Out of Space on Classic 160GB Question

[blueboy714]

I'm almost out of space on my 160GB and was curious what is the easiest thing to -

1) I could start removing albums from iTunes (I have everything on CD) - which I don't want to do.
2) buy another Classic - which is my choice.

If I do buy another Classic is there an EASY way to use 2 Classics and have them each have completely different albums on them - without having to check all of the song boxes on and off each time I connect a separate iPod? It seems like an easy answer exists - I just haven't been able to find it yet.

Thanks - blueboy714

 

[ScoobZ]

Yes - playlists, either smart or static. You can then sync some lists to one iPod and the other lists to the other iPod.

 

[blueboy714]

thanks - can playlists handle 160GB? For example - one playlist of A to L and one playlist of M to Z?

blueboy714

 

[Jesse Hollington]

You can limit a Smart Playlist by capacity quite easily, although selecting based on alphabet would be a bit trickier. You're probably better off try to split them along lines such as genre.

Note that the use of Smart Playlists could also save you the trouble of buying another iPod classic unless you really want to carry your entire library around with you on two iPods. Criteria such as ratings and last played and last skipped info can easily be used to rotate music on and off your iPod each time you sync, so that you can keep your music "Fresh" without having to fiddle with it too much.

 

[otaku]

Maybe

I haven't tried it, but I think you can set up one playlist for the first iPod, and then a smart playlist that specifies "Not in first playlist".

 

[Jesse Hollington]

Yup, that can definitely work if you want to build a manual playlists, and could be an effective way of picking your favorite/preferred music in one playlist, and then catching everything else in another.

Of course, you'd have to manually monitor the standard playlist to ensure it didn't exceed the capacity of the first iPod.

 

[blueboy714]

thanks gang - I've been investigating smart playlists and they provide me what I need, but I can't find an option to load only to a specific iPod (otaku thought there was a "Not in first playlist" option).

 

[Jesse Hollington]

The option for which playlists get synced to which iPod is in the actual iPod sync settings that appear when you have your iPod connected. Simply to the "Music" tab and change "Sync All..." to "Sync Selected Songs and Playlists."

 

[otaku]

I was saying to set each iPod to synch to a separate playlist (Music->Sync Music->Selected Playlists). as jhollington suggests. Then one playlist would have either regular or smart selections of what goes on the first iPod, and the second playlist would put what is left onto the second.

But since you didn't ask...I started out with a 4GB mini, and I used to just put my "favorite" stuff on it, plus a smart playlist to randomly fill what was left. Since I sync'd every day, there was always fresh music available. Now I have a 120 I don't have to do that, but you might want to try this before investing in another iPod.

 

[blueboy714]

someone that work with had an interesting alternative since I primarily use external drives. Buy a second drive and just plug in the drive you want to access depending on the iPod you are using. Any flaws with this idea?

 

[Jesse Hollington]

That's far more complicated than it needs to be. Firstly, unless you're using two completely separate iTunes libraries, it can become a mess to manage as you'll always be missing half the content in your library. Further, although iTunes obviously can't add music to an iPod if it can't find the file, it will never actually remove content from an iPod unless it's deleted from the library entirely, regardless of whether the underlying file can be found.

If you're really going to use two separate library databases, there's no reason to put them on separate hard drives as you can easily switch back and forth between libraries. Again, however, there's absolutely no need to make things even that complicated... Just keep everything in one library unless you have some other reason to separate it out, and build playlists of what you want on each iPod.

The simplest way to do this would be to create two Smart Playlists. Set the first one to limit itself to 160GB of content, selected by whatever criteria you like (ie, random, album, least recently played, etc).

Then, create the second Smart Playlist with criteria that says "Not in Playlist: <other playlist>." This will include everything that wasn't selected for the first smart playlist.

You can then connect each of your iPods (or both at the same time), select the iPod in the Devices listing, and go to the "Music" screen and choose to sync the first playlist to the first iPod and the second playlist to the second iPod.

You can also get more creative with the criteria in these playlists if you wanted to divide up your music by things like genre or rating and even create additional playlists to control what goes where, but if you're just looking for a somewhat random selection of your music on each iPod, those basic two Smart Playlists should work fine.

 

[blueboy714]

thanks for the quick tutorial jhollington. I suggested this to a few people I work with and know and gave this link and now they are also going to go the route of buying a 2nd Classic and setting up a Playlist. I figure Albums starting with "A to L" and then "M to Z" is about 50/50.

 

[Jesse Hollington]

It's also worth noting that if you use "selected by Album" as the criteria, iTunes will automatically make its selections alphabetically, so there's no need to build a complex Smart Playlist just to choose "A to L" or hassle with managing the size of manual playlists.

So a playlist limited to 160GB selected by Album should pick as much music as it can, starting with albums beginning with the letter A, and continuing until the playlist reaches the capacity limit. The second playlist, using a "not in playlist" criteria can then pick up where the first one left off.

 

[otaku]

That is a really good suggestion, since you'll be sure to get ALL of the album names, even those with numerals or foreign characters in the names.

 

[blueboy714]

That is a really good suggestion, since you'll be sure to get ALL of the album names, even those with numerals or foreign characters in the names.

Agreed - I forgot about Prince's "1999", Pat Methany's "80/81", etc.