Events changed and I needed another drive to store some files and I figured replacing the WHS drive with a newer drive that also consumed less power would be worth the effort. In short, the upgrade failed and I’ve decided the effort now outstrips the benefit. I figured I’d relay my experiences. Also, if the drive fails I’ll probably be in the same situation so I’ll probably do some research and try again sometime in the future.

First the good news. I put the original drive aside and popped it back in when I threw in the towel. The server came up fine - as if nothing happened.

When I ran the Server Recovery Disc using autorun I had several problems. The first noticeable problem was an empty license dialog. I had to run the the WHSRecovery.exe directly and then the install ran OK.

On Windows Vista the Server Recovery portion worked fine but when the WHS Connector software install should have started nothing happened. I suspect it has something to do with UAC or security but rather than troubleshoot I went to Windows XP.

On Windows XP everything seemed fine until the Windows Home Server Connector software installation. That install couldn’t find my server. I had similar problems during the initial installation but the things that worked there didn’t work here. The Server Recovery has worked for me in the past. After popping the original disk back I was able to install the connector software just fine. In my case the computer and server were in the same switch and one the same network. I could ping the WHS just fine (I could get the IP address from the mac address), the connector install just wouldn’t find it.

Eventually I’ll set up a simple network with just the WHS and one PC and work on troubleshooting the issue.

If you’ve got an HP MediaSmart Home Server the instructions for replacing the system disk are here. Keep in mind that user accounts will be lost along with other server configurations. If you use file duplication you shouldn’t lose any files.

This isn’t a high priority for me but if I find a solution I’ll update this post.

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Among the new features I like is the ability to set the alert thresholds for disk usage. My biggest annoyance was that disks were shown in yellow when above 75% usage and in red when above 90%. Since disk usage is managed by WHS itself and there’s nothing I can do about individual disk usage I disliked having the yellow or red bars which usually indicate a problem when I had an otherwise healthy disk. There’s also new thresholds for total disk pool usage which is is more useful than individual usage.

If you’ve installed the WHS PP1 beta you should use the WHS Disk Management beta which you’ll have to request. In my case, the WHS data is too important to trust to the beta software even though it should resolve the data corruption bug.

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I almost feel sorry for Microsoft (hard to actually feel sorry for a company that makes that much money) and think there’s been a lot of anti-Vista piling on. For example, Infoworld declared "partial victory" in their petition to save Windows for things Microsoft has done for several years (allow OS downgrades) and for things they already said they’d do (use XP on "low power" PCs - the ones that can’t run Vista). Let’s face it, Windows XP was derided when it was originally released and took a service pack before it really began to make inroads.

So I figured I’d spend more time in Vista to see if all the hate was justified.

I had one interesting problem that turned up when I missed a setting in Parallels. I ran Windows XP virtual machine in "bridged" network mode so that the virtual machine received it’s own IP addressed. When I moved to Windows Vista the virtual machine had the default setting of "Shared Networking". I found that when the Vista VM was running I would eventually lose the network connection to my Windows Home Server from OS X. But Vista would still be able to connect to the server so there wasn’t any network or server problem. The problem went away when I switched to bridged network mode.

I figure Vista needs more memory so I’ve allocated 1GB to the VM where I ran XP with 768MB. I can’t really speak to speed comparisons since I also moved the VM to a faster hard drive. The software I use doesn’t stress the vm, Vista memory usage is about 50%. For what I do, no speed complaints so far.

So now that I have Vista let’s see if I learn to hate or love. (I suspect it’ll be neither.)

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I cleaned up the files and have 900GB free so I should have enough space to replace the drives one at a time without turning off file duplication. Being the cautious type I start off by rebooting the Home Server and waiting for it to indicate the disks were balanced. Then I run through the following steps to replace the hard drives.

1. Run the drive removal wizard for the first drive. In this case it’s the drive in bay #4. The wizard tells me that no files, folders or backups will be lost. I confirm the drive removal and the process begins. This drive takes about 3 hours to prepare, during which time the WHS isn’t accessible.
2. Once the removal wizard is finished the LED on the drive bay glows purple. I pop out the drive and install the new one. This process is just like adding a new drive once the old physical drive is removed.
3. I add the new drive to the storage pool using the Windows Home Server console.
4. I reboot the WHS and copy some files up to it to make sure everything is OK. I wait an hour or so and make sure the disk activity dies down. (I use the Windows Home Server Disk Management Add-In to track disk usage.)
5. Then I run the drive removal wizard for the second drive, this time the one in bay #3. Since this drive was nearly full it takes about 4 hours to prepare the drive.
6. Once the removal wizard is finished the LED on the drive bay glows purple and I replace the drive.
7. I give the server one last reboot to make sure everything is fine.

A couple of the wizard and console screens are shown below. The initial drive removal wizard screen is a bit ominous and implies I’m responsible for insuring I have enough space otherwise I’ll lose files. But once the wizard finishes it’s done the calculations itself and confirms that no files or backups will be lost.

Once the drive removal wizard is finished the drive will be listed as a “Non Storage Hard Drive”. Then once the new drive is inserted it will also be listed as a “Non Storage Hard Drive”.

The Disk Management Add-In screen in the management console shows both new drives and the disk activity as files are copied to them.

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This weeks my backups were put to the test. And they worked as expected!

Because my iTunes library is so large (150GB+), backing it up is a problem. So my strategy is:

1. I Sync the library with a copy on my iMac’s local hard drive (I use ChronoSync)
2. Clone my iMac hard disk nightly - before the library sync mentioned in step 1 occurs

This give me three copies of iTunes:

1. The active copy on the Windows Home Server that I use.

2. A copy of last nights library on my local iMac.

3. A copy of the library from two nights ago on my cloned hard drive.

So I have a couple days to detect the corruption. As expected the corruption occurred when I was actually using iTunes. I was told it could not write the library. I tried to shut down iTunes but had to force quit after 3 hours of waiting for it to exit. At that point upon restarting iTunes, the library was empty (although the song files were still on the WHS share.).

I decided to run iTunes from my local iMac to avoid future occurrences of the issues, rather than restoring the corrupt library files. I held down the Option (alt) key while starting iTunes and selected the local copy as the library. I expected to have to change the settings so iTunes would look for music on the local disk but it was already set this way. This may have been due to it returning to default settings due to the corruption.

I now sync the local iTunes library with the WHS share as the backup.

I did lose any changes made during the day such as downloaded podcasts and play counts. The podcasts simply downloaded again and I deleted the ones I listed to. If I had added any songs I would have had to import them again.

There’s really no way to know if this was the data corruption bug or just some other problem. I’m leaning towards the bug because I have also been copying a lot of files to the Windows Home Server so the drives have been very busy, which seems to be a needed ingredient.

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HP describes the procedure to add the drives here and the entire process took me about 10 minutes. The HP EX470 comes with one drives so three drives can be added while the EX475 comes with two drives so it has two empty drive bays. If there’s a drive in the bay the the light bar will be lit.

Adding the Drive Hardware

The front door of the HP EX475 swings open revealing the drive bays. Drives are added from bottom to top so You’ll add drives to the lowest empty bay first. It’s not necessary to shut down the server when adding drives, but it can’t hurt.

To remove a drive bay push down the latch that holds the handle, lift the handle and pull the bay out. Be sure to push down the rear flap, as shown below, once the bay is removed. Just push out the side rails a bit to free up the flap.

Insert the left side of the new drive first (left - when the handle is toward you), it does make a difference and it’s much easier. The posts in the drive bay will fit the mounting holes in the drive. Then flex the right rail outward and put the rail pins into the right side of the drive.

Side the drive bay back into the server. Be sure not to accidentally lock the handle down by pushing on it when inserting the drive. (Yea, that’s what I did.)

Close the HP’s front door when all the drives are in. The LED’s should start glowing purple soon after the drives are inserted. Mine took less than 30 seconds.

Adding the Drives to the Storage Pool

Once the hardware is installed it’s still necessary to add the drives to the pools so they can be used. Start up the Windows Home Server console and go to the server storage tab.

You’ll see the unused drives listed under "Non Storage Hard Drives". Select one of the unused drives and click the "Add" button. The Add Drive Wizard will run. There’s not much to do beyond clicking through the wizard.

Once the drives are added the Server Storage tab will reflect them. Once the drives are part of the storage pool the light bars will glow blue.

The Aftermath

I found that the original two drives continued to be used for new files for quit awhile. Then the system drive stopped getting new files but the original second drive continued to accumulate files until it exceeded 90% in usage. Then the two new drives started to use space in tandem, growing at the same rate.

I eventually deleted a large amount of files which shrunk usage on the original drives, with the system drive seeming to have the lowest priority as it’s now the once with the most free space, even with 20GB dedicated to the system partition.

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I was also having connectivity problems from my Macs. These were also sporadic and I suspected they were due to the recent OS X 10.5.2 upgrade rather than the Windows Home Server.

I figured no matter what, if I called tech support the first thing they’d want me to do was re-install. I also wanted to rename the server. I happened to name it the same as my .Mac ID and I figured there was a slight chance this was the cause of the connectivity problem. At the very least, it could be confusing.

The recovery is done from a PC connected to the the same network as the Windows Home Server. The Server Recovery Disk included with the HP WHS is used. A wired connection is recommended so that the connection isn’t interrupted during the recovery. I did the rebuild from Windows XP running under Parallels on my iMac.

HP has pretty good procedures online (scroll down to the Recovering Server section) and the online help and recovery wizard are also good so I won’t repeat every step in detail.

Factory Reset

I made sure my data backups where up to date and inserted the DVD to start the recovery. There’s two choices presented:

I go with the Factory Reset option in order to completely flatten the server. The data is backed up so there’s no sense trying half measure. The reset goes along as documented and the wizard is self-explanatory. It took about 90 minutes from the time I popped in the DVD to the time I could start restoring my data files and creating the IDs.

About half this time was spent watching the following dialog box. There were extended periods of time (5-10 minutes) where no progress was shown.

After the reset was finished I needed to recreate the IDs and restore my data files (a simple file copy). All the PC backups are lost and the home server connector software has to be uninstalled and re-installed on each PC. Since backups were lost I initiated a backup immediately after re-installing the connector software on each PC.

The Results

I did the Factory Reset last Saturday and the server hasn’t crashed all week so that problem seems to have been resolved. Looks like it was a software problem.

Much to my surprise the intermittent connectivity problems also went away. So that was either a Windows Home Server problem, a conflict with the old server name and my .Mac ID, or a total coincidence. In any case it looks like this problem was also resolved.

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Installation on VMware Fusion 1.1.1

I used the New Virtual Machine Wizard to create the VM. The wizard is very straight-forward so I won’t bother to include screen shots of every step. I selected the following options (listed in the order they’re asked for in the wizard):

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows
• Version: Windows Vista
• Name and Location - Save As: Vista Home Premium
• Name and Location - Where: A directory I have on an external USB drive for VMs
• Disk Size: 30GB
  I kept the default settings where disk space is only allocated when needed, so 30GB is a ceiling.
• Easy Install used
  I entered an ID and password to be created. Since I use Windows Home Server this is the same ID/password created on the home server and the other Windows VMs I use. I also enter the product key. I also keep the default of making my Mac home folder accessible from the VM as read-only.

I let the virtual machine start immediately and install from DVD. Twenty minutes later I’m presented with the logon screen. Once I logon the VMware Tools install kicks off automatically. When they’re done the virtual machine reboots.

Post Install Setup & Configuration

Once the VM reboots and I logon the first thing to do is fix the sound driver. As the Fusion Release Notes indicate the sound driver needs to be updated:

When you install Microsoft Vista 32-bit edition in a VMware Fusion virtual machine, there is no sound output. To correct this problem, run Windows Update to update the sound driver from within Vista.

To update the sound driver in a VMware Fusion virtual machine running Windows Vista 32-bit edition:
1. In the virtual machine, from the Windows start menu, right-click Computer and select Properties.
2. In the left pane, under Tasks, select Device Manager.
3. When prompted for your permission to continue, click Continue. Windows displays the Device Manager.
4. Right-click the Multimedia Sound Adapter with a warning symbol (indicating that there is no driver) and select Update Driver Software.
5. At the prompt How do you want to search for driver software?, select Search automatically for updated driver software. Windows finds and installs the appropriate driver for your virtual sound card.
6. When you are prompted to restart, click Restart Now.
Sound should now work in your Microsoft Vista 32-bit virtual machine.

So I update the driver, reboot and test the sound which works fine.

The VMware Easy Install creates it’s own PC name (which is random so meaningless) and uses “Workgroup” as the workgroup. I change the PC name to match my naming convention and change the Workgroup to my home workgroup. Which needs another reboot.

Then it’s time to run Windows Update to get all the security patches so I go into Windows Update and tell it to check for updates. The first update I get is an update to Windows Update itself. Once that’s installed I check for updates again and there’s 45 updates totaling 105.3MB. (It really is time for SP1) I install those updates and there’s another reboot. I then configure Windows Update to download updates when they’re available but not install them.

I try to connect to my Windows Home Server software share so I can install the connector software but I can’t. I’m told “File Sharing & Discovery” is off so I say to turn it one. Then I’m asked if I want to change my network type to “Private” which is recommended if I’m at home or work, rather than turning File Sharing on for a public network. I click the selection to make the switch. I still can’t connect to the Share.

The VM is configured to use NAT networking with the host. I shut down the VM, change this to bridged in the virtual machine network properties (so the VM gets it’s own IP address), and restart the VM. Now I can connect to the share and install the Windows Home Server connector software. I do a backup once the connector software is installed. Also, changing the network to Bridged cause Vista Home Premium to see this as a new network so I made it a Private Network by selecting “Home Network” when prompted.

I haven’t done the activation yet. I’ll wait the 3 days allowed in case I find I need to re-install the VM.

Additional Software

I already installed the WHS connector software. Now it’s time to install AntiVirus software. I already use free versions of Avast and AVG on other VMs so I wanted to try something different on this one. I decided to go with Avira AntiVirus PersonalEdition Classic which is free for personal (non-commercial) use.I picked it mainly because I never used it before and wanted to see what it was like. Their full version (the one you pay for) rates high for virus detection.

Lastly, I use Windows Live Writer for creating blog posts and I find a couple other Windows Live offerings intriguing although I haven’t actually used them. So I run the Windows Live Installer and select the following installs:

• Windows Live Sign-In Assistant
• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Writer

Once these installs finish my Windows Vista Home Premium virtual machine is complete.

Summary

The virtual machine currently takes 11.8GB on disk although that can grow to 30GB if I add software and data. The installation took me about 3 hours although I wasn’t sitting there immediately responding to every prompt. The install probably would have been faster if I installed from a DVD image rather that a physical DVD and the time to download that 105MB of updates will vary depending on the Internet connection.

The VMware Easy Setup feature simplifies the setup even if it doesn’t get things exactly the way I want them. Changing the PC name and workgroup is a simple task.

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Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows has a Windows Vista SP1 FAQ with more information.

So, is the release of SP1 enough to improve Windows Vista’s reputation?

Update: Paul Thurrott thinks Microsoft may have shipped SP1 before it’s ready.

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The original release candidate had to be uninstalled prior to the upgrade. This was done by going through Control Panel in the Windows Update/View Installed Updates section. It took about an hour and included a couple reboots but once it started I could just walk away. According to the instructions from Microsoft even after the uninstall was finished I needed to wait an hour for things to settle down. Sure enough, checking the logs after the uninstall showed that the installer was still cleaning things up.

After I did the uninstall, Microsoft’s automatic update installed the regular Windows Vista security patches that had been released since I installed the SP1 RC. They weren’t sent to the release candidate. At this point I had killed an evening and decided not to install the refresh right away.

The installation of the refresh used the same process as the original release candidate. I again installed it through automatic update so I downloaded the file that modified the registry to have automatic update get the update. It downloaded and installed the two prerequisites without a problem. A third prerequisite is needed by some, but I didn’t need it. Even though I kept checking the refresh didn’t appear even after getting the prerequisites and I again gave up as it got later than I wanted to start the 2+ hour process.

The next night the SP1 RC refresh was waiting for me. The install took about two and a half hours, including the download and a couple reboots. I haven’t noticed any real differences or problems. But then again, I don’t use this instance of Vista for very much and if I did I probably wouldn’t risk a release candidate on it. The time required to do the update would also be a killer if it wasn’t in a virtual machine that allowed me to keep using my MacBook while the update happened.

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Microsoft Remote Desktop is already installed with Windows Vista. To run it just go to the Start -> Search box and start typing Remote Desktop. It’s also included with Windows XP where it’s in the Accessories -> Communications menu group.

It can also be installed on Windows 2000 Professional and and earlier OS’s by downloading it from Microsoft.

When the remote desktop client starts you’ll first be for the computer to connect to. Once that’s entered you’ll be prompted for the user name and password. Use administrator as the user name. Use your Windows Home Server console password as the password and you’ll be on the server.

You’ll see a ominous message warning you about bad things:

It’s open in IE so just close the window and you’re on the server desktop.

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But then iTunes for Windows came out and that’s what really made me a iPod fan. Not the iTunes store (which I avoided for the longest time), just iTunes as jukebox software that could manage my iPod. The killer feature for me was the smart playlists. They’ve evolved over time but here’s an overview of a few I have now. Screenshots are from iTunes for Mac but they should apply just fine to iTunes for Windows.

Rating Songs

I rely on the song ratings for some of my playlists so some background is in order. Every song is rated 2 to 5 stars but it’s not true that I like every 5 star some better than every 4 star.

A song with two stars means I don’t like it. It’s probably not synced to my iPod although there are exceptions if I like the song when played as part of an album but don’t want it to play outside the album.

Every song starts with 3 stars. Five stars means I like it more than most for that genre or artist.

Four stars means I liked it more than most. I may rate a song 4 stars instead of 5 if I have too many five stars for the artist.

One star isn’t used for songs, it means it’s spoken word and I’ve already listed to it.

Smart Playlists

Smart Playlists are created by selecting “File -> New Smart Playlist…” from the menu. They can be edited by right-clicking the list and selecting “Edit Smart Playlist”. Click the thumbnails for for full size images.

All Music

For the mother of all playlists I start with one called “Music Only”. This one is set up to only include songs and exclude everything else. If new file types are added I have to change it but at least I only have to change it in one place. All my playlists are set to include only checked items as shown here. If I don’t want a song on my iPod I uncheck it in iTunes.

While “Music” can be selected as a playlist this indicates what iTunes sees as the Music library. In my case this isn’t just songs so I need the Music Only playlist.

List of 5’s (by LRP)

This is an example of a playlist that uses my ratings, the All Music playlist and presents me the songs that I haven’t heard in awhile at the top of the playlist. In this case the “by LRP” means “by Least Recently Played”. The playlist criteria is shown in the screenshot. As you can see from the screenshot it picks files with a five star rating and is limited to my “Music Only” playlist so I’ll only get music.

It’s not checked, but you’ll see it’s set to limit to 700 items based on least recently played. This is a holdover from when my music didn’t all fit on my iPod. Checking the box would limit the playlist to the 700 songs and if this playlist was set as the sync criteria only those songs would sync.

As for the Least Recently Played Piece…

Save the Smart Playlist then sort by the “Last Played” field in iTunes by clicking on it until it’s sorted least recent to most recently play. If you need to add the field right-click the field header bar and select it from the list. The playlist will sync to the iPod in this order (at least it does for my 5G iPod) and any field can be sorted. Click the first column (numbers - no title) to return to manual sort.

I have similar playlists for my other ratings. It’s convenient to listen to songs of a certain rating and change the rating if my tastes have changed.

Best of…

I have numerous “Best of” playlists for specific artists. There are minor differences between the way they’re set up in order to either keep the number of matched songs relatively low or provide enough songs for a playlist. But they’re all basically the same and the screenshot to the left shows the basic playlist. Some artists may be limited to 5 stars while others may include songs from various bands they were in, which is covered in the next section.

Similar to the best of for artists I also have best of genre playlists. Simply pick Genre as the criteria instead of artist.

Grouping

The properties of every song contains a Grouping field on the info tab. This can be used to contain the artist name if they were in various bands. The example shows Buddy Holly entered into a song done by The Crickets.

To create a Best Of collection for Buddy Holly I can use the Group field and avoid some complex nested playlists. Smart Playlists can only “match all” or “match any” which can be limiting at times. The criteria is “contains” because there may be cases where several artists I like are in the same group and I want those songs to appear in each of their own playlists.

Unrated Songs

When I add a song to the iTunes library the first thing I want to do is rate it. So I have a playlist setup to identify unrated songs. This way I can easily play the songs and rate them. No star is selected, if you accidentally click a star you can clear it my clicking at the very left edge of the field.

One thing to keep in mind - if you are playing the list in iTunes and rate a song it will immediately drop off the list, even if it’s playing. If it’s the one playing then all playback stops. To prevent this uncheck “Live Updating” or do what I do and rate the song when it’s done playing. Songs can be rated on the iPod without affecting playback.

Playlist of Selected Podcasts

I like listening to podcasts while driving to work in the morning. I have a smart playlist set up that contains the podcasts I like to start the day with.

Podcasts can be selected by using the Album field.

Amazon MP3 Store

For me, the Amazon MP3 store has become a place to buy music since it’s all DRM-free and in many cases cheaper than iTunes. This smart playlist identifies the music that was bought from Amazon.

My Favorite Playlist

This is my most used playlist. I like the constant refresh of the music I listen to even if it does take several months to get through everything. Still, this playlist doesn’t contain every song. It’s limited to 250 songs so I can still do random play and only get older songs. It also excludes Classical and Jazz since I only listen to those when I’m in the mood for them. It also excludes all those lowly 2 star songs. Some people like shuffle but I prefer this list.

As for where I came up with the 250 number. It’s approximately how many songs I’d have to listen to each week to make it through the entire collection in 6 months.

Additional Playlists

Theses playlists are variations on the above themes so don’t really require any explanation once you see the criteria. Hover your mouse over each thumbnail for the list description and double click it to view if your interested.

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In Google Reader click on Manage Subscriptions at the bottom of your subscriptions list (or click on Settings long the top).

Then click Import/Export from the settings menu. You’ll see the screen shown below.

Click on the Export you subscriptions as an OPML file link and save the file to your hard drive. If your using Safari or any other browser that auto saves the file will be called google-reader-subscription.xml.

I decided to set up my feeds in the NewsGator web. I already had an account from an earlier trial of their software and I remembered the password.

Once you have the account click on the Manage Feeds link then select the URL & Import tab. Then click on Import followed by the Chose File button. Select the file you saved from Google Reader and click Import. These are shown in the next screenshot. follow the numbers.

The import maintained my Google Reader folder structure.

Each of the clients also has the ability to import the OPML file if you don’t want or need the web service. If you have multiple Macs you can sync using .Mac instead of the NewsGator web service.

The biggest thing Newsgator/NetNewsWire has going against it for me is I “grew up” with Google Reader. I had about a dozen feeds when I started using it and I’m now at 137. So my news reading conformed to the Google way as I expanded. I need to re-train my muscle memory but I found that NetNewsWire for the Mac was more in line with the way I’m used to than was FeedDemon for Windows.

One thing that jumped out at me is the ability to customize feeds in each client since it recognizing each client as a unique location. This will allow the feeds to be tailored to my environment, unlike Google’s every feed every place way of doing things. There’s still a web based feed reader for when it’s needed and everything has stayed nicely in sync so far.

You do not need to create the web account if you don’t want the web reader and don’t need to sync.

Shawn Blanc has a good review of NetNewsWire (the Mac RSS reader), written back in December. It’s based on the NNW 3.1 beta.

I couldn’t find any current and comprehensive reviews of FeedDemon (the Windows RSS reader), just lot’s of “it’s great” type comments. CNet made it an Editor’s Choice back in October 2006 as did PC Magazine in April 2006.

Any one else considering switching to the NewsGator/FeedDemon/NetNewsWire club now that membership is free?

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• Windows Vista Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Money 2007
• SyncToy 2.0 beta
• Intuit Quicken and QuickBooks may be affected
• Torrent applications may be affected

The cause is a terse:

This issue may occur because of a recently discovered problem with Windows Home Server shared folders and with certain programs.

No work-around is posted, other than don’t use the apps with WHS. Microsoft has been able to reproduce the problem according to a blog post by the Windows Home Server team.

Microsoft has said they’d update the KB article when they have a fix but I would expect a software update to follow.

Update: Ed Bott at ZDNet has additional information on the bug. It’s harder to reproduce than the Microsoft KB lets on and requires the WHS to be under “extreme” load among other things.

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This article at Mac OS X Hints, provides information on how to share iTunes between Mac and Windows. While the procedure basically worked I had some problems, possibly due to changes in iTunes since the article was written, possibly due to something unique in my setup or requirements.

I had two problems:

1. iTunes would not let me select the library on the share from my iMac. When I option->clicked to open iTunes and browsed to the WHS it wouldn’t list anything (literally - no shares, no files). I ended up creating an alias (sym link) to the iTunes directory on my WHS music share. I could then browse to the alias and select the library. To add to the frustration this worked fine from my other Macs but still fails to work on my iMac, even moments after shutting down iTunes.
2. Switching between the Windows and Mac versions of iTunes caused the library to rebuild each time. I didn’t like the delay. Besides, all my Windows machines are virtual machines running on a Mac so I don’t need Windows iTunes. This appears to be due to the way iTunes addresses the library and it updates the path to the files. But the procedure outlined in the Mac OS X Hints article does work and there may be a way to specify the location that will be both Mac and Windows happy.

You may want to turn off DS_Store files on network drives, if you haven’t already. The process for setting up my specific WHS configuration is documented below.

Setting Up the Share

I decided to create a folder called iTunes under the common Music share that was there upon delivery. Since my iTunes library was on my iMac I needed to set that up to connect to the share. I browsed to the share in finder to mount it and told OS X to save by id/password in my keychain. You can also mount it by selecting Go -> Connect to Server in the Finder menu. Type in your WHS name in the format smb://servername, where servername is your WHS. You’ll be prompted to pick the share and enter a ID/Password (if it’s not already saved in your keychain).

I want this share mounted all the time so I’ll add it to my start up items. To do this go into the Accounts panel in System Preferences. Select the ID and then the Login Items tab. Click the plus sign to add an item then browse to the new iTunes folder on the Windows Home Server. Click the Add button and it will appear in the startup list. To work seamlessly the id/password should have been added to the keychain when you manually connected.

Moving the iTunes Library

I moved the iTunes library from my iMac to the Windows Home Server by following the standard procedure for moving an iTunes library on a Mac with some minor modifications. Be sure to select a sub-directory of iTunes for the files, I created iTunes Music to match the standard. After finishing the standard move process (the bulleted items in the Mac OS X Hints article) I copied the iTunes Library file from my local iTunes folder to the iTunes folder on the share. I did not add the extension so it’s still Mac only.

I could not do the next step on my iMac until I created an alias. Browse (in Finder) to the iTunes directory in the WHS music share (not the "iTunes Music" folder with the song files, but the main iTunes directory.) Right-click (or control-click for one-button mice) the iTunes directory and select Make Alias from the menu. Then move the alias that was created to your local hard drive. I put mine in my home directory. I did not need to do this on my Mac Mini or MacBook.

Start iTunes by holding the option key when you click the icon (aka option->click it) browse to the alias you just created, then select the iTunes Library file and open it.

The album art will be missing so now’s a good time to copy it. Copy the contents of the Album Artwork folder (located in the iTunes Folder) from your local PC to the iTunes directory on the network share. I did this with iTunes shut down (not sure if it matters but to be safe) and made sure the network directories were empty of files.

At this point I just option->click iTunes on each of my Macs the first time I start iTunes and select the shared iTunes Library file.

I still haven’t deleted my old local iTunes library although I did rename the iTunes folder.

Additional Information

I haven’t purchased or used any iPod games although the one demo game I had (Vortex) seemed to move to the server share just fine. This may have occurred when I first synced my iPod as I was told some purchased items were missing and I let them be restored from the iPod. I didn’t notice the directory earlier but since I didn’t have any games I didn’t think to specifically check. You may also need to manually copy the iPod games directory and library file to the share, or make sure they get restored from your iPod.

I did try using iTunes for Windows and Mac to access the same library. This did work but every time I switched the OS the Library was rebuilt which was time consuming. Since I have no real need for iTunes on Windows I decided to drop it.

Since doing this I’ve had problems keeping my sync connection to Apple TV. Apple TV still only syncs with my iMac and not with any Mac that has the library open. The iTunes name displayed for sharing is still unique on each computer. But, I’ve had to set up syncing for my Apple TV to iTunes a couple of times since setting up the shared library. I’m unable to reproduce the problem on demand by going to the different copies of iTunes and starting them and then checking my iMac iTunes. But eventually it just disappears. I’ve never had a iTunes sync problem before but others have so this may be unrelated to the shared iTunes library. Or, it could be related to the DRM that limits Apple TV to one iTunes library for syncing. The good news is all I’ve had to do is re-authorize it, it doesn’t clear the hard drive and cause everything to resync again or force me to reconfigure what I want synced.

My iTunes Library file consists of about 8,100 titles and is about 19MB. When shutting down iTunes over a wireless connection there is a short but noticeable delay while it saves the library. Over my 802.11n network it takes less than 10 seconds and over 802.11g it takes about 20 seconds to exit iTunes. Not a problem for me, but noticeable.

Backup Considerations

Windows Home Server has the ability to duplicate shares which means it makes sure there’s a copy of the file on two different physical drives. Not exactly mirroring, but similar in concept. With the iTunes Library on my Mac it was being backed up in Time Machine and on my drive clone, two different pieces of hardware. On WHS it’s on two physical drives but not truly backed up. If a WHS drive fails I’m OK, but if WHS itself or the server hardware fails the files are trapped. Also, if something gets deleted from WHS accidentally it gets deleted from the duplicate drive too. The same with corruption.

I’ll probably set up something with ChronoSync to copy the library down to a local drive either as a current backup or to be picked up by Time Machine. The benefit of Time Machine is I’m not locked in to restoring only the latest files. If I missed some deletion corruption I can go back. Unfortunately my iTunes library is just to large to back up over the Internet to something like Amazon S3. It would max out my upload bandwidth for weeks.

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