Accessing your Itunes Library From Multiple Computers

The Problem
It is probable that in your home, more than one person owns an iPod / MP3 player of some description. It is also probable, that one person seems to have been delegated the task of updating everyone’s iPod and managing iTunes.
If you are reading this article...it is probable that you are at least fairly computer literate, and therefore probable that you are that lucky, lucky person in your household.
Sure, being the sole manager of your household’s music has its advantages – you have complete control of your music, you can update your own iPod whenever you want, and I suppose with some clever deviations from the truth you could loosely call yourself a DJ, a sure way to pick up girls in your local club.
However, once your mates start asking why the hell you have the latest McFly album (which you innocently downloaded for your girlfriend / sister / roommate) on your iPod...a better solution is needed.

The Proposal
If you have even a basic wireless network in your home then there is a simple solution. By using what is known as a ‘Network Attached Storage” (NAS), you can attach a hard drive to your home network, on which you can store all of your music.
When you used any of the computers in your house, they would detect the NAS as another hard drive on your computer, meaning that from any PC in the house you could:

Play music
Download music from the iTunes store or other (totally legal, of course) places
Create a new playlist for your iPod
Synchronise your iPod
Sound appealing? If so read on!

The Possibilities...
There are many ways to add a NAS device to your home network - the main one I will discuss here is the simplest – you buy a NAS device, problem solved. These are relatively new, especially to the home market. If you take a look at http://www.scan.co.uk/ you will see a number of them ranging from £86 to £650. None of them there are particularly bad, but personally I use the Western Digital’s MyBook series and have had no problems with them. The instructions you need to follow however will be almost identical regardless of which product you buy in the end. For more info on choosing a NAS please look at the “Choosing a NAS” section at the end of this article.

The Solution
Once you have purchased a NAS (I like that acronym...) you simply plug the Ethernet (usually yellow or blue) cable into your router or modem. If you have a PC connected to the router via Ethernet, as opposed to wirelessly, don’t worry - you don’t need to plug the NAS into the computer directly.
It is beyond the scope of this article to cover plugging the NAS to a plug – if you need help, give your household Microwave company a call...they seem to specialise in telling people how to plug things in (for legal reasons you may have to lie and say its your Microwave by the way....you could try running the term “Network Attached Storage” by them but...)
Anyway – when you power up your PC, the NAS should be pretty much plug and play – the NAS will show up as another hard drive (viewable from My Computer) or possibly a network location, depending on how it was designed.
Either way, now all you have to do is move your music to the new hard drive. First, go to iTunes, click the Advanced tab and then click “Consolidate Library” - this will simply make sure all your files are in one place (My Music for Windows by default), so if you have downloaded files to random places over the years, it will move them to My Music.
Now close iTunes and simply move or copy your music folder into it from your local drive. Once this is done, you may want to delete your local copy to save space, and so you can be sure iTunes is no longer using the ‘old’ library.
Now to add the new library to your home computers simply go to File (in iTunes of course) -> Add folder to library -> select the folder you just copied everything to.
You can now install iTunes on all PCs in your house, and link them to the NAS!

Extra: Choosing a NAS
NAS devices can be a simple “hard drive in a box with an Ethernet port bunged on the back” affair – in which case the only real factor in making a decision is getting a balance between cost and space.
I would recommend you be generous with the storage capacity – a 320gb model is little more expensive than a 160gb in most cases, and it will obviously allow for future expansion of your (totally legal) music library. In addition, you can also use it to store documents, backups etc in the future.
These basic models will typically cost between £80 and £120. If you stretch the budget a little further, you can get the excellent “Asus WL-700gE NAS Appliance” (http://www.trustedreviews.com). This is not only a NAS device, but also a router with firewall, and acts as a “media and print” server – so you can connect all your PCs wirelessly to one printer, and stream TV etc. It can even be used to download files without a computer running through the night! I have not used it myself, but it has excellent write ups.
As stated earlier in the review, if you are looking for a simple NAS box, I’d recommend the Western Digital MyBook series, but LaCie and other companies also produce good devices.
If you have an old hard drive lying about, you should be able to find an adapter to give it an Ethernet port, but by the time you have bought that and an enclosure for it, it would probably be more cost effective to just get a separate NAS device.
If you have any questions , feel free to contact me at james AT pimp-my-ipod DOT com – this is my first article here but I intend to post more and maintain my existing ones to keep them up-to-date.