Disk Space Issue

[MickeyLittle]

My wife's laptop is Windows 8.1 and she has 21GB free out of 1TB. I want to put her iTunes library (500GB) on an external hard drive. I have a Seagate 2TB NAS external hard drive. This will probably take 12-24 hours over our network. We have U-Verse 12-18 MBPS or whatever speed it is.

Would it be faster if I did this move USB 3.0 to USB 3.0? If so how do I get this Seagate to even show up as a USB drive? I've tried plugging a USB 3.0 cord in but it just won't show up that way.

Sorry for all the questions.

 

[sharpuser]

Hi, @MickeyLittle ,

It is not a good idea to have your iTunes library on a networked drive. The software is not designed for that, since it reads and writes very often to the drive. Your performance would likely be dismal, especially since you are saying that it would take more than 12 hours to copy 500 GB, which is less than 700K per minute. That is a typical network speed from the year 1999.

You must have that hard drive connected to a WiFi router via USB right now? If so, unplug that, and connect locally to your loved one's computer. Yes, Windows 8 should recognize that drive. Let's concentrate on getting that to work.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Ok when I get home I'll unplug the ethernet cord to the hard drive and use a 3.0 cord from it to my wife's laptop. Hopefully the laptop will see it this time since I wiped the HD clean this morning by doing a Clear All right before I left for work.

Maybe it wasn't recognizing it in USB mode yesterday because it was labeled as a Network Drive.

 

[sharpuser]

Let us know how it goes!

 

[MickeyLittle]

Is there any tricks to moving iTunes from a desktop/laptop to an external hard drive? I am fixing to start and I believe I read somewhere to use the move command and not copy/paste.

 

[sharpuser]

@MickeyLittle ,

The steps to move your iTunes folder to an external hard drive are here.
Move your iTunes Media folder on a Windows PC

 

[MickeyLittle]

@MickeyLittle ,

The steps to move your iTunes folder to an external hard drive are here.
Move your iTunes Media folder on a Windows PC

Sir this is perfect and looks to be well underway! Thanks so much for the encouragement and tips on getting this done. I'll report back later when finished but I can already see from the bar movement that it must be 2% - 3% completed and it has only been transferring for around 5 minutes.

 

[leeshor]

What's up Mickey?

 

[MickeyLittle]

What's up Mickey?

Hey Lee, just messing around trying to clean up the wife's mess!

Well 412GB is the official total and it took less than 2 hours! Very nice! So now I'm off to delete the library off her laptop's hard drive.

 

[sharpuser]

Great progress, @MickeyLittle . Now if you want to start iTunes on that computer, make sure the hard drive is plugged in. You now have lots of room for other items on that drive, too.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Yes sir. It is working great. You saved me a ton of time and lots of headaches down the road as I'm sure having iTunes on a network drive wouldn't be near as stable or as quick as a hard wired drive!

Thanks Again!

 

[sharpuser]

Better is a bowl of vegetables where love is, than a plate of meat where there is hatred.
Better is a fast external drive with just enough space, than a slow networked drive with plenty of room.