Using iTunes to access all your music on a NAS but keeping the library.xml local... Is it possible/how? (Mac OSX))

Solution 1:

The slow but reliable way would be to move everything back to your local hard drive and load it up in iTunes. Then go to iTunes->Preferences->Advanced. At the top, you'll see the current consolidated location of your media. Click Change, and choose the location on your NAS where you want all of the media stored. Then go to File->Library->Organize Library, check Consolidate Files, and click Ok. This will move all of your media (including music, podcasts, apps, books, etc) to the NAS while keeping the iTunes metadata like playlists and play counts on your local hard drive. This is mostly from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449

If that isn't possible (local drive too small to temporarily hold all media), you may be able to try just moving the iTunes Library file from your NAS to your local hard drive and choosing that when you start iTunes with an alt-click. If that doesn't work, there is old advice about corrupting the library file, editing the xml file, and then launching iTunes, which will then supposedly reconstruct the library file from the xml file. This is riskier, so you'll definitely want to create backups of these files before trying it. Reference info: http://hifiblog.com/past/2006/05/11/howto-move-your-itunes-music-while-preserving-library-data-when-you-dont-let-itunes-manage-your-music-library/

It may be worth mentioning that I did something very similar about a month ago; started with everything on the local drive, then followed the first half of my instructions above to move the media to an external drive while keeping the library files on the local disk, so I'm suggesting those steps from experience. Good luck!

Solution 2:

I had the same question and I found that yes, Itunes library file (.itl) could be moved easily. Just copy it from your nas to a folder on your hard drive and launch itunes with alt key pressed. Choose as library, the itl file u just copied to your local drive. U should then see all your lib intact, and can navigate through it way faster. I wrote that blog post, hope it helps : http://geekmeupscotty.blogspot.fr/2015/01/music-files-in-nas-dont-mean-your.html

though Vikash as a great argument against my technique in this post : https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/30667/108834 I answered here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/166450/108834