Internal or external?

I keep my iTunes music on an external network drive - I set this under preferences/advanced.  I manage the music from my Desktop PC, but also access it wirelessly from various laptops and a macbook (but avoid adding or deleting from those).

I have no problems with this. I don't notice a performance penalty, but the network is gigabit, so I shouldn't really.It frees up a lot of space on the PC too!

I have a MacBook Pro with a internal SSD. I keep my entire iTunes video and music library on an external 4 TB FW800 RAID 0, which is cloned on a regular basis to another identically configured RAID.

Just tell iTunes not to copy files to the iTunes Media folder when adding to the library (see Preferences->Advanced).

I ended up not streaming any of my iTunes media anyway. It sounds like rubbish, sound quality is just too disappointing.

Thanks guys.

As I have already started my ripping, can I finish the copying, then bung the files over to the external drive? Then link iTunes to that external drive?

Also, I have a WD Elements 320GB harddrive. Sufficient enough? Or can someone recomend something I should rather be using?

Thanks Awfully

Kage

You can process files anywhere you want, move them, and then tell iTunes where they are.

320GB may or may not be sufficient, depending on your needs. Look at the size of one album and multiply that by what you expect to rip. In the end 320 GB is not really that much space, and nowadays, 2 TB (i.e. (2000 GB) drives are not very expensive.

320 Gig I expect would be a little tight in time.  I started with 120 Gig and ran out of space very quickly, then I went for a 1 Ter WD Book for photos, Music and selected backups, which was running out of space, so now I have added a 2 Ter Buffalo dedicated to music.   I would start big.

I moved my music files several times, and copied subsets - I usually cleared the old iTunes library when I did that and rebuilt the entries by file/add folder to library.

Does the Mini have Firewire? I guess it should....?

Assuming it has FW then use a FW external drive. It's way quicker for file transfers etc but also it'll free up the USB as the connection for audio (via HighFace or Halide Bridge etc). USB, with an interface, is the preferred method vs optical. Especially if you plan on adding the nDAC.

How true.

My 4 TB RAID 0 is actually two, the second being a backup of the first.

Dear Kage, it might be slightly more complicated than this. I can definately recommend transferring everything onto an external HDD, but moving an existing iTunes library needs to be done with care. Please read: http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...new-hard-drive-2007/ . If you follow step by step, everything will run smoothly. My recommendation is to keep the Library itself on you computer's hrddsik, and have the library with the music files on your your ext hdd. Cheers,

Iver