Backing up iTunes libaray to NAS

[jimglasgow]

Hi Folks,

Hopefully somone can help me with this one please bear with me as i try and explain!

I have a Sonos, NAS Western Digital MyWorld and iTunes, I am trying to find out how I can backup my iTunes Library to my NAS box, preferably automatically, espiecally after I download new tunes from the iTunes Store, as it places the download into my iTunes library, and i want it on my NAS, as my Sonos box takes its music from my NAS. I'm trying to figure out how they can replicate one another. The NAS appears under Shares in iTunes.

Hopefully I have explained it well enough, as the way im doing it seems a very tedious way to do it!

Download music into iTunes.

Go to iTunes folder on mac, copy new songs and paste into NAS

Then finally, update music index through Desktop controller for Sonos

Surely there must be an easier way!

[BarryM]

Once you have copied all your music to your NAS you could tell iTunes that the media folder location is now on the NAS.

That way the only thing you will need to do is download the tune, then ask Sonos to update the index.

I don't use a Mac (nor iTunes), but on Windows you change the folder location via Edit|Preferences|Advanced.

[jimglasgow]

Originally Posted by BarryM

Once you have copied all your music to your NAS you could tell iTunes that the media folder location is now on the NAS.

That way the only thing you will need to do is download the tune, then ask Sonos to update the index.

I don't use a Mac (nor iTunes), but on Windows you change the folder location via Edit|Preferences|Advanced.

Yes, thought about that but i think i may have more in my NAS and therefore when i sync it to my iphone it maybe a problem moving things around

[birdman325]

I have a similar situation. I keep and access all my music on my Mac through itunes. I backup through Time Machine backup onto a 1 TB USB drive I have connected to the Mac. I also have a 1 TB NAS on which I replicate all of my music from itunes and my Sonos accesses the music off the NAS.

While I could move the "pointer" from itunes on the Mac to access the music stored off the NAS, I don't and for simplicity, just keep itunes running off the Mac. That does mean that each time I acquire / purchase new music onto my computer, I have to manually "copy" the music to the NAS and then re-index through Sonos. It is a bit of a pain but I have yet to figure out a way to keep the Mac and the NAS in sync automatically. Since I don't buy music that often, it is not that tedious.

[BarryM]

Originally Posted by jimglasgow

Yes, thought about that but i think i may have more in my NAS and therefore when i sync it to my iphone it maybe a problem moving things around

As I said I don't use iTunes, but I don't understand the problem.

You would only be moving the iTunes repository to the NAS. It should still work OK. If you have non-iTunes music on the NAS, just keep it a separate folder. Only tell iTunes about one folder, and tell Sonos about both.

You would have problems if you try to synch in another location, ie away from your NAS, maybe that is what you meant.

You could find some software to assist with keeping your NAS and PC folders in synch. I use BeyondCompare on the PC. It makes light work of the job. Use Google to find something for the Mac, or look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_synchronization

[Ubertaffy]

I have done both. For quite a while, and for reasons that seemed logical at the time, I had my local drive house my itunes media folders and used a free program called synctoy 2 from microsoft to "backup" all changes to my NAS, which was what Sonos pointed to. I suppose there are a few minor positives to this setup, but in the long run it added additional steps that I didn't like and wasted space for me.

So now (and for a while) I have itunes point to the NAS itself as its library files (I actually have all the itunes files there too so Sonos will still import the playlists, and so any computer in my house can access the library and files to make changes or add new music). I still use synctoy, but now its just as a backup to a USB drive.

[birdman325]

When I first bought my NAS (Linksys Pro Duo) I had it set at RAID 1 (2 x 500 gb) and I moved all of my music off the Mac onto the NAS and pointed iTunes to the NAS. It worked fine (except for some reason, the MAC would periodically lose the NAS and I would have to "reconnect") until the NAS crashed. Thinking I was fine because I had it set up with the mirror drive, I was dismayed to find that it was not a problem with either of the drives, but it was a problem with the boot sequence of the NAS. I spent hours on the phone with support and while they were very supportive, we could not get the NAS to go back on line, so the only option to recover all of the data was to send it to data recovery shop. Not a cheap exercise. (Unlike the DLink where you can just open the case and remove the drives, this is a sealed unit).

So I sent the NAS back and they sent me a new one as a replacement. Luckily, I had retained all of the data / music that I had initially moved off the MAC, so now I run itunes off the MAC with a backup using Time Machine and as I get new music, I manually copy it to the NAS and re-index. Now that I have Sonos, I no longer need other computers in the house to access the music, as they do so through Sonos.

[jchapman9]

Something simple like SyncBack (free version) can be scheduled to run regularly (you can use it to back up other folders, such as Documents etc) and maintain the copy on the NAS. You then have a copy on both your PC and the NAS, and don't need the PC on. As previously mentioned, you need to update the index on your Sonos after purchases have been backed up.

[jimglasgow]

I understand the reasoning behind pointing iTunes to the NAS, but the problem i have is when the NAS exceeds the capacity levels of the iPhone 32Gbyte, and therefore syncing between iphone and the libarary will be a problem m, more capacity on the NAS than the iPhone...unless anyone knows how to manage this i will make the NAS the default for the Itunes libarary

[jchapman9]

Create a playlist in iTunes called iphone and drag in it the stuff you want on the iphone only, up to the memory limit of the iphone, then change the music sync setup to only sync that playlist.