I have a 250 GB LaCie external hard drive to which I back up music, photos, etc. My G5 internal drive is filling up and I want to use the external drive to store my music, but still want to be able to access all of it with iTunes like I do now for the music on the internal drive.
How do I set it up to let iTunes play my music just off of the external drive?
Back up everything first (but you knew that, right?)
1. Copy all of your music files to the external.
2. Disconnect the external.
3. Open iTunes, select the Library. Select all. Take a deep breath. Delete key. Answer yes to deleting all files and moving to the trash. Your Library should be empty and blank.
4. Empty trash.
5. Connect and start the external.
6. Go to the "advanced" tab of iTunes preferences. There is a click box for "Copy files to iTunes folder when adding to library," unclick this. Click OK.
7. Go to the "file" menu >> Add to Library...
8. Click on the external drive in the resulting dialog box, find the music you copied earlier and choose it.
9. iTunes sets new pointers to the external, but doesn't copy your files back to your boot drive.
I would suggest that rather than deleting the library first off, why not just move it somewhere else on the hard drive where iMovie won't see it or rename it to something iMovie does know. Then if things don't work out, you can always move back or re-rename the files/folder. Patrick
Sounds ok, but if I already have a copy of my music on the hard drive, won't I get a duplicate set and use up space? Isn't there some way to just play the music off of the hard drive without all of this shifting of stuff around?
OK, if you already have your music on the external, all you should have to do is change your Music Folder location in iTunes Preferences, as explained in the document I referenced above. Be sure to leave the iTunes Library & iTunes Music Library.xml in your iTunes folder on your internal drive.