Will Tunespan correctly recognise a clone of the Tunespan drive?
Answered
Being somewhat paranoid about data loss I'm planning to buy a further external drive to make a back-up of my recently spanned media using Carbon Copy Cloner.
If the cloned disc is plugged in, will TuneSpan recognise it as if it was the original?
The same question
Apparently not!!!!
I cloned the drive, named it the same, plugged it in, Tunespan said the drive had no media to display! However, iTunes DID recognise the drive and played the media from it with no problem. So it seems that iTunes is a bit smarter at working out clone drives than Tunespan.
Given that Tunespan seems to be unable to recognise cloned drives, functional back-ups of spanned media look to be problematic. I'm now ploughing through having Tunespan relocate media from one (smaller) drive to a larger one, something that would have been easier had I just been able to plug the drive in and clone it. Bit of a pain really. Pity Tunespan can't recognise a cloned drive when iTunes can.
Apparently not!!!!
I cloned the drive, named it the same, plugged it in, Tunespan said the drive had no media to display! However, iTunes DID recognise the drive and played the media from it with no problem. So it seems that iTunes is a bit smarter at working out clone drives than Tunespan.
Given that Tunespan seems to be unable to recognise cloned drives, functional back-ups of spanned media look to be problematic. I'm now ploughing through having Tunespan relocate media from one (smaller) drive to a larger one, something that would have been easier had I just been able to plug the drive in and clone it. Bit of a pain really. Pity Tunespan can't recognise a cloned drive when iTunes can.
Sorry for my delayed response. I was traveling with limited access to internet and limited time.
I'm actually surprised that iTunes recognizes the files with a cloned drive. I could have only speculated on what would happen because I hadn't tried anything like this myself.
I know that even if your two drive are named the same, they are still unique drives to OS X and if you have both of them plugged in at the same time, one of them will get "-1" appended to their internal path name, but their display name in the Finder would stay the same. If and when that happens, it could confuse iTunes.
Never having both plugged in at the same time would probably be the best way to avoid this kind of issue.
From within TuneSpan, you can quite easily get TuneSpan (and iTunes) to point to the files on the cloned drive by reselecting them in the Spanlist and re-spanning them to the cloned Span Location on the cloned drive. This process would move family quickly since TuneSpan would find that the exact files exists at the intended Span Location and it would then just update the location in iTunes with AppleScript as well as in its own database.
That solution should be a quick an easy way to get the job done if your just migrating from one drive to another. But, if for some reason you planned on switching between two cloned drives regularly, that could cause some confusion and you would have to span back and forth to make sure things are pointing to the correct drive that's plugged in.
Hope that helps :-)
Sorry for my delayed response. I was traveling with limited access to internet and limited time.
I'm actually surprised that iTunes recognizes the files with a cloned drive. I could have only speculated on what would happen because I hadn't tried anything like this myself.
I know that even if your two drive are named the same, they are still unique drives to OS X and if you have both of them plugged in at the same time, one of them will get "-1" appended to their internal path name, but their display name in the Finder would stay the same. If and when that happens, it could confuse iTunes.
Never having both plugged in at the same time would probably be the best way to avoid this kind of issue.
From within TuneSpan, you can quite easily get TuneSpan (and iTunes) to point to the files on the cloned drive by reselecting them in the Spanlist and re-spanning them to the cloned Span Location on the cloned drive. This process would move family quickly since TuneSpan would find that the exact files exists at the intended Span Location and it would then just update the location in iTunes with AppleScript as well as in its own database.
That solution should be a quick an easy way to get the job done if your just migrating from one drive to another. But, if for some reason you planned on switching between two cloned drives regularly, that could cause some confusion and you would have to span back and forth to make sure things are pointing to the correct drive that's plugged in.
Hope that helps :-)
If you do the re-spanning trick, make sure your old drive is not plugged in so that TuneSpan will very quickly detect that the files in the original location are not found, but the files in the new location are found. That will speed up the process and stop TuneSpan from warning you about finding a duplicate file at the span location.
If you do the re-spanning trick, make sure your old drive is not plugged in so that TuneSpan will very quickly detect that the files in the original location are not found, but the files in the new location are found. That will speed up the process and stop TuneSpan from warning you about finding a duplicate file at the span location.
Hi. Thanks for the reply. OK, I'll detail it precisely as I'm a bit confused over the solution. My main plan was to 1) move the entire contents of my spanned drive (consisting of movies and TV series only) to a new, larger drive. Having done so, Tunespan said the drive had no media to display. Despite the drive mirroring exactly what the original had.
The plan is not to use drives interchangeably, merely to have one Tunespan drive plus a cloned back-up for the time when the original fails (and with hard drives for me it's when, not if).
Now I have to say this lost me completely: "From within TuneSpan, you can quite easily get TuneSpan (and iTunes) to point to the files on the cloned drive by reselecting them in the Spanlist and re-spanning them to the cloned Span Location on the cloned drive. "
You mean I select the tracks that are spanned that now have the question mark against them and tell Tunespan to span them all to my new cloned drive where they already are? With the new cloned drive plugged it Tunespan tells me there's no media on it, so I can select anything on that and say "hi Tunespan - here they are". So I'm trying to get my head round selecting tracks that Tunespan will say are not effectively plugged in and tell Tunespan to span them to a new drive where they in fact already are.
Hi. Thanks for the reply. OK, I'll detail it precisely as I'm a bit confused over the solution. My main plan was to 1) move the entire contents of my spanned drive (consisting of movies and TV series only) to a new, larger drive. Having done so, Tunespan said the drive had no media to display. Despite the drive mirroring exactly what the original had.
The plan is not to use drives interchangeably, merely to have one Tunespan drive plus a cloned back-up for the time when the original fails (and with hard drives for me it's when, not if).
Now I have to say this lost me completely: "From within TuneSpan, you can quite easily get TuneSpan (and iTunes) to point to the files on the cloned drive by reselecting them in the Spanlist and re-spanning them to the cloned Span Location on the cloned drive. "
You mean I select the tracks that are spanned that now have the question mark against them and tell Tunespan to span them all to my new cloned drive where they already are? With the new cloned drive plugged it Tunespan tells me there's no media on it, so I can select anything on that and say "hi Tunespan - here they are". So I'm trying to get my head round selecting tracks that Tunespan will say are not effectively plugged in and tell Tunespan to span them to a new drive where they in fact already are.
"You mean I select the tracks that are spanned that now have the question mark against them and tell Tunespan to span them all to my new cloned drive where they already are? "
Yep, exactly :-)
This works because even if the files don't exist at their current location, TuneSpan will also check if they happen to exist at the new Span Location that is selected. I wrote that extra check in for this exact scenario.
If you tried to span the tracks to some other location, you'd be alerted that the files can't be found. But, if they are exactly where TuneSpan would span them to anyway, then TuneSpan will let the span proceed.
Hope that makes sense. I'll be here if anything doesn't go as planned or if you have any questions.
"You mean I select the tracks that are spanned that now have the question mark against them and tell Tunespan to span them all to my new cloned drive where they already are? "
Yep, exactly :-)
This works because even if the files don't exist at their current location, TuneSpan will also check if they happen to exist at the new Span Location that is selected. I wrote that extra check in for this exact scenario.
If you tried to span the tracks to some other location, you'd be alerted that the files can't be found. But, if they are exactly where TuneSpan would span them to anyway, then TuneSpan will let the span proceed.
Hope that makes sense. I'll be here if anything doesn't go as planned or if you have any questions.
Ah I see, thanks. That should make starting to use a clone back-up as the master drive much easier if (when) the primary drive fails. I have little faith in hard drives LOL having suffered major catastrophe 2 times in 3 years.
As an aside, with the 'different drives despite being cloned', I just plugged the back up of my cloned drive in. It was called "TS Back Up". In iTunes I then clicked a known 'spanned' track and iTunes could not locate the fail (not surprisingly). However, simple name change of the drive to Tunespan (the same as the original spanned drive) and no problem. iTunes instantly played the track. When I opened Tunespan it did see the drive as Tunespan 2 but with just one movie on it. Then things got really confusing until I renamed the drive again and 'attempted to locate" the files. Don't need to go into all that as it was just a test. But iTunes clearly will recognise clone locations simply by renaming the drive correctly. Now all is renamed with all tracks located etc.
Thanks for the help. Great app.
Ah I see, thanks. That should make starting to use a clone back-up as the master drive much easier if (when) the primary drive fails. I have little faith in hard drives LOL having suffered major catastrophe 2 times in 3 years.
As an aside, with the 'different drives despite being cloned', I just plugged the back up of my cloned drive in. It was called "TS Back Up". In iTunes I then clicked a known 'spanned' track and iTunes could not locate the fail (not surprisingly). However, simple name change of the drive to Tunespan (the same as the original spanned drive) and no problem. iTunes instantly played the track. When I opened Tunespan it did see the drive as Tunespan 2 but with just one movie on it. Then things got really confusing until I renamed the drive again and 'attempted to locate" the files. Don't need to go into all that as it was just a test. But iTunes clearly will recognise clone locations simply by renaming the drive correctly. Now all is renamed with all tracks located etc.
Thanks for the help. Great app.
Replies have been locked on this page!