iTunes sync and general problems

Hey all… I recently purchased the My Book Live 1tb drive to serve as a central hub for basically everything. I’m having some issues and I’m hoping they are easily fixed.

  1. I moved numerous iTunes Libraries to the drive to sync with numerous iPods and am unable to get them to sync over the network. Is this something easily fixed in iTunes or with the drive?

  2. In general slowness in accessing files has been a problem particularly with transfers to the drive and accessing video files on the drive. Also hoping for suggestions on how to speed this up.

In theory this is a brilliant product that will really make things easier on me but a few kinks and bugs need worked out. Thanks for your help and time!

  1.  No, that’s not what an iTunes server does  NO iTunes server will do that.   It does NOT let you centralize your library for iTunes to then sync to devices.   Its ONLY function is to allow multiple other iTunes CLIENTS or devices to do PLAYBACK ONLY.  No Syncing.  Apple will NOT allow that.

  2. You’re going to need to be a little more specific.   “General Slowness” is like telling the doctor “I don’t feel right.”

I guess I don’t understand the somewhat seemingly hostile reply. A simple “you aren’t being clear enough” would have sufficed but I guess condecending to a stranger is a way to go also.

The clarify… These are my ipods and my devices and my libraries. I moved them off my laptop and other external drives to the network drive to conserve space on my laptop and have one drive I can switch between libraries on to sync. It partially syncs but does this slow or locks up during.

The drive has a generally slow performance transfering from the laptop to the drive in general. I guess if I’m describing my symptoms to a doctor I would say “this hurts” and rely on his knowledge to begin to know what to check and do. When accessing video in particular from the network drive it is choppy on my laptop. I was curious to see if the drive had additional or third party software or setting need changed on my laptop to remedy this.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be hostile.   :wink:

Maybe I’m reading into this something I shouldn’t be.    Are you using the MyBook Live as an “iTunes SERVER,” or just a file share?    If the latter, then forget everything I said before.     

I just ran a test on mine;  I copied Avatar (a 12 Gigabyte file) from my QNAP NAS to my MyBook Live via my linux desktop.

READING from my QNAP, I get about 41 Megabytes per second ( ~ 330 Mbit/second)

WRITING to the MyBook Live, I get about 10 Megabytes per second ( ~ 80 mbit/second)

My QNAP is connected via GIG Ethernet, my MBL is connected only at 100 meg, so it’s definitely bound by the network in my case, and should do significantly better if it were connected at Gig.

All I can say (before I go home and swap ports to Gig) is that it should get AT LEAST 100 Mbit/second throughput in both directions.

What kind of numbers are you getting?  How are your MBL and Laptop connected network-wise?

Ha… it’s ok I guess the use of caps kinda threw me. All good. :smiley:

Truthfully I have no idea what you just said. I have an older traditional video ipod I have set up with my personal development library that was on an external 250 gig drive and a seperate itunes library than my music library which syncs with my ipod touch. Basically I moved all the files from the library on the external drive to the network drive and all the files from my laptop to the network drive and updated the location of both libraries in Itunes. I’m not sure if that is using it as a server or just changing the drive and the locations of the files. I’m having to sync them over the network though through my Linksys router.

Seemingly the connection between the laptop and the router is causing the sync problems and the file transfer being slower. I don’t know how to measure speeds I just know that moving files from one drive to another typically go considerably faster than this.

I’m good at doing instructions so if you have a way for me to tell you numbers on transfer I can do it. Running Windows 7 and the router is a Linksys WRT54GS

Other than that. I don’t know what to tell you. LOL

Ah.   I use capitals like I emphasize speech.   “Here we have a door.   The room is empty.  But behind *THIS* door, …”   

What you’re doing is just using a network share.  What confused me is that the My Book Live has a built-in iTunes server, and I assumed that’s what you were talking about.

Hmmm.   I’ve just always had MY iTunes stuff local; I’ve never tried sourcing it from another location for the purposes of Syncing. 

My wife uses the same music library, but from her laptop.   So, she’s connecting to it via network…   I haven’t noticed it running any slower, but she syncs different stuff than me.

So, your laptop, is it WIRED or WIRELESS?    Wireless can cause all kinds of performance issues; just because it says it’s 54 megabit per second “G”, doesn’t mean you’ll get anything close to that.  Especially if you have more than just a few devices using wireless.

A basic way to measure speed on the network is to copy a file across, and just measure the time it takes using a stopwatch.  Find the biggest, fattest file you have, and copy it over to the MyBook.   Just measure the time it takes.  Divide the size of the file (in BYTES) by the number of seconds, and that will give you Bytes per Second.   It should be CLOSE to 10 megabytes per second, or faster.

I updated the firmware to my router. The connection is wireless. I just moved a video file and it was averaging about 1 MB a second. Which is far below 10… So i’m not sure what to do.

Does your laptop have a WIRED ethernet connection capable?  If so, try that and see if it improves.   

If it does, then you know the issue is with the wireless, 

Yea the issue is wireless. I will see if I can find some firmware update for the laptop wireless … thank you!!

It may not be correctable with firmware.   There’s just limitations of wireless in general.   It MIGHT help, but don’t get your hopes up.