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I recently got a MacBook and installed Windows 7 on it. Being a .NET developer and a Windows lover (I'm sorry, it happens), I want to keep my iTunes library on my NTFS partition, but have both Windows and Mac read the library so I can sync/develop for the iPhone on Snow Leopard.

Is there an app that does this?

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NTFS-3G combined with MacFuse will allow the Mac OS X to read NTFS.

It's all a matter of picking a file system that both OSs can read/write to. FAT32 is another option. You can move your iTunes folder to a FAT32 disk or partition, however this will give you a limit of how much you can eventually store in iTunes. You could also move your home folder to the FAT32 partition if that's what you've formatted your Windows partition as.

Apple Support pages:

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  • NTFS-3G isn't case sensitive... is there a way to force iTunes to rewrite the .itl or .xml files using the correct names?
    – hb.
    Dec 9, 2009 at 22:14
  • HFS+ is case insensitive too unless you add that option, but some applications break on case sensitive file systems (all Blizzard games, for example). You're just going to have to pick a file system that both OSs support and either make a partition just for iTunes or get an external hard disk. Perhaps a simpler solution would be to get a dedicated machine for iTunes sharing/playing or get a set of speakers for an iPod. With an iPod, you don't shred your database file and you don't lose metadata like play count because all that is handled on the device and is resolved at sync.
    – dotHTM
    Dec 10, 2009 at 16:14
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I think the Mac should be able to read from NTFS out of the box. (It can't write to NTFS.) Put your music folder in a place thats accessible to both systems and point iTunes at it on both the Mac and the PC.
iTunes preferences -> Advanced Tab -> Change Media Library location ...to point at the right folder.

I haven't tested this. Edit away as necessary.

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  • iTunes requires the partition to be read/write, so I'm stuck with NTFS-3G - which isn't case insensitive, so I'm getting a lot of "dead" tracks (due to the insensitive-ness)
    – hb.
    Dec 9, 2009 at 22:13

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