I like to move it (iTunes, that is)

When I bought my iMac last year, I foolishly thought that a 500GB hard drive would be plenty big enough. But you know what they say, you can never have too much storage and my recent regime of ripping DVDs into iTunes as well as upgrading a lot of my music to lossless files has meant that those 500 gigabytes have been getting used up pretty quickly.

I figured that I needed to locate my burgeoning iTunes library somewhere else, off of the iMac internal hard drive. I had a few options, and the one uppermost in my mind was Network Attached Storage (NAS). After discussing this with Olitee though, he was firmly of the opinion that this wasn't necessarily the best option. Not only was it expensive, it might not work exactly as I wanted it to. I'd still have to have iTunes running on my Mac in order to be able to get my files to my AppleTV and Airport Express. His answer was a big external hard drive, locally attached to my Mac instead.

However, the thing I liked about a NAS was that - if it was a two-bay one, with two separate drives inside - it would automatically mirror one drive to the other in case of failure. I wouldn't be able to do this with an external hard drive would I?

I've used Apple's Time Machine to back up my computer ever since it was first introduced in Leopard, and I love it. It's incredibly reliable. What I didn't realise though, is that Time Machine will not only back up your main Mac drive, but it can also backup up other attached drives (providing they are formatted for Mac), so clearly, if done correctly, I could get Time Machine to backup my external iTunes library in addition to my main Mac drive.

So, learning from my "you can never have too much storage" lesson, I decided to go the whole hog and get two new drives - a 1TB for my iTunes library, and a 2TB for Time Machine.

Moving your iTunes library is reasonably straightforward, but there are a few potential pitfalls along the way - things have to be done in a certain order. You can search for "moving iTunes to external drive" if you want some more in-depth tutorials on the subject, but here's how I went about it.

Firstly, because I wanted Time Machine to be able to backup my iTunes drive, I needed to format it for Mac use. By default, most external drives come preformatted as FAT32, and rather stupidly, the ones that are Mac formatted cost more money?!

Anyway, you need to fire up Disk Utility, choose your drive in the left-hand column (make sure you choose the right one!) and then go to the "Partition" tab. I only wanted the one partition, so I chose this from the dropdown and ensured "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" was selected. Hit "Apply" and in only a few seconds you have a freshly formatted drive, ready to go.

The important thing to realise at this point is that you CANNOT just drag-and-drop your iTunes folder onto this new drive and expect it to work. It won't. You need to let iTunes do your housekeeping for you - that way the iTunes program can keep track of what is going where.

Needless to say, before you start messing with any of this, make sure you have a backup in case things go awry.

Then, in iTunes, you need to go to the File menu, and then choose "Library" -> "Organise Library".

From here you'll get a dialog giving you two check boxes - the lower of the two says "Reorganize files in the folder iTunes Media". If you've already got your library set up this way, then it will be greyed out and you won't be able to click it, so you needn't worry about this step. If, like me, you didn't have it this way, you can check this box at this point. DON'T choose the upper "Consolidate files" checkbox just yet - that comes later! Click "OK" and iTunes will set everything up in neat subfolders for you, in a central repository called "iTunes Media", subdivided into music, movies, TV shows etc. To be clear, you don't HAVE to do this - you can leave your folder structure as is, but to my mind allowing iTunes to set it up makes the next steps easier.

The next part is to tell iTunes that you want to move your library somewhere else. You do this via the iTunes "Preferences" option. Go to the "Advanced" tab, and you'll see "iTunes Media folder location" at the top.

Click the "Change" button and navigate to your external iTunes drive (I named mine, rather imaginatively, "iTunes"). You need to create a folder inside this drive for your media files, so create one at this point using the "New folder" button. You can name this new folder anything you like, but I opted for the default "iTunes Media". Click okay, and then ensure both the "Keep iTunes Media folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkboxes are ticked. Click "OK".

Now comes the slightly scary bit. Go back to the iTunes "File -> Library -> Organise library" menu, and this time check the "Consolidate files" box. Click "OK", and iTunes will warn you that it's about to copy everything into the new location and that this cannot be undone. Click "OK", and the long and arduous task of moving everything will commence. This could take minutes or hours, depending on the size of your library.

Bear in mind that this does not remove your original media files from their previous locations - it copies them, not moves them. This means that you'll have all your music, movies and so on in two locations now - the new one, and the old one. Clearly the object of the exercise is to free up space, so you need to find your original "iTunes Media" folder and drag it to the trash. It's VERY important not to trash any of the other iTunes files - just the media folder. The other files "iTunes Library.itl", "iTunes Music Library.xml" etc are vital to the correct operation of iTunes. If you get rid of these, you'll lose all your play counts and playlists.

Quite iTunes, and then restart it. If you've done things correctly, iTunes will simply restart without protest. If it does, then you can empty the trash, deleting your original media files and freeing up all that lovely drive space!

For most people, that will be quite enough tinkering. Everything will work as it should, and when you add new music or videos to iTunes, they will be stored on your external drive along with all the others. However, if you've got computer-OCD like me, you'll want to move all those other iTunes files that I just mentioned too.

Make sure iTunes isn't running, and then go to your original iTunes folder location, and there will be those few files (iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Music Library.xml, iTunes Library Genius.itdb etc) and folders (Previous iTunes Libraries, Album Artwork etc) in there. You can copy and paste these into the root of your new iTunes drive (i.e. NOT in the iTunes Media folder) and then, once this is done, you ned to start up iTunes whilst holding down the option key on a Mac, or shift key on a PC, and iTunes will ask you to choose an iTunes library. Click "Choose library" and navigate to your new drive and click OK. iTunes will start up, and from hereon will remember where to find its files. You can delete the original files once everything is working correctly, or if you're paranoid like me, you can back them up safely in a separate folder somewhere else in case of disaster.

All of this will mean that you've moved all of iTunes, wholesale, to your new external drive.

By default, Time Machine WON'T be backing up this new drive at this point, so make sure you go to the Time Machine preferences and remove your iTunes drive from the "Exclude" list under the "options" menu. The next time Time Machine works its magic, it'll backup not only your internal drive but also your external iTunes drive as well. Sorted.

And we're in.

It has been ten days now since we moved into our new house, and things are starting to resemble something approaching normality. We still have a lot of boxes which haven't been unpacked, but they're mainly books and CDs, because as yet we don't have any shelves to put them on.

I've had Virgin Media TV, broadband and phone installed, and as part of the install upgraded to their 500GB Tivo. This has taken a bit of getting used to, as it is a much more complicated (but also more capable) device than the old V+. As for broadband, Virgin insisted on me having one of their SuperHub combined modem/routers - which I didn't really want, but customers apparently don't have any say in the matter. I was happy with my separate cable modem and router, but I guess it's one less power plug. Despite the SuperHub being 802.11n, the wifi doesn't even reach halfway across the house so I've been making do with my old Devolo 85mbps homeplugs, just to get the internet where I need it.

However, I've today set up something a little better - still not my intended wired gigabit network, but certainly more robust than my current solution.

I've gone for another product by Devolo (because they really are the best when it comes to powerline networking) but this time I've opted for their dLAN 200 AV Wireless N adapters. Instead of each plug just having one ethernet socket, these have three, and not only that but each acts as a 802.11n wifi access point as well, which is handy.

Basically what this means is that I've got three wifi access points, giving good coverage all over the house, and the ability to hard wire all the devices that support it as well - three in the lounge, three in the cinema and three in the study. The monitoring software tells me that I'm getting about 115mbps across the wired devices which is good enough for the time being. I don't rely on wifi all that much (I'm not a big fan of it really) but if I do need it (for phones, laptop, Wii, Kindle etc) then it's available.

On a more disappointing note, it looks like it'll be some time before I'm able to set up the garage conversion as the home cinema. I'm sorely missing my 5.1 surround sound, but there are other priorities at the moment - apparently we need furniture and stuff?

Moving on up

I've recently noticed that my last blog post was way back in February, and now we're in the middle of June - so let me apologise for my lengthy absence. I do have a good excuse though.

It would appear, that after much stress, we're moving house at the end of this week. We put our house on the market at the beginning of March, and finally, last weekend we exchanged contracts on our new property.

I hadn't realised quite what an all-consuming exercise moving house would turn out to be. Between that and work I've done nothing else in the meantime. There have been no new gadgets, and no new projects at all - obviously they've all been on hold pending the move.

What this does mean - now that we're finally going - is that the new house will present all kinds of new opportunities for gadgets, tech and tinkering. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Some ideas that I've had so far:

• A wired gigabit whole-house network


• A dedicated home cinema room, possibly with a projector


• A Network Attached Storage media library


• An Apple TV and Airport Express house-wide audio/video system


• A new, upgraded, bigger, better lounge hi-fi

I dare say there will have to be some decorating and general DIY that will have to come before any of these projects, but it's nice to have a plan isn't it?

As a starter for ten, I've got the Virgin Media engineer coming on Monday to install my new Tivo system so at least that's one new gadget to be getting on with. I've also got a new Fatman iTube valve amplifier/iPod dock system on the way courtesy of Audio Affair, which I won in one of their Twitter competitions last week. Once I've unpacked all those cardboard boxes I'll try and blog about both these additions to my gadget world. Stay tuned, and bear with me please... this may take some time!

It was all going so well.

After my triumphant victory over the red ring of death last month, I had been feeling pretty good about my ability to fix broken tech. Not only had I mended my old CD player but I'd now brought an Xbox back from the grave.

Buoyant from these successes, I then went about taking my washing machine apart in order to replace the perished door seal. I was invincible!

Sadly, my geek-pride was about to take a bashing. My Xbox promptly died again. Red ring of death and everything. Try as I might, I couldn't resurrect it again. I was beaten.

However, not to be completely thrown by my apparent failure, I used this as an opportunity to buy a shiny new Xbox 360 Slim. Every cloud has a silver lining I guess.

I'm still waiting to find out if the washing machine repair fares any better...

Green Is Good

After yesterday's post about my Red Ring of Death nightmare, I received my x-clamp conversion kit in the post this morning. Eight screws, eight carbon steel spring washers, eight metal washers and sixteen nylon washers. I couldn't begin to wonder how a few pence worth of bits from a hardware shop would repair my 360, but I was prepared to give it a try.

Needless to say, the installation of these bits is more than a little fiddly, but so long as you're organised and patient, it's not difficult. Here's the tutorial I used for this part:



I followed the instructions to the letter, plugged everything back in and tested it. Here's the result:



WOOT! I shall see how long it lasts, but for now - we're up and running again!

A visit from the Red Ring of Death

It had to happen sooner or later. I've owned my Xbox 360 for a little over three years now, and it was only a matter of time before it decided to call it quits and break down. I'd been experiencing graphical glitches and lockups on the 360 for a couple of weeks, and I knew that it was on its way out. Sure enough, at the start of this week, it resolutely refused to start up, displaying the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" - three red flashing lights on the front of the machine, which under normal circumstances would be a friendly green colour.

I went to check my Xbox account to see when I'd registered the 360, and sure enough I was just outside of my warranty - how very typical. With Microsoft wanting the best part of £100 to even just look at my Xbox, I decided that drastic times called for drastic measures.

Having received some guidance from tech guru Tom, I discovered that my most likely fix would come from tinkering with the heatsinks which are supposed to keep both the CPU and GPU cool. The internet is alive with reports of how the cooling in the 360 is particularly rubbish, and the method of securing the heatsinks onto the chips (flimsy metal x-shaped brackets) was the main culprit. The accepted method of sorting this out is to crack open your 360, rip out the offending x-clamps and replace them with something more substantial.

I'm not going to replicate the methodology of getting into the 360 on here - there are some brilliant tutorials and walkthroughs on YouTube. Without them I would have struggled to even open up the Xbox, because Microsoft really don't want you to get inside. However, once you know how (and so long as you have the requisite T10 and T8 torx bits) it's relatively easy. The videos I found most useful were these:





Getting the x-clamps off the bottom of the motherboard was the most difficult part, but with a little patience and perseverance you can manage it. And this is the point I find myself at at the moment. I've stripped down the 360, removed the x-clamps and heatsinks, cleaned the CPU and GPU and I've ordered a set of screws and washers from eBay. I really don't know whether this little project will work or not, but even if it doesn't I'm really no worse off.

Standby for update...

2010 Gadget Review of the Year

Back in both 2004 and 2005, I wrote "Reviews of the Year" on my old blog, summing up the previous twelve months and the gadgets that had come and gone. I must admit, there was much more to write about back then (probably something to do with the disposable income I had burning holes in my pockets) but I've decided to revisit the concept for 2010, because it has been a pretty good year for new and shiny tech. So, here goes...

Apple iMac - February 2010

I finally decided to part with my much-loved G5 iMac at the start of the year, and went on an eBay selling spree to raise funds for a replacement. I opted for the 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and I've been incredibly pleased with it. Admittedly, every time I see a real-life 27-inch model I covet it greatly, but the 21.5" is fine for my purposes. It's a massive leap in performance from its predecessor, and I've not regretted the purchase one bit. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC - March 2010

After getting a pair of Grado SR80i headphones for Christmas, I was looking for a way of combining them with my existing Apple Airport Express to give a proper high-fidelity listening experience. I decided the best way to do this would be via an offboard digital-to-analogue convertor and eventually plumped for the Fubar IV. I fell in love with it straight away - superb sound, compact size, built-in headphone amplifier. Perfect. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Supplier - May 2010

Following the success of the Fubar IV, I went one step further and purchased the matching dedicated power supply, The Supplier. Connected up to the Fubar IV, it just took all of the things I already loved about it and improved them. I think the Fubar/Supplier combination has been my best gadget purchase of 2010. Brilliant. (Original post here)

HTC Legend - May 2010

Also in May, I decided to stop procrastinating about getting a new phone and decided to take out an 18-month contract on an HTC Legend. Running Android and sporting a very fetching all-aluminium body, it has recently been updated to 2.2 Froyo and has proved to be a brilliant little phone. I see my friends toting their new iPhone 4's, but I think the Android/HTC combination can match the iPhone almost every step of the way. I will admit that I would love the iTunes integration of the iPhone, but other than that for the money I'm really pleased. I still have another 11 months to live with it, and I hope it'll continue to go from strength to strength. I'm wondering if it'll ever see 2.3 Gingerbread though... (Original post here)

WDTV Live - July 2010

A cracking deal from eBay meant that I took the plunge on a Western Digital TV Live media streamer for the bedroom TV, and on the whole I've been quite impressed with it. Since getting the new AppleTV (see below) my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat, but for less than half the price of the ATV it has proved more than capable. I don't like the interface, and if there was better integration with iTunes (rather than just SAMBA sharing) it'd be much better, but generally it's pretty good. Wouldn't buy one for the full £90 RRP though - that's AppleTV money.

Sony STR-DA2400ES AV Receiver & Sony BDP-S373 Bluray Player - July 2010

I got a bonus at work and promptly blew it all on these new bits of home cinema kit. I managed to resist the urge to start replacing all my DVDs with Blurays, and I'm glad I did because I've discovered that on my 720p 32-inch TV, there's really not a lot to be gained in terms of picture quality. HD audio is nice, but I'm still fairly impressed with Dolby Digital 5.1 to be honest! I do like having the convenience of HDMI switching on the receiver though, and having automatic sound calibration is superb. Although I'm not using the player for Blurays, the DVD upscaling is excellent and the network features are a nice touch.

2nd-Gen Apple TV - September 2010

After the new Apple TV was unveiled at the beginning of the month, I immediately preordered one. It was exactly what I was looking for to bridge the gap between iTunes on my iMac and the TV in the lounge. And, having used it for a few months, it does this job admirably. I haven't bought or rented anything from the iTunes store, I'm just watching my own content on it. The whole experience is very "Apple" - simple and slick, and using it alongside my iMac and Airport Express makes for an excellent multi-room music solution too. (Original post here)

Amazon Kindle - December 2010

Having only got this a few days ago, I can't write anything particularly in depth about the Kindle, other than on first inspection I think I'm going to really like it. Some people have bemoaned the fact that it's "just" an e-book reader (apparently I should have bought an iPad at five times the price) but ever since I first clapped eyes on the new model, I've wanted one. If it gets me back into reading again, it'll be a superb gadget. Full opinion to follow, once I've actually used it in anger...

All in all, it has been a year of very satisfying gadgets. I'm hoping that 2011 will be more of the same.