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I am currently having iPod Nano and iPod Touch. I am about to buy iPad very soon. I have a single computer with me.. I want to ask some of the question related to this. Firstly, do I require separate accounts for each of the devices that I have? How will I be managing this all devices, do I have to perform some initial steps? Will this affect the applications which I own right now? If I sync my ipods and ipad then what will happen?
You can have multiple iPods connected on one computer and keep a separate iTunes library for each iPod. Simply follow the below steps:
- On Mac: Hold down the Option key while opening iTunes. On Windows: Hold down the Shift key while opening iTunes.
- Click Create Library.
- Name and save the alternate library file. iTunes opens with your brand new library file.
- Open iTunes Preferences. Choose iTunes > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Windows).
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Deselect the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkbox if it is already selected and click OK. This will prevent iTunes from creating duplicates of your existing media files in the new library folder.
- Add the specific media files you want on your iPod to iTunes either by dragging them into iTunes or choosing File > Add to Library (Mac) or File > Add File to Library or Add Folder to Library (Windows).
- Once you have the iTunes Library just how you want it, connect and sync your iPod.
- Once the sync is complete, quit iTunes.
- On Mac: Hold down the Option key while opening iTunes. On Windows: Hold down the Shift key while opening iTunes.
- Click Choose library.
- Choose your original iTunes Library and click Choose (on Mac) or Open (on Windows). You can now switch back and forth between the different libraries for different iPods.
1. Make sure you have a unique name for every iPod that you want to connect to your computer.
2. Go to iTunes and re-confirm if you have the “manually manage music” option checked.
3. Make a playlist for each iPod. Name the playlist with a unique name.
4. Add all the songs that you want to be present in the playlist.
5. Check and update the sync settings for every iPod. Connect the iPod to the computer and navigate to the “music” tab on iPod. Select “selected playlists” and then uncheck the playlist for each iPod.
6. Click “Apply”. Repeat the same procedure for all of the other iPods that you want to connect with the computer.
7. Finally, go back to the main page and untick manage music.
There is no need to create a separate iTunes account. iTunes will automatically detect what device you have connected. You can sync all of the devices with iTunes and it will manage the data storage without users action required. However if you exceed the data limit in the library, for instance, for your iPod but have enough space to store it on iPad you can either leave the iPod plugged in to sync automatically but leave the content limit set to the max capacity. Or you can even change the way you sync iPod, i.e. manually selecting content.
Do not worry, Apple has already prepared for the same and knows his users can come across this kind of problem. Even I have a lot of iPod products. Each of them appears differently in iTunes. Each of them have different names and have separate settings for songs, movies etc to be synchronized. The best part of it is that you will notice different icons for every model.
For this you just need to setup iTunes to update every iPod with only certain playlists. For instance, you can configure your music with your iPod Nano, all other videos etc goes into your iPod Touch. So basically how to configure this:
1. Make a separate iTunes playlist for all the iPods.
2. Set the iPod Options in iTunes so that every iPod is updated only from a specific playlist.