Sharing Music over the Network (with a twist)

[julzcompufreek]

Hey All,

I recently went and bought myself a nice new 320GB HDD for my Desktop Computer which sits in my room. In addition, I have a Laptop and My dad has a Desktop in the study. Now, I have setup the Desktop in my room (the one with the 320GB HDD) as a sort of Media Server. I store all my movies, and am hoping to share my Music.

Now, I am wanting to copy over all my music to the desktop, as a sort of backup, but also to share it over the network. Now I know that I could easily have a shared database that all the computers connect to stored on the 320GB HDD and then share the music, however, here is the twist. I am going to keep the music on my laptop as well, because I listen to it on the road (when I obviously do not have network access). I want to keep both databases up to date and in sync with each other. I mostly fix up tags and other informaton on my laptop, and then i want to keep it in sync with my desktop. Problem is, when you move a mediamonkey database to another computer, you need to update the hard drive serial, so it will recognise which HDD the music is on.

So i am wondering how I am going to do this. I was thinking maybe I might just have to copy over new tracks and only get the information from the ID3 tags rather than from a database.

I know this is very complicated request, but if you have any ideas, please let me know.

[Peke]

Search on forum as this already have several solutions, but basics are that for music you need to have it scanned over network not on local drive. Best to done that is to scan each computer local drive from itself thru networks shares.

[Lowlander]

This has recently been discussed, the best solution is:

1) Desktop has it's own DB, which scans the external drive for music. Thru virtualCD you can copy songs to the desktop itself. Benefit is that the songs show as one in the database.

2) The laptop has it's own DB. This is needed to be able to use MediaMonkey while the laptop is away from your network. The laptop would scan the music on your network. Here you can use the virtualCD as well to copy some/all songs to the laptop.

On the laptop you would set in the options that MediaMonkey updates the timestamp when songs are edited. You can have songs locally on the laptop, edit them and when you're back home use auto-organize files to move them to the external drive.
On the desktop you would setup the file monitor or use a manual add/rescan tracks to update the library. Occassionally you would need to send song to the virtualCD to create a copy on the desktop.

This should keep all in sync and works the best. I use this method and it works very well for me.

[Teknojnky]

If you want to keep a duplicate of your entire library (or subset), you could set one of your systems up as a fake 'usb device' so you can make use of MM syncing features.

Exact steps would be:

- configure the d_usbmass.dll in MM options
- decide which device will be the 'usb device'
- select the drive letter to use (probably best bet is to map a network drive on your laptop to your desktop)
- set the drive label/share name
- set your sync options

I would recommend ensuring that you have confirmations for delete and updates if you choose to enable deletions/updates.

In this manner, you can sync your local files to remote, or vice versa without a huge headache.

If you use a shared mapped drive, I would recommend using a shared specifically for your music folder and not your whole drive, as MM would can the the entire drive (because it thinks it's an external removable device)

[julzcompufreek]

Ok, thanks for your input guys (I knew I could count on all of you)

I will give some of the ideas a go

thanks again

[abrazor]

is it also possible to set up a FOLDER as a fake usb device?

[julzcompufreek]

Yeah, I dont know about the fake usb device thing because it doesnt update a mediamonkey database.