Filed under: Tips and tricks, iTunes
Using FireWire to help speed up the iTunes Home Sharing process
One of the new features of iTunes 9 is Home Sharing. The feature allows you to manually browse, import, and automatically add iTunes content from up to five authorized computers in your house. While Home Sharing is certainly a welcome feature, it's so slow that you may not live long enough to see all of your content transferred.
Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.
Given the trend toward larger file sizes of digital media -- higher bit rate music and videos, in particular -- iTunes Home Sharing may take quite a bit of time for some. However, some FireWire shenanigans should shorten this time significantly.
One of the neat features of FireWire is its networking capabilities. Similar to how you can connect crossover Ethernet cables to directly connect two computers, you can use FireWire to directly network (or daisy chain, if you have more than two) your computers. Doing this with iTunes Home Sharing, however, requires a bit of trickery, and here are the steps, assuming that your network config is set to Automatic:
- Turn on iTunes Home Sharing on two computers. Let's call them Computer 1 (which we'll call the target) and Computer 2 (which we'll call the host).
- Connect the two computers via FireWire.
- As you'll need an Internet connection to authorize your iTunes account on both computers, leave your Internet connection on for both computers.
- After authorizing, turn off the Internet connection (whether it's via AirPort or Ethernet) of the target computer (Computer 1). However, the Internet connection of Computer 2 should remain on. I've found that leaving on an Internet Connection on Computer 1 will result in Home Sharing using its Internet connection (either AirPort or Ethernet) to transfer the file within your LAN.
Now, Computer 2 should be able to import the files from Computer 1 via iTunes Home Sharing using a FireWire transfer, which will likely save you a lot of time.
Note: Using FireWire for iTunes Home Sharing is not bi-directional, so you'll need to repeat these steps if you want Computer 1 to import content from Computer 2.
Although these steps are a bit of a hassle, you'll likely only need to do them once, as subsequent uses of Home Sharing will more likely be incremental in nature, for which AirPort or Ethernet should be adequate.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
mmendoza27 said 8:46PM on 9-17-2009
I'm guessing people would be more likely to carry a FW800 cable around, but wouldn't it be more efficient to use a crossover Cat-5e cable?
I mean, most current Macs come with a Gigabit ethernet port anyways. Good idea though.
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iGO said 11:13PM on 9-17-2009
"help speed up the iTunes Home Sharing process"
This entire entry is moronic at best, extremely time consuming and very inconvenient at minimum.
Let's race:
3 iMacs in the house. One on each of three floors, all situated and tethered with each of their respective peripherals and plugged into their outlets. No ethernet, just wireless-n, like the three in my house.
On any given day, let's say 30 songs worth of music (but even if it was 300) are purchased or ripped into one of these iMac's.
I'll bet my house, that the one iMac employing wireless-n, that browses the new music via home sharing, selects the 30 songs (or 300), and drags them over to it's own library, will copy the entire content in 2 to 20 minutes. Done. And can be bi-directional, immediately.
The other boob, has to physically move his iMac, and ALL that is involved in doing so (un-tether everything, boot-down, boot up, make space, power-source, connect to source iMac, tether, configure, internet access, etc.....then reverse everything to put it all back), doesn't stand a chance. This would take 30-40 minutes, easily. Never mind the real inconvenience. WAPITA! And then to do it all again, the next time.
What a freakin joke.
Sang Tang Can't Hang
Modano said 9:26AM on 9-18-2009
@iGO: Not everyone has a 65 story house and 97 Macs. If you have a laptop and a desktop this is an excellent way to approach this problem. Just because it doesn't apply to YOU doesn't mean that it's useless.
Modano said 10:39AM on 9-18-2009
It's like you guys are looking for something to complain about. I just provided an example of how this is a useful hint. Laptop, desktop, enormous library. What do you want, a refund of your TUAW subscription when an article doesn't apply to your precise situation?
iGO said 11:15AM on 9-18-2009
@Modano.
1) Of course, moving or copying files/media between any two computers will be faster!! employing Firewire or Ethernet, compered to wireless.
2) But in the context of the new feature "Home Sharing" in iTunes 9. This method is still moronic. Home Sharing is about convenience and ease of use.
3) If the blog was titled:
"Firewire or Ethernet, to Move or Copy GB's of Files, Faster!
then the entry might be valid.
But as Many have pointed out in the comments that follow, this has been repeatedly blogged about, many times in the past.
The Net here: a useless entry.
Would have been better to just repost one of those old blog's about the use of firewrie or ethernet.
Get it now?
cbh said 8:48PM on 9-17-2009
Without actual timing measurements, this story is incomplete. Are you comparing the rate of firewire data transfer with the rate between two wireless clients? Why no discussion of gigabit ethernet?
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brian said 2:41AM on 9-18-2009
I have actually done some testing! A few years ago I compared TCP over FireWire 400, 10/100 Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet. FW400 and 10/100 (across a switched network and with a crossover cable) both came in right around the same. (I think it was about 90 seconds to move a 650 MB CD image.) Gigabit Ethernet was THREE TIMES FASTER--only 30 seconds to do the same transfer. I didn't test FW800 but I think it's safe to assume that it'd be about 2x faster than FW400, still slower than gigabit.
You know what the good news is? The gig-E ports on Macs (and maybe all computers, I'm not sure) have this cool feature where you can connect two gig-E Macs with a STRAIGHT cable (NOT a crossover cable) and get gigabit speeds. (If you use a crossover cable it'll actually drop to 10/100 speed.)
So: use any plain old Ethernet cable--longer AND cheaper than a FireWire cable--and you'll get FASTER speeds.
Tommy said 5:39AM on 9-18-2009
Brian- You'll still need to have a CAT6 cable, not "any plain old Ethernet cable".. If you try to connect two gigabit macs with a cat5e cable, it will only work at 10/100 speed.
Tony said 7:18AM on 9-18-2009
Untrue. Cat5e is rated to gigabit speeds and is good enough unless you're going for long distances. I
Don't listen to the salesmen in shops.. they're trying to get you to buy the more expensive stuff.
Ned Scott said 8:57PM on 9-17-2009
First, gigabit ethernet should blow this out of the water. Second, your setup instructions suck.
It's painfully easy to network two macs that would allow bidirectional syncing/coping. All you do is turn off wifi or disconnect ethernet on one computer, then on the other go to system preferences and share internet via firewire. Both computers will have full access to the internet and transfer all files via firewire.
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Rafe H. said 9:06PM on 9-17-2009
Cross-over ethernet cable? I think OS X has supported standard ethernet between 2 computers since 10.0, right?
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Jonathan A said 9:38PM on 9-17-2009
It's not really a function of the OS. It's a function of the ethernet hardware, specifically the PHY. Ethernet hardware that supports automatic detection of crossover (Auto-MDIX) has been around for about 10 years now, and the feature is (nearly?) ubiquitous in Gigabit PHYs. But yes, I think all recent macs support this feature.
VanillaSpice said 9:51PM on 9-17-2009
Cable auto-sensing (detecting whether a cross-over or normal cable has been inserted, and making it work both ways with either sort of cable) is a hardware feature, not a software feature. So it would be more correct to say the feature has been around on computer models released since the introduction of MacOS X.
JGray said 9:21PM on 9-17-2009
if you set the service order in network prefs so firewire is #1 it will take care of this problem and both can sync
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aether6 said 9:22PM on 9-17-2009
whats wrong with a crossover cable? did you get these directions from someone in AOL Operations?
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JedixJarf said 9:50PM on 9-17-2009
My Macs already connect at gig speeds, faster than firewire 800.
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daktaris said 9:53PM on 9-17-2009
and you dont even really need a real cross overcable. any ethernet rj45 network cable will do. the mac will cross over those wires inside if it needs to.
I appreciate the intentions of hints like these but sometimes reading tuaw remind me of MacAddict magazine from 5-10 years ago. Many of their how-to articles were poorly edited, over ambitious and unnecessarily complex.
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Beanie said 9:57PM on 9-17-2009
Yeahhhh.. this seems really unnecessary. You still got paid $10 for this post though. Well played.
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Dave said 9:58PM on 9-17-2009
Agreeing with just about everyone here.
Ethernet would likely be sufficient. If one's router or switch isn't gigabit, then just connect the two Macs directly for the transfer. I haven't found any reports or tried any of this myself, but having just recently made my entire home network gigabit, I'm finding the speed improvement is quite substantial.
I would -guess- that FW 800 is probably faster than gigabit Ethernet in terms of raw data transfer rates. Real-world scenarios would change that though.
But does any of this even matter? It's like someone's first Time Machine backup. Of course it could take awhile. Just start it before going to bed.
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CyBeR said 2:56AM on 9-19-2009
You would guess wrong.
Firewire 800 runs at 800mbps
Gigabit ethernet runs at 1000mbps.
Do the math.