One For Clever iPod/iTunes Folks

sevlow

Not a user of iPod/iTunes myself, but my two kids both have players an I need some advice please;

Firstly I have set up a dedicated shared drive on our home network (following a run of bad luck with the kid's PC's falling over recently.

I am now in a positon where both kids iPods are loaded with music and I need to get this onto the shared drive. I am a bit worried that I'll end up with the ipods trying to syn to an empty drive and loosing all the kids music. I am sure it's basic stuff for you iPod folks but youll appreciate my concern - Ideas please?

Secondly and advice about managing our music on a shared drive using a combination of iPods and generic mp3 player would be welcome. I manage my own music with Media Player and simply drag and drop stuff onto my own player. I am worried with a cemtral shared library that iTunes will try and take over my PC and take me into a strange new world. Can I retain the central shared drive but run iTunes on the kids PC's but looking at the share?

Aiadi

Put all your music on the central hard drive. Install iTunes on all computers and make sure you untick the option of letting iTunes organise your music folder in the advanced preferences. Finally add music to your iTunes library on each computer (pick the music files you want on that particular computer) and that is all you need to do. It won't take over your system and you'll find it much better than WMP. Finally I would recommend that you backup all your music files (and indeed any other important files you have) regularly.

sevlow

AiAdi - Thanks,

Just to certain - Kids music now only exists on thir iPods. I assmed that the first step would be to get a copy of the music back onto the shared drive?

Aiadi

sevlow wrote:

AiAdi - Thanks,

Just to certain - Kids music now only exists on thir iPods. I assmed that the first step would be to get a copy of the music back onto the shared drive?

Yes, make sure that you have your kid's music all on the shared drive and then onto iTunes before connecting any iPods. The iPods will sync with whatever is on iTunes at the time when one is connected. an empty iTunes will empty your iPod so make sure iTunes hav every single file needed before connecting.

tewboss

alternatively you could use Anapod which allows you to copy music from your kids iPod to the central hard disk.

missile

Why not create one file \My Music and two subdirectories \kid1 Music and \kid2 Music. Then you can all do your own thing.