I’m looking for someone who has an iTunes library of 60+ Gigs under OS X. I’m almost positive that iTunes has some part in my crash problems, and I would like to talk to someone who has a library file about the same size as mine (about 60 Megs I think) to hear if maybe the size is some sort of an issue…
So if this is you, or you know someone, please put me in contact.
Update: I’ve sought help over here.
Update: iTunes 4.5 is out, hopefully that fixes this. I’ll keep you updated.
about 60 Megs I think = about 60 Gigs I think?
How about splitting the library into several files? Pop, Soundtracks, Jazz, Funk and so on. That would probably take care of your problems. If not, get a PC ;-)
“That would probably take care of your problems. If not, get a PC”
Yeah, and sell me your Mac for a nice discounted price. ;)
I have started notcing this problem, after a day of ripping from cd’s and downloading my library has doubled and my system is slowing down big time.
Now I am on a pc so it may be slightly different but I think that whats happens is iTunes loads up most of your library (if not all of it) into RAM so it knows track names and all that to make searching and browsing faster.
So what may be happening is that your system is being bogged down by your iTunes library and when a program needs to hack out some RAM your Mac starts to crash.
Just a theory :)
60Gb?!? Wow! Although I am nowhere close with my puny 9Gb, I have an idea. I assume you keep your library on an external FW drive? Could it be spinning down (or trying to) despite being accessed from iTunes?
Well, our “jukebox” at work—a pink iMac still running iTunes 2 on OS 9—plays from a 39gb library around 18 hours a day, seven days a week. No issues. 39 is a long way from 60, though — you might have crossed some kind of breakpoint.
I’m at 66 gig with no problems, but I’m not using the “let iTunes manage your files” feature, since I’m on a PowerBook and don’t want to spend the limited internal disk space on audio. I keep the music library on an external drive and just sync up stuff to an iPod for music away from home.
I have 48Gb of music on my PC in iTunes. Haven’t really noticed any problems with it besides a noticeable startup delay. The only reason I can come up for that is that it would be buffering the entire library (headers, etc. from its database) into RAM. I got 1Gb of memory though…so that might be it too. Maybe I should try yanking out some memory :)
Whenever I have a problem with iTunes, I just delete the iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes 4 Music Library.itl files. The next time I start iTunes, there is no music in my library. Then I go to File, Add Folder to Library and reimport my music into the library. I find that doing this every so often helps keep iTunes in shape.
@Basil: That’s crazy talk. You also loose all of your playlists, playcounts etc. iTunes 4.5 just hit the street, see whether this upgrade helps.
FYI – I also noticed slowdowns in iTunes (1Ghz powerbook/ 1gig RAM) when I topped 50-60gigs of music. At this point, I’m at like 150gig and really while the slowdown hasn’t improved, it hasn’t gotten much worse than the 60gig level. I do have 90% of this on an external 200gig firewire drive.
A question I have though: If I delete my iTunes Music Library.xml file and iTunes 4 Music Library.itl files, when I re-import my music files, how much of the track data will I lose?
This is an old thread…but I figured I’d ask anyway.
D
I have 45 of my 124 GB of music at work on a dual 1.8GB G5 tower with 2.5GB RAM. I’ve had no glitches whatsoever, but i’m sure this is not a normal setup.
At home, the 124GB of music files on an external drive works flawlessly… that is, considering it’s a 1.8GB iMac G5 20” with 2GB RAM!
and of course i have frivolous extra programs running at home
What i still haven’t reasoned through is the fact that i have Sofa adding artwork automagically to mp3s as necessary on the music at home. if you want the latest .dmg, email me.
Technically, this increases the filesize, thus (but not necessarily) fragmenting the mp3 at least into 2 frags…. and, well, i’ve done this to allot of my library, without problems in itunes. (this is where someone pipes in about no need to worry about defragging MacOS X.)
YMMVary.