If you have a large iTunes library, you may have reached the point where you need to offload some of your media files to another drive. There are several ways you can do this. You can connect an external hard drive to your Mac, and use that to store your iTunes Media folder. If you use an iMac, this is probably the easiest choice. However, if you use a laptop, you may not want the hassle of connecting and disconnecting an external drive whenever you want to use iTunes.
Another option is to use a network attached storage device, or NAS. This is a storage device that your Mac connects to over your network–usually via Wi-Fi, but you can also use Ethernet–and that can give you vastly more storage, especially if your Mac has an internal SSD.
If you use both iTunes and another network device or app–such as Plex, a hi-fi media streamer, or Sonos’ wireless home audio system–you can use the NAS to store media that other devices can access too. You won’t need to ensure that your Mac is always on.
In this article, I’ll discuss how you can set up iTunes to use a NAS, and I’ll point out some issues you need to be aware of to ensure that iTunes works correctly.
Read the rest of the article on Macworld.