Spanning for keeps.

Thanks for getting in touch.

Actually, to consolidate your ENTIRE iTunes Library onto your internal drive, it may be easier to do it without TuneSpan.

There are a few reasons for this. One of which is that there are a few files types that aren't listed in the XML iTunes Library file, so TuneSpan can't span them. Such as text-based books, mobile apps, and others. So, some files could get left behind when you if you did it with TuneSpan.

I would recommend doing a standard library consolidation through iTunes. Briefly, you would change your default iTunes Media folder in the Advanced iTunes Preferences and then use the built-in Consolidate Library feature in the File menu > Library menu > Organize Library... option.

BUT! Since you say that some files for tracks have already gone missing... this will not solve that problem. If iTunes can't find the file, it won't be able to consolidate those files to the new location.

Do you believe the missing files still exist on your system? Are they in the current iTunes Media folder?

This isn't intended to be full instructions on how to consolidate your library, just making sure we are on the same page before you do anything.

There is another way to consolidate your library that may be useful to try in this case. Let me know more about your missing files and then we can move forward.

Also, I think you're working towards a good goal, and drive that you use with just Macs should definitely be formatted to the standard Mac OS file format.

I guess at this point I should mention that the data is actually going to be split between two 500GB internal drives, not just one drive (not sure why I didn't say so in the first place).

~98GB Spanned on Internal 1

~85GB Spanned on Internal 2

~292GB to be moved from External

I don't use iTunes for anything but music files (mostly ALAC, some MP3, some AAC). There are a few apps from my iphone, but it wouldn't even phase me if they got deleted.

As for the missing files, I spent all day patching them up to get ready for the move. So no more missing files as of today...

Cool, so the missing files issue is dealt with, that's good.

Since you want to have the media split between two drives, then TuneSpan can play a part. But just to be sure that absolutely nothing is left behind that TuneSpan may not be able to span, I still think having iTunes play a part would be good. I believe that if your mobile apps are not in your iTunes Library, they will get deleted from your iPhone on syncing, but I haven't fully tested that.

Part of the process I'm thinking of will still involve updating your default iTunes Media location, but not using iTunes to consolidate all the files in your library, since the other part will be using TuneSpan to span whatever stuff to the other internal drive first.

I'm assuming one of the internal drives you're referring to to span you stuff to is your main system drive, which already has your iTunes ITL and XML files. Is that so? Or are you planning on spanning to two different internal drives/partitions, neither of which are your main drive?

Let me know a bit more about your setup, and I'll give you full details on what I'm thinking for the process.

Pico, you're right on. One of the internal drives is the main system drive and has the ITL and XML files.

And just to clarify, the iTunes Media Folder Location is on the external.

Sorry I didn't get back to you right away.

So, here's what I'm thinking...

Please read through all the instructions and make sure it all makes sense before you jump into this. If anything doesn't make sense, or you have any questions, please ask.

Also, it's always good to have a backup, if possible.

------

First step, span as much as you like to the secondary drive. Your 90 GB or so.

Make sure you have the "Trash Copied Files" option ON in TuneSpan, because we will be manually copying what's left on the external drive, not using TuneSpan.

One quick note, 90 GB is A LOT of media. It will take a while to copy all those files, but it will also take a lot of computer resourses, RAM, CPU, and disk activity. It may be good to not do too much else on your computer while the span is going, and it may be more convenient to do it overnight. Also, depending on your computers stats, it may be more safe to move the stuff to the secondary drive with multiple spans. Do two sets of 40 or 50 GB so that your computer isn't as taxed in one go. Or, smaller sets if necessary. It all depends on how much free RAM you have, and also how much free internal drive space for VRAM you've got. Doing lots of other work on the drives can slow things down as well.

After those spans are complete and you've got everything you want on the secondary internal drive, you're ready to manually copy the rest.

Now, you can quit TuneSpan, we are done with it for this process.

The plan is to manually copy the remaining media to your internal drive, so that nothing is left behind that TuneSpan may not be able to span if it's not in the readable XML iTunes Library file... Text-based books, Rented Movies, Mobile Apps, etc.

So, I would recommend copying the media back to the original iTunes Media folder next your your ITL and XML iTunes Library files.

The default location for your library files is at "~/Music/iTunes/" ("~" is your home folder). The original iTunes Media folder's path should be "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/" you can create this folder, if necessary. It used to be called "iTunes Music", but "iTunes Media" is what iTunes starts with now since its more common to have various media types.

So, now you have the new, empty "iTunes Media" folder in the default location, and all your remaining media files on your external drive. For simplicity, I'll assume they are in a folder called "Spanned Media" at the root of your external drive.

Now, you just want to manually copy all the folders from inside your "Spanned Media" folder on the external drive to the "iTunes Media" folder in the default location through the Finder, without using TuneSpan. This should be media type folders, such as "Music", "Podcasts", "Movies", etc. But it may be lots of artist folders if you're using the older iTunes organization. Either way, it doesn't matter, just copy everything in "Spanned Media" into "iTunes Media". Again, to not tax anything too heavily in one go, you can manually copy stuff in sets. The "Music" folder first, then "Movies", etc. Or sets of artists, roughly by letter or something so its easy to keep track. So, this will take some time as well, but it shouldn't be a hard task to complete.

Now, you've got half your stuff spanned to the secondary drive, the files are copied and iTunes knows the locations because TuneSpan updated them. But the other half was just manually copied to the original iTunes Media location... iTunes doesn't yet know the location of these files. iTunes is still pointing to the files on the external drive for all those tracks.

Here is the trick. I recently found out about this behavior when another user was changing their default iTunes Media folder and discovered it... When you update the default iTunes Media folder in the Advanced iTunes Preferences, iTunes will scan the new folder to see if any files already exist in there that match tracks in the library, and will automatically update the locations for just those tracks to the paths in the new default iTunes Media folder. This leaves all your spanned media in place, which wouldn't have happened if you had used the Consolidate Library feature, iTunes would have copied EVERYTHING to the new default folder, which we didn't want.

So, do that... Open up the iTunes Preferences (command + ,) and go to the Advanced pane. Click the "Change..." button next to the iTunes Media folder location box (which should currently be set to the location on your external drive).

In the Change iTunes Media Folder Location open dialog box, locate and select the new "iTunes Media" folder at "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/". After you select it, it may take a moment for iTunes to scan the location and will prompt you about reorganizing the contents in the folder, go ahead and do that if you like iTunes to keep your files organized, it won't take long if they are already organized how iTunes expects.

Once that's all done, iTunes should know where all your files are in the "iTunes Media" folder, and should still have your other files on the secondary internal drive.

To make sure it all worked, you can quit iTunes (to make sure the readable XML iTunes Library file is saved and updated, wait a moment after iTunes quits), and then launch TuneSpan. Select the "All" media type in the top bar of TuneSpan, and look at the Media Locations browser. Make sure that nothing is listed on your external drive. You can eject your external drive to make it very clear that no tracks are pointing to files on the external drive. Is TuneSpan showing any questions marks in the Media Locations browser? Is your external drive in the list? It shouldn't be.

That should be that. With your external drive still disconnected, I would recommend opening up iTunes and making sure everything is right and all your stuff is playable. But, checking TuneSpan's Media Locations browser is a pretty definitive test as the data is coming directly from the readable XML iTunes Library file. But, you can make sure your Mobile Apps are found on the internal drive, etc, through iTunes itself.

I think that's it. At that point, you're set. All you're media is on the internal drives. You can trash the "Spanned Media" folder on the external drive, or just reformat the drive when you are sure you have everything else on there backed up. Make absolute certain that you have everything off the external drive before reformatting, there is no going back.

Once your drive is reformatted, you can set the default iTunes Media folder back to the external drive, or you could keep it as is. It may be nice to have new media added to your internal drive so it's always accessible. You can use TuneSpan to span whatever you choose the external (all the stuff from the secondary internal drive and whatever stuff from the main internal drive), but it may be nice to keep some media on the main internal drive for consistent access. But, that depends on what you want and how you use your computer. It should be easy to do whatever you please from that point. But, if you need anymore tips to get to your desired setup after you have your external drive reformatted, let me know.

That's that. If anything doesn't make sense or doesn't come out as expected, please get in touch. In the end, it's on you to make sure all your media is safe and that you haven't lost anything in this process. Be very careful and observant when you do this. Good luck! Let me know how it goes.

It's actually a little under 300GB that has to be transfered from the external to the internals.

Right now I'm spanning about half that amount on the second internal HDD. I know you said do less, but I sort of wanted to test my laptop.

Do you think upgrading the amount of RAM will actually speed up the spanning? Will TuneSpan use more if I have more? I attached a screen shot below of the activity monitor as well as the specs of my computer. There is still an average of about 800MB of Free RAM and the page outs hasn't really gone up or down. As for Swap used, I did open Google Chrome and one other program before the screen shot was taken.

Also, will spanning in small amounts make the process faster or more or less about the same amount of time? From what I remember when I was doing small 10 gig spans, I would actually see the tracks spanning with 3-10 second intervals. Now, with the ~150GB span, it's more like 45 seconds to a minute. Is this because TuneSpan is doing more background activity with the other files or was I just imagining the speed of the smaller spans (I'd give it a try but I don't wanna cancel the span after 3+ hours).

Glad you've gotten started.

But, I do think you're spanning too much at once. TuneSpan can tend to take a lot of ram as the span goes on. I'm working on improving the efficiently, but there is some substantial overhead required during the span to keep track of everything, and show nice results in the end.

As the span goes on, more ram will continue to get taken. You're only a few hundred in of over 6,000. Do sets of 1,000 or 2,000 and see how your RAM is at the end.

You have a lot of hard drive space for VRAM, but if your ram gets overloaded, OS X will force you to quit apps or shut down. If your force quit TuneSpan (or shut down) during the span, issues can occur stuff will be here and there, files not trashed. TuneSpan will be in crash recovery and only allow you to redo the same span to make sure things are in order. But if the issue was ram consumption, it will happen again and you will have to take TuneSpan out of crash recovery mode and resolve the issue more manually. It's a hassle seriously worth avoiding.

I recommend not taking the risk. Use the advanced gear icon in the spanning window and choose Skip the Rest to end the span as is. The spanned tracks will be verified as normal. The verification stage also takes more ram, it would suck if the ram overload happened then. But, it would be slightly easier to recover from. Verification is when all your copied files are trashed, you'd have to deal with that more manually. Again, worth avoiding.

So Skip the Rest and span in smaller chunks. Please, your computer may do fine, but it's not worth the risk. It's an issue in TuneSpan I will continue working on the make it more ram efficient.

To rephrase briefly, you're computer may do fine since you have so much availale space on your primary drive for as much Virtual RAM as may be required.

But, if somehow OS X gets maxed out in any way, the result isn't very graceful. Mostly just stressful.

I went ahead and let it run overnight. I closed all the other apps, disconnected unnecessary hardware, and turned off internet access.

18.6 hours in and only 606 tracks were spanned. Seems like it's getting slower and slower, but it's still using the about same amount of resources? I certainly remember spanning 500 tracks from and to the same drives and it took a fraction of the time, 15 minutes tops. Not sure if you answered it exactly, but does it take significantly longer with large spans -or- Is the track count not an accurate account of it's actual relative progress?

I should also note that it says "Launching iTunes & Updating: " __________" but it never actually launches iTunes.

Moving onward, I had definitely planned to skip the rest and do chunks after the overnight span. A small concern is that I based the span on a smart playlist in iTunes that contained all songs rated 2-stars (gee, I sure do have a lot of so-so songs). So what stops me from canceling is not knowing what tracks are good to go and which ones aren't after I do the skip. From what I remember, there's a drop down filter in TuneSpan at the top left corner that will do just that. This will work for a smart playlist, right? ~just wanted to double check.

It definitely should not take that long for you to span 600 tracks, if it only took 15 minutes to span 500 before.

The speed of the span all depends on the files you're spanning and the connection the transfer is going over. If these 600 files were big ol movies, it would make some sense. If you are transferring over USB as opposed to FireWire 800 or better, it would make sense that it's going so slow.

The overall span time shouldn't take too much longer than if you manually drag-and-drop copied the files in Finder, since that's the bulk of the work. But, TuneSpan also needs to communicate with iTunes after each copy to update the location. If there is a lag on that part and it's taking a while for TuneSpan to communicate with iTunes for some reason, that could be part of the issue.

I see in this screenshot that TuneSpan says "Launching iTunes & Updating", was iTunes quit at any time? It may be that somehow iTunes crashed in the night and TuneSpan was not able to relaunch it, so it just stopped at that point. You can manually relaunch iTunes to start the spanning process back up.

The connection is over USB 3.0, but the ~15min span of 500 tracks was also through USB 3.0.

It has actually been going this slow since I started the span. It never completely froze or stopped, just extremely slow. And come to think of it, I haven't seen iTunes opened by TuneSpan at any point. I've left iTunes open and it doesn't seem to be going any faster.

I went ahead and hit skip the rest and now its on been on this screen for about 10 minutes. iTunes is still open. In the activity monitor, there is incremental movement for TuneSpan.

TuneSpan is no longer responding according to the Activity Monitor. Haven't force quit yet.

Do not force quit TuneSpan, it could be locked up waiting to iTunes to quit.

Try quitting iTunes manually to see if TuneSpan kicks back into gear.

Sounds like this span has had issue communication with iTunes throughout the span, that is probably why it's gone slow. USB 3 should be quite fast enough.

Please do not force quit TuneSpan before getting in touch with me. So sorry for these issues.

Let me know how things go with this span before starting to do another, even if it ends up ending successfully. I hope it does end successfully after iTunes is quit.

It is now responding and says it's reattempting span for 380 tracks (?). It's not stuck or anything, but going slow again. No activity in iTunes; I've tried to manually quit and relaunch. Option to "skip the rest" is available again.

This would be because TuneSpan was not able to communicate with iTunes during those 300 or so tracks. Not sure why this would have happened, but it's good that TuneSpan is back on track.

Hopefully TuneSpan will be able to communicate with iTunes during the reattempt and work out for these tracks.

As long as TuneSpan finishes and shows results your library and files will be fine. TuneSpan will revert failed tracks if necessary.

Let me know how it goes and then we can try to figure out what's up with iTunes not responding during the span.

Here is a screen exactly 11 minutes later to get an idea of the rate it's going at.

So I take it this might just take over 17 hours? Hit Skip?

So sorry, TuneSpan won't let you skip during a reattempt.

Something not normal is going on with iTunes for you right now. Are you doing other stuff in iTunes? Syncing a device? Downloading things?

I'm heading back home and will try to think or a way to end this quickly and safely.

Right now, stay the course. Again, so sorry about this.

Also, is your iTunes preferences window open? Are there any alerts open in iTunes?

These are modal windows that can block the AppleScript commands that TuneSpan is sending.

How's the reattempt going for you now? Hoping it's done or still on track.

I stepped away for a while and just hit the gym. Here it is 3 hours later:

No, haven't touched iTunes since the start of the span. iPod, IPhone, etc. have been disconnected as well. No alerts, prefs closed.

If I chose to skip again, will things get messy?

Damn, that's no good. This shouldn't be happening.

If you choose Skip the Rest, TuneSpan will tell you that you can't do it during a reattempt. Normally, the reattempt is a very fast process. Updating each track should take much less than a second a piece.

If you force quit, thing will be a bit messy, but not too horrible if we can get the AppleScript commands to work quickly and properly, as they should.

I hope these long updates at at least working so on the next verification, it would be done. But, if not, TuneSpan will reattempt one more time before reverting the tracks (trashing the copied files at the span location, since the location update didn't work). Which would probably take more absurd time.

I'm really sorry you're stuck in this. This isn't acceptance TuneSpan behavior, and I haven't encountered it before like this.

I hope that if it's left overnight, it will just be done and we can move on. Although this is taking a stupid amount of time, TuneSpan ending properly will be the cleanest outcome.

Again, I know this sucks, I'm sorry.

It was close, so I decided to say up a little longer to see what it would do next.

It says it's quitting iTunes, but iTunes just sits there chillin' like it's got nothing to do.

Activity monitor read fine for TuneSpan for about 5 minutes, then it was no longer responding.

Now back to square one: "Reattempting Span for 380 Tracks". Not sure if I can wait through another 13 hours and I'm sort of getting uncomfortable with the drives running this long.

Can you walk me through what I'll have to do to patch things up if I have to force quit? You mentioned something about AppleScript commands, but what happens if those don't work? Am I going to end up with doubles and have no way of knowing which ones to delete?

I wish there was an option to revert back already instead of having to wait this long for it to do that. Isn't the second reattempt kind of unnecessary?

I'm going to sleep it off and hopefully it will be close to being done by then.

Man, I'm so sorry about this. Again, I haven't seen these AppleScript messages taking so long, ever before. It's not right.

Firstly, the reattempt is JUST sending the AppleScript command to iTunes for each track to update the location, there should be no more drive activity going on.

I hear you about wishing you could revert back already instead of having to wait this long again, that would definitely be an option if it normally took this long, but this isn't normal. Normally, a reattempt of 300 tracks would take way less that one minute. It would take seconds. So, the second reattempt may be overkill, but under normal circumstances, there is no real downfall in trying one more time to be extra sure if it will only take moments. But for your situation, its no good at all.

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Where are you at now? Is the reattempt done or almost done?

Again, I can't apologize enough for this. If this were how long TuneSpan always had to take, I would have never release the app. Having it be as speedy as possible is crucial to TuneSpan. Copying files will always take as long as they take, but these AppleScript messages should be nearly instant.

No worries, I've accepted the situation. Hopefully the revert will run fine later and I won't have to wait much longer after the reattempt. Do you have any ideas of what may have caused this? There's clearly a disconnect between iTunes and TuneSpan. This is the first time it's taken this long, but then again it's also the largest span I've tried to do. Could it maybe be the format of the external?

If this were to happen to me again, I'd likely want to force quit instead of waiting. For future reference, could you explain to me what I'd have to do? Is it a matter of just relaunching TuneSpan and trying it again or will I have to manually delete files first?

I don't believe this issue has to do with the format of the external, since the problem is occurring essentially in iTunes. TuneSpan is sending a message and waiting for a response. It's taking far too long to get a response back from iTunes, and it seems that the command is not even working after that long wait.

I'm really hoping that this is just some crazy fluke. After this is done and TuneSpan reverts the failed tracks, I'm hoping simple restarting your computer may set things right. I really don't know what could have caused this as its not a normal thing. There may be something weird going on that I'm no aware of. Do you have any iTunes plugins or anything? What version of iTunes are you running?

If you were to force quit TuneSpan, it all depends on when the force quit happens. If it's after the verify, its not AS bad, but it will always involve stray files be left on your system. The question is which of those location does iTunes know. I cannot recommend force quitting being a good solution, I wrote in crash recovery to help, which will resolve any and all issues with the files and iTunes locations, but if the same thing occurs upon recovery (say, the same crash in another case, or this slowness you're having) it's not very useful and some manual work would have to be done. I would be here to help if you did have to force quit or encountered a crash, but its a frustrating situation to deal with cleanly.

After this is done, again, I would suggest a computer restart. Launching up iTunes and making sure everything is good in there. Check the locations of the files you spanned. Open TuneSpan to see what locations are reported in the Media Locations browser, and make sure everything is good and iTunes knows where your files are.

Then, if everything looks alright, try some very small span sets, 1 or 2 albums at a time, just to test to see if this problem has resolves itself and the updates are going quick and the spans are successful. If this slowness is consistent and happening over and over again, then there is something for us to find the root of. If not, and everything is fast again, this was just a terrible fluke.

I'm making various changes to the source of TuneSpan to try to have this kind of situation not be so terrible in the future. Now, when you skip the rest, TuneSpan will not try to reattempt any tracks, so, Skip the Rest will end the span very quickly in all circumstances.

Also, I've added a combination of modifier keys which when held down will not do the location update in iTunes. If this existed in the current version, you would be able to hold down the modifier keys to not send the message to iTunes and skip all the tracks during a reattempt very quickly. This will not be a documented feature, but something that I can tell people about if they ever run into a situation like this after the next version is released. Also, conveniently, it will help me do testing to force various situations to happen during a span.

Appreciate your hard work Pico. I will look forward to the update.

I'm running the latest version of iTunes 11.0.1 and I have no plug ins.

Just saw it finish 380 of 380, and after trying to verify, it is attempting to reattempt the span for a third time.

Not sure if this will be of any use to you, but I hit sample and saved the text document.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ff8qnmw08x9...

Damn, I forgot that version 1.0.4 still had 3 reattempts built in. I've lowered it to 2 in this next version, because I did think the 3rd was overkill.

Again, this sucks, I'm sorry.

How are you feeling about it? Is you computer still usable while this is running in the background? Can you give it another day to allow it to finish? After this reattempt and verification, it will not do another reattempt, but do a revert, which will trash the files at the copied location because iTunes didn't update the location. Since that part doesn't involve and AppleScript interaction with iTunes, it will go quick.

Let me know if another day is unbearable. I can understand if it's just too much already and you just want to end it with a force quit. Hopefully Crash Recovery Mode will function properly after a computer restart. If it's still being bad after a restart, we will have to deal with this manually.

Also, among the other changes in the new version I've mentioned, I've added the ability to Skip the Rest during a reattempt. It behaves a bit differently since those tracks will still have to go though another verify (to show properly results, and go straight to the revert, even if it's failure). Just another extra measure to make sure this kind of situation will never be a hassle again.

After we are done with this particular hassle, I can send you build of this latest version so that you can benefit from these changes immediately in case this continues to be an issue. Hopefully it will not continue to happen and TuneSpan and iTunes will start behaving normally, but just in case, having this new build will help avoid this time waster.

Good thing I heard from you again. Since you said there's only two reattempts I thought it was a glitch and was about to force quit. The computer is definitely still usable, so I'll let it run again.

I really appreciate your attitude on this. Personally, I am not happy with this TuneSpan behavior, and I'm doing all I can to make it avoidable in the next version.

But, that still doesn't get to the root of the issue. After this is over, we will have to see if this behavior is constant and reproducible, and then I can try to get to the bottom of it and see what I can do to do better in TuneSpan.

Either way, let me know when it's done and I can send you a build of this new version and we can move forward in getting your library setup how you want. This has an absurd delay in a simple process.

Hey again, just checking in to see where you're at. Hoping it's nearly done by now, let me know.

Didn't catch it after completing the reattempt, but it's finally done.

FINALLY!

So, give your computer a break for a bit, do a restart and relax, all your files should be fine and iTunes should know where everything is, even though some are on the internal and some on the external now.

After you restart your computer, if you want to attempt a very small test span to see if it's still really slow, that would be helpful to know what we're dealing with.

But, I understand if you just want to take a break from TuneSpan for a bit. Let me know what you find.

No break needed here. Just spanned 251 tracks. The span was quick (little over 60 seconds). The verification part was a bit sluggish, but all in all it only took 3.2 minutes.

I'll try a larger one in a bit and report back.

Great! Sounds like it's back on track and behaving like it's supposed to.

What part of the verification was sluggish? Quitting iTunes and reloading the library when the progress bar is spinning, or the actual verification part where the progress bar is moving?

I know that crazy long wait was annoying, but I believe it was the better thing to do in a crappy situation. I'm glad it's over with and everything is alright in your library.

If you would like to try out a build of the new version, which has a handful of nice new changes, but also the safeguards against getting stuck like that again, let me know. You can email me directly at "pico {at} randomapplications.com" so I can send you a build since I don't want to post it publicly on here.

Looks like smooth sailing from here. Did a span of ~1000 that took about 10 minutes, 2000 in ~20 minutes, and 3000 in ~30 minutes.

Currently spanning the rest of the external to the solid state and it looks like it's steam rolling it's way towards an even quicker finish.

Again, thanks for the consistent and detailed support. TuneSpan is irreplaceable in my workflow and some small hiccup / fluke isn't going to stop me from using it.

I've sent you and email in regards to trying the new version.

Awesome, so everything is back to normal! That is relieving!

I'll get back to about the new version through email when I get to a good stopping point and put a test build together for you and a few other users.

Since you have spanned to the solid state instead of copying manually and then changing the iTunes Media folder location, there may still be some files left on the external drive after this span is complete. Be sure to look in there to find any files left behind that will need to be dealt with before you reformat the external. Let me know what's left and I can help you deal with it.

Sounds good.

Yeah I checked it out, there was a couple empty artist folders and 1 or 2 tracks that were already accounted for in iTunes so I just trashed them. Already reformatted the external, which is now getting filled up by Time Machine.

That's perfect! So everything is setup how you wanted now?

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any more questions about anything else.

Just updating this thread to say that TuneSpan 1.1 has been released on the Mac App Store (http://mas.tunespan.com).

TuneSpan 1.1 has many changes and improvements, some of which were added because of the issues encountered in this thread.

In TuneSpan 1.1, you can skip out of a reattempt to entirely avoid getting stuck like Mark did, and there are many other various improvements to the spanning process. Hopefully, some of these things that Mark ran into should not be able to happen again to any other users.