Question for iTunes users.

[randomness]

Various operations in iTunes 4.9 have gotten very slow since I added all my music directories to my library. These operations include getting info on a track, paging to the next screenful of tracks displayed in the library, and searching through track metadata. For these operations, I get the "spinning beachball of death" for a bit, but fortunately program control has always returned.

Is this a problem that can be solved by upgrading to a newer version? I heard there were some issues with iTunes 6.0, so I've waited. Or is this a problem best solved by using something other than iTunes? If so, what other software would you suggest?

(The system is a 15" PowerBook G4 running Mac OS 10.4.4 with 2GB of RAM. The directories are spread across three drives, one internal and two external, one connected using FireWire 400 and the other using USB 2.0, for a total of slightly over 600GB of files. It doesn't seem to matter if I switch the drive connected using FireWire to one of the USB ports.)

Thanks for any useful suggestions!

Comments

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

It's highly likely that iTunes 6 can handle the size of your library better than 4.9. Version 6 has no difficulties with my library of 14,000+ songs in it. (It's number of songs that would be bogging you down, not size of files.)

Just move your older copy of iTunes out of your Applications folder, make a backup of the library file, and then upgrade to 6 and see what it does. If you don't like it, you can always go back to what you had before.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'll give that a try.

(I'm up to just over 100,000 tracks, so if version 6 works well I can let you know you have lots of expansion room.)

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Holy hatrack. No wonder you're bogging down. That's just crazy talk, dude.

[monkeygod.livejournal.com]

even itunes 6 isn't built to take that many tracks. its quite possible that the library files have become corrupted with that amount of info. i often find that deleting all the tracks from the itunes library, removing the library files, then re-adding the entire lot helps to keep things running smoothly. this is on the PC however, so YMMV ...

also 100k songs ? at some point one needs to pause the collecting and start *listening* :P

[monkeygod.livejournal.com]

i should also point out that distributing the files over 3 drives is probably contributing to Itunes' headaches. It likes to keep things in a nice, central location. I also seem to remember having some performance issues when I used to have my music library on external drives - but that was a couple of years and versions ago. Also never anything as major as yours.

100k tracks should be around, what, 415-450GB ? pretty sure not everyone was as anal meticulous as I was when ripping, so closer to the lower end I'd imagine. Any chance of consolidating them all on one drive ?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

107043 songs, 337:15:53:38 total time, 605.48 GB.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

at some point one needs to pause the collecting and start *listening*

So, if I weren't using iTunes to try to listen I wouldn't be having this problem. :)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Looking somewhat more carefully at the problem I suspect it's largely because the iTunes Music Library XML file is so large. It's at 128MB and growing. It probably takes a lot of time to chew through it.

Thanks for your suggestions! I think what I may do is to keep an archive--possibly on a newly-bought drive--and pull the stuff I actually want to listen to onto my laptop, which has plenty of room on it now that I've purged all the music off it onto the external drives.