我这是正版的。。我爸找他很好的朋友买的，那手机店开了17年了。都是正版的。。
最好的朋友最好骗。
iphone没有越狱版本。 如果你是初忙 你去看看
91助手论坛或者威风网论坛
晕，你。。这越狱的是多给100块买来诶。。（是拆封了没错）。而且也没有白苹果，里面什么都很顺利啊。。。无语。我爸去他家买都更省。。。好朋友是一辈子的。你怎么这么说。。晕。
你太盲了。 还坑你100快钱。去给你的论坛看看把。举指之劳还收你钱。本来就不会白苹果。 不拿91手机助手安装软件你越狱一万次也不会白机。别心里过不去。 这东西就是这样的。还是自己看清楚了才知道 这到底是怎么回事
。。无语了，反正我一点也不会相信你。我看你是没有朋友吧。。我相信我爸和他朋友。
你是没看过：有些人买来新的IP4拿去店里叫人帮忙越狱啊。。。。。。怎么老是 遇到这么固执的人啊。
我这手机都是正品。你不爽啊？？
你可以不信啊。反正烧的是你钱。我现在拿白iphone4 32G配森海塞尔ie8i.你还想买耳机可以买ie8i相当爽了。主要是朋友周围被骗被忽悠的太多。看你越狱都收你钱。这还叫朋友？明明就是坑钱。听不进去别人话可以。。。有的时候稍微那么想开了就明白了。你一定要去 威风网 这个论坛看看。 这里较真儿没意义 反正钱都花了。
。。。无语，哼，好，那你说那IP4要多少钱啊？好朋友就不用赚钱？？我爸的朋友多得是，大部分都很真诚。你是被骗几次啊？我这就是正品。那你说：假的有哪些功能或什么不能用的？快发过来，我看按按看能不能用啊。。。
我没说你的是假的。。。有可能是翻新。你不要激动。。。 去iTunes storo 下载 保修查询 这个软件。安装后它会自动添加你的手机序列号，你把名字添加上去就可以了。然后会出来设备列表 你点进去刷新就出来你的
购买时间保修日期。以及生产地。注册状态。保修类型。保修期。电话技术支持。设备家族。设备描述。等版本等等。 如果不会下载。打开手机设置，通用，关于本机。看序列号后进去。
售后服务里有查询的一个页面自己看看把。 不想多说了。 好人不好当啊。。
。。自己前面发的明明就是说我的是假的，还扯到我爸的朋友。。。不实在地回答问题，还来这里和我这个大学新生吵。。。真的很讨厌。。好，我现在去查：我的序列号是82128LHZDZZ。晕，查好久，终于找到了。
自己查查把。 这点问题都解决不了。。。我说了二手或者翻新。 你怎么读书的？难道你不理解这个词？注意力不集中！
我查到了啊。是正品啊，我，真想骂粗话。。你如果都这样，很多新手都会围殴你！LJ。。我没法截图过来给你看啊，你这个垃圾啊。。。真的惹人厌恶，难怪都不相信朋友。。、、 连好朋友都不信，那一般的朋友那就不用说了。。 【電話技術支援：有效&維修和服務保固：有效&符合AppleCare Protection Plan 的資格】以上是我查到的， 什么都不回答我，还来这里扯。。
二手货或翻新就是假的啊，你没读书啊？？垃圾。。。
我看你最傻吧，朋友都没有，不相信朋友，我看你朋友也当你是傻子一样看待。。。自作自受要来说我是假货。。就跟你说是正品，什么都要和我辩啊。。唉，自以为有钱有脑子。其实什么都没有。连朋友都不信。可悲、、
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