How do I use dedicated storage and iTunes?

do you have Apple support ? They walked me through the steps by phone . Took half an hour . Lots of steps .

Thanks. I guess the issue also is what is the best what to store it: NAS, separate hard drive, etc.?

An NAS with Itunes server built in like the one offered by western digital will be best. You won;t even need your computer to be on that way.

I can't remember exactly how to do it but basically you plug in your external drive to your mac mini, and then in itunes you go to advanced settings and one of your choices for storing your music will be the hard drive. In other words your pointing your library to the hard drive, so when you load your music it will automatically be stored on your new drive. It works like a champ. Oh, and once your hard drive is recognized you can drag and drop "copy" all of the music that is already stored on your mac mini. Hope this helps.

Greg

I was recommeneded using a seperate ssd drive by Oyen called minipro . it was $170 shipped . very small almost the size of a deck of cards . 1tb . Owner of db labs has took all the guess work out of setting up a macmini for optimal performance . Great forum discussions on audiocircle he was a part of .

Wow, thanks!

Hi Tarraga
I am not that knowledgeable with computers BUT recently I ripped all my cd's using Itunes AIFF format and stored the digital files in to an external USB hard drive the WD Mypassport Studio 1TB.Here is what I did.
Open Itunes and click on itunes button top left,then choose Preferences,another smaller window opens up,go to advanced Settings (the gear wheel symbol),there you given the choice to iTunes media folder location.If you have an external drive attached to your mac mini it will show up there as oppose to the internal drive,and choose that as your destination drive and to also to duplicate your entire itunes music library.
Hope I was of help.
Regards
George

+1 Yiorys. You can demonstrate this to yourself by setting up a subfolder on your 1TB backup drive and designating it within iTunes preferences as above.

For the record, a minor correction to something that was said above. The Oyen Digital 1TB external drive does not utilize an SSD (solid state drive). It utilizes a conventional 5400 rpm mechanical laptop hard drive, in an external enclosure.

At this time, 1 TB SSD's continue to be VASTLY more expensive than the price of that Oyen unit. There are some hybrid drives, though, which contain both a small SSD and a large HDD, that are available at reasonable prices. I'm doubtful, however, that they would provide any advantage in an audio application relative to purely mechanical HDD's.

Regards,
-- Al

Adding to my previous post, some of the smaller Oyen drives utilize SSD's, but not the 1 TB drive. As indicated at OyenDigital.com, the largest SSD they offer is 480 GB. And, per their website, that lists at $410 in its cheapest version!

At Newegg.com, the least expensive raw SSD (without an enclosure) that approaches 1 TB is a 960 GB drive selling for $1,000. Some others sell for much more than that.

Regards,
-- Al

I am using a 1TB Oyen drive and it is not a SSD. It is dead quiet thou and has been working perfectly for several months now.

Re the original question, see this procedure at the Apple support site.

That document pre-dates iTunes 11, btw, although I suspect that it remains applicable.

Regards,
-- Al

It's pretty easy to do this.

Copy your entire folder "iTunes" to the external USB or Firewire drive. Depending on size, it might take a while.

In iTunes preferences, click the Advanced tab, and in the area that says 'iTunes Media folder location', just to the right, click Change, then point to the new location.

You can also split your collection into multiple libraries, i.e., one for Classical, one for Jazz, etc. When starting iTunes, press the option key while you start iTunes, and it will ask you which library to select.

You DO know that your Airport Express is limiting your sample rate to 16/44.1, correct? Is that why your upsampling at the DAC?

Thanks to all who responded. There seems to be a consensus here and I just ordered a Synology 2 TB NAS and will then move the files to it. To answer Rhanson739's question about AP Express being limited to 16/44.1, yes, that exactly is why I'm using a Cambridge Audio DacMagic up sampling DAC. I also recently purchased a Pangea Power supply for it and that made an immediate positive difference in performance.

Great, Tarraga. Sounds like that setup will work well for you.