Consolidating all of your setup and running Serato/iTunes directly from an External Hard Drive (XP

From Ssl-wiki

Follow the thread @ http://scratchlive.net/forum/discussion/?discussion_id=6163#new If you have a MAC and have accomplished this please add your input.

The idea is to centralize your iTunes/SSL databases and music on ONE external drive (WINDOWS) that can be used as your main storage medium for ALL of your digital DJ system. This enables us to:

• Not have to worry about synchronizing new music on both my home PC and my gig laptop. No synching is required because everything lives in one drive.

• If you are an iTunes user, keep iTunes and SSL perfectly matched without having to juggle confusing database locations, etc.

• Operate Serato/iTunes on your home PC to make changes and edit files (bigger screen) without having to take out the laptop and rig everything up just for a few minutes worth of changes (working on a tiny screen and with the stupid pointer pad gets tough after a while).

• Pull your EHD (external hard drive) out and plug it to your PC and you will be seeing exactly what you see on your laptop at your gigs.

• This should also allow you to play your music on any* other computer (* See configuration details below).

This is how I went about it. Please note, I keep all my music in one location only and I let iTunes organize the music, so I won't have to worry about missing links to files that are scattered all over my computers/network. For you these tips may entail moving/consolidating files, etc, which is covered in other posts within the thread above and the http://scratchlive.net forum. If you have a MAC and have accomplished this please add your input in a separate topic.

PART 1 - First things first:

• DO A BACKUP OF ALL DATABASE DATA for both iTunes and SSL.

• DO a backup of your STAR RATINGS with this free script: http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2006/02/03/itunes-saveratings-script/

• TAKE YOUR TIME in order to go through this procedure, to test, and to make sure that you won't have anything go wrong at a gig, etc. I accomplished everything in a few hours. Had no problems at all.

• If you can, do a back-up copy of all your music (should probably have one anyway in case you ever have your HD crash/fall & break/virus/etc.)

• If there are programs other than iTunes/SSL which require the My Music folder as a default for their operation/storage of files, you may want to figure out what should be done with them as well.

• I found out that the EHD has no knowledge of its own name, it is the PC that you connect it to that assigns a name for any device. In order for this to work your hard drive must appear with the same name on both computers [For example: SSL DRIVE (S:) ] If you have NOT already changed your EHD's drive letter to the same thing on both of your PC's then go for it, change an existing drive letter on a drive/drive partition, or on a volume, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.

4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

5. Click Change.

6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.

7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change. The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

(See more at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844&sd=tech)

PART 2 - MAKE IT HAPPEN:

The “mystic” step that makes the rest happen was easier than I expected (I thought it would involve some heavy OS/iTunes Hacking). In my case, like most people, I wanted for iTunes to change where it stores its database files (currently you cannot tell iTunes where to store its database, it uses Window's "My Music" folder by default), but I never thought that things could function if I simply instructed Windows to move the My Music folder anywhere else, specially not on an EHD! But it works just fine...

1. Verify that iTunes and any other programs using the location of your Windows XP My Music folder are closed. The default location for this folder is C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music

2. Download and install Tweak UI from the Microsoft PowerToys website - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx (Note: This utility is for Windows XP only)

Once you have installed Tweak UI, open it from the Start menu...

3. In the column on the left, click on the plus symbol (+) next to My Computer and select Special Folders.

4. In the right pane on the Folder list, click My Music.

5. Click the Change Location button. You may see a warning message appear with precautions for changing this setting; after reviewing the message, click "Yes" if it suits you.

6. In the resulting window, browse for the directory on your EHD where you would like iTunes/SSL to find its database files (in my case it was S:\My Music).

See tech article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302398

You should be done!

Only ONE PC can use the EHD at a time even if it has dual firewire ports and only one PC will be able to run iTunes/Serato at a time. Serato/iTunes will launch properly and load their database data as usual (considering that all file structure remained the same within the relocated My Music folder). Upon launching iTunes on the machine that does not have the EHD connection iTunes will show an error as it cannot locate the database (it cannot find the My Music folder), don't worry, if you forgot close the program and hook up your EHD then relaunch the program and everything will show up.

ADDITIONAL BS:

If you are DJing professionaly and have a lot of other files stored on the C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music folder you may want to create another folder within My Documents with a different name where you can store all of the other stuff that is not absolutely necessary for SSL/iTunes so that you won’t take extra space that could be used by your music in your EHD. It is recommend to operate a drive that is well organized, defragmented often and that is generally clean and used only for one thing: SSL. If you are using it in a non-professional way then its not a priority to keep a rigorous standard.

Save yourself the frustration, time, embarrasment and potential loss of work by practicing safe backup strategies. The hard work you put into your music and music database deserves to be protected, so keeping a duplicate drive is worth it. Spend the extra money on a new drive (preferably another external that you can take to your gigs in case of a sudden failure while at the club) and take the extra time to synch your "main DJ drive" with your backup drive as often as you can.

TERMS & CONDITIONS > The previous advice was generated 6/06 for operation of iTunes 6.0 and SSL 1.6, future versions may respond differently. This advice is provided as example only, make changes at your own risk. Provided are the links for you to do your own research should you need it.

• Helpful Links:

What are the iTunes library files? http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93732

Move iTunes music/Library to new drive - http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Move iTunes music/Library to new drive - http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607487

iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748

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