iTunes library size limit?

Soundhound · Apr 4, 2007

I have a 500 gig library of music (don't ask) and have kind of a quirky setup to make it available on my home network. It works ok, but the problem is that the size of the library seems to freak out iTunes. It takes foverer to load, freezes temporarily sometimes, permanently sometimes, works really slugishly others. Is there a size limit to the library iTunes can access properly? Anyone else dealing with a huge itunes library/have any solutions for this?

Thanks!

coach_z · Apr 4, 2007

give us some of your comptuers specs.

i bet that you are running out of ram and that itunes is bogging down because it is using up all of your ram...how do other applications run when itunes is slowing up? monitor your 'activity monitor' when using itunes for a while and see what your processor and memory usage are
-chris

Soundhound · Apr 4, 2007

the specs are 1.67 ghz PPC G4. 1.5 gigs of RAM.

baggss · Apr 4, 2007

I have the same issues at times. I have over 85,000 music tracks (600+ Gb) and over 3000 Video tracks (700=+ Gb) in iTunes. everything is spread across 7 internal and external drives, and iTunes is on my main boot drive (8th drive). It can get sluggish at times, even on the Quad G5. iTunes is not all that good with large library database files it seems.

There are several options:

1) Delete your library and rebuild it.

2) Create separate libraries for Music and Video or even Music, TV shows and Movies. Hold down Ctrl + Shift (I think) when starting iTunes and it will give the option select a library or create a new one. You can create as many as you want, but to switch between them you have to restart iTunes.

I've done option 1 and it helps a bit. Option 2 works pretty well but can get cumbersome when you want to switch between libraries.

I'm guessing that you are using a network drive so that may be part of your issue. Other than that, I don't know of any real tricks to speed up performance other than get a faster computer or reduce the overall size of the library.

dtravis7 · Apr 4, 2007

On my G4 Power Macs I have noticed when the iTunes library gets really large it lags a bit trying to get to it. My Video Card even made a difference when I changed from the stock GF2 to an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 Megs. That seemed to help also when the library got really large as before the upgrade it was very jerky scrolling the library. The rest is probably CPU speed and maybe even Hard Drive speed. Try the tips also that Baggss suggested.

Soundhound · Apr 4, 2007

It is a network drive but this happens even when my laptop is not connected to the network. The library file is very big, and I'm guessing that is what makes iTunes so clunky. There are very few video files in itunes. I have a library of video stuff, but I keep that separate because of this problem, I didn't want to make it worse. arg.

baggss said:
I have the same issues at times. I have over 85,000 music tracks (600+ Gb) and over 3000 Video tracks (700=+ Gb) in iTunes. everything is spread across 7 internal and external drives, and iTunes is on my main boot drive (8th drive). It can get sluggish at times, even on the Quad G5. iTunes is not all that good with large library database files it seems.

There are several options:

1) Delete your library and rebuild it.

2) Create separate libraries for Music and Video or even Music, TV shows and Movies. Hold down Ctrl + Shift (I think) when starting iTunes and it will give the option select a library or create a new one. You can create as many as you want, but to switch between them you have to restart iTunes.

I've done option 1 and it helps a bit. Option 2 works pretty well but can get cumbersome when you want to switch between libraries.

I'm guessing that you are using a network drive so that may be part of your issue. Other than that, I don't know of any real tricks to speed up performance other than get a faster computer or reduce the overall size of the library.

Zoolook · Apr 4, 2007

85,000 music tracks?

Very cool.

Isn't the library in an XML format? Probably not really that efficient.

trpnmonkey41 · Apr 4, 2007

Yea the library is built on XML which is really aweful for large library usage. Hopefully with Leopard and Core Data we will see a new database system for iTunes to increase performance

Cassifire · Apr 4, 2007

How do you have that much music? I have exactly 1 GB.

ste6168 · Apr 4, 2007

baggss said:
I have the same issues at times. I have over 85,000 music tracks (600+ Gb) and over 3000 Video tracks (700=+ Gb) in iTunes.

Baggs.... I envy you lol. both the op and baggs make my measly 23000+ song / 50 video library look terrible. I cant wait to someday reach 500gigs

christm · Apr 5, 2007

Cassifire said:
How do you have that much music? I have exactly 1 GB.

my library is 1970 songs/files or in size terms 8.33gb or 5.2 days.

pjw7790 · Apr 5, 2007

I only have 1960 songs and 20 something videos.

Zoolook · Apr 5, 2007

I;m running about 65 gigs (about 20 gigs of Music and 45 gigs of Video, blame Battlestar Galactica and 24..., will be even worse if Stargate SGI ever comes out from season 1).

slashjunior · Apr 6, 2007

How do people get that much music? I have 12120 songs (which reminds me, I need to update my iPod), 34.7 days, 72.35GB of music no videos. All of my music is ripped in VBR MP3 -alt preset standard LAME using EAC on Windows. If I were to rip all my music into lossless then maybe I would be reaching that sort of figure for my music.

baggss · Apr 6, 2007

I will simply say that I do not own the CDs for anywhere near all of the music in my library. No, I don't do P2P either.

ste6168 · Apr 6, 2007

slashjunior said:
How do people get that much music? I have 12120 songs (which reminds me, I need to update my iPod), 34.7 days, 72.35GB of music no videos. All of my music is ripped in VBR MP3 -alt preset standard LAME using EAC on Windows. If I were to rip all my music into lossless then maybe I would be reaching that sort of figure for my music.

Along with baggs above, I will also say I dont own the CD's for my music. I own some and I also own some that are not ripped because I will probably not listen to them. Anyway, my figures as of now (they change everyday though really) are 23029 songs, most of which are 192 and above (some at crapshoot 128), 61.1 days, and 114.17GB. I personally do not P2P, used to but got away from it a while back...

Mace · Apr 8, 2007

I thought I had something going with close to 7,000 songs, lol. I'd love to have collections that deep. Kudos to you all.

Soundhound · Apr 8, 2007

Okay I bought a new 'n' airport and have all my expresses (except one, but it'll come around

) showing up and able to play music. Now I'm wondering, how do I create the library on my powerbook? Do I drag all the files (500 gigs worth) from the airdrive, over the airport network to the itunes on my mac and let it churn all night? Should I connect the mac directly to the drive and build the itunes library on my mac that way? does it make a difference?