Coordinate PC and Laptop using External Drive

[PeterO]

Warning: I am not a sophisticated user so lots of technical steps, moving/cutting/pasting files may be over my head.

I have Gold MediaMonkey on my PC with library on hardrive and everything is working fine. I just purchased a Laptop and an External 640 gig Drive. I have backed up PC library onto this External Drive. I have installed my Gold MediaMonkey onto new Laptop and want to access the External Drive and see exactly the same MM tag set-up as I see on my PC. Also, I want to be able to rip/edit on Laptop to External Drive and then write from External Drive back to PC hard drive. In other words, I want to go back and forth between PC and Laptop using the External Drive and always see the same MM tagging.

Is this possible?

[Pietercape]

Hi PeterO,
I have the same setup, a desktop with my master library and a laptop with an external drive. I plugged the external drive into the desktop and copied the entire music library (from the root file) to the external drive. I then plugged it in to the laptop and used the Add/Rescan files to the library to scan all the files into MM on the laptop. This worked perfectly for me.

Copying the files takes time the first time round depending on the file size and your computer setup. For subsequent additions to the library I use a small 1GB jump drive to copy the files to from the desktop, switch the jumpdrive to the laptop, copy the file to the library and use ADD/Rescan to add to MM. Over time I have found this the simplest. I am sure that there are better and quicker ways but this works for me.

[PeterO]

Thank you Pietercape for your response.

I told you I'm a novice so I will take baby steps-

My PC library is on my hard drive file (My Music) and is just over 200GB. PC Media Monkey (3.0 kb) is in my Program files.

My laptop has a 160GB hard disc so cannot support the library; MM is in the Laptop Program files. When you say add/rescan to MM on my Laptop is it just writing the tagging formats because the actual music files won't fit. I guess I'm unsure where all the tagging resides- in the library or inside the MM Program file?

While you probably understand my intention let me say again- I backup my PC (My Music) file to External Drive and then want to use it (outboard) as the library for my Laptop which can't handle the library itself.

Finally I'm not sure what a jump drive looks like but with a little research i can buy one. Ideally I would like to use the External Drive back and forth and be able to have it write only those files to either Laptop or PC which have new or changed time stamps i.e. not constantly recopy music or tagging that hasn't changed.

Thank you in advance for hand holding.

[Pietercape]

Hi PeterO
I'm with you - a novice myself!
What happens when you Add/Rescan files to MM is that MM reads and stores the file address (where on the external drive it is located) and the music data (Album/Artist etc) and only that info is stored in MM. If you try to play the music with the external drive disconnected the Album, Artist data will show but it cannot play the song because the actual music sits on the external hard drive and the song appears "greyed out" in MM.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by "Backing up" your music to the external drive. Are you using a backup and restore program? I don't know that MM will consistenly read those files. In my very limited experience my backup files have a different file structure and are compressed files. What I meant was to copy the files from the fixed hard drive on the PC to the external drive. To do this you use My Computer and locate the My Music file on the hard drive. You can also find the address by looking at the "Path" in MM on your PC, the file address appears there.
When you have found the My Music file and the External drive is connected to the PC open another My Computer window and double click on the External Drive (Probably shown in My Computer as a removable disk) and locate or create a directory where you want to copy the My Music file to. Go back to the first My computer window, right click on My Music and select Copy. Open the second window right click and Paste My Music to the directory you want on the external drive. 200 GB will take a couple of hours.

When done transfer the External drive to the laptop and in MM use Add/Rescan, find the external drive, then the My Music file and OK

You can see MM scanning the file location and metadata to your laptop hard drive.

Sorry about the detail but you did ask for a step by step explanation.

[Guest]

Thank you again, pietercape!

I had already had gotten my PC library successfully onto the external drive. I just tried your Add/Rescan suggestion and it worked like a dream backing up the tags in about 5 minutes. It's a perfect replication of my PC MM although I had to change the genre configuration in my two filters- popular, classical. I am assuming I can go back and forth between 1) laptop plus external hard drive and 2) external hard drive reading/writing from/to PC hard drive, i.e. making changes to tags, add rips etc.

Sidenote: I watched Women's Canada Hockey last night- while they aren't as fast or physical as the Men's Teams it seems to me they are better stick handlers.
Amazing team!

[Pietercape]

Hi PeterO,

When making changes to the ExtDrive/PC combo remember that MM on the laptop will still have the old data stored and will look for it in the old locations. It could be an idea to delete the library on the laptop before hooking up the ExtDrive and then rescan the full library.

I enjoy the ladies hockey too, hope the men"s is as exciting. Good luck with MM