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smoving iTunes library to an external drive

A

AeroBar

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Hi,

I am about to order a 1 TB external hard drive to store my photos and iTunes library on.

It will have Firewire 800, so will my iTunes access files on the external drive as fast if they were the internal drive? ( and will iPhoto do the same? )

Cheers.
 
AeroBar said:
Hi,

I am about to order a 1 TB external hard drive to store my photos and iTunes library on.

It will have Firewire 800, so will my iTunes access files on the external drive as fast if they were the internal drive? ( and will iPhoto do the same? )

Cheers.
Click to expand...

smoving... har har har 😛 well that gave me a good laugh 😛
 
AeroBar said:
Hi,

I am about to order a 1 TB external hard drive to store my photos and iTunes library on.

It will have Firewire 800, so will my iTunes access files on the external drive as fast if they were the internal drive? ( and will iPhoto do the same? )

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Make sure you use iTunes' Consolidate method. 🙂
 
stevod said:
Can you move the files and keep all of the 'play count' info?

S
Click to expand...

Absolutely. All you do is enter the location of the new library in iTunes' preferences, and then use the Consolidate function. I did it recently. 500GB copies in five hours.
Scroll down to "Consolidate Library: the Right Way" in this tutorial.
 
Man I was about to ask this 😀

A moment of truth… so I've verified a few dozen songs will play and videos work when I moved the original to the trash bin… 😱

Safe to delete the original?
 
I would backup the original, rather than rely on a single storage location. With regards to storing the library on an external drive connected via firewire, this is exactly how mine is setup. You can stream from it as well. When streaming from something like an AppleTv, the only thing you might run into is a slight delay while the external drive spins up, since they usually go to sleep after a period of inactivity.
 
Hello Fellows,

Thanks for all the input.
Slight change though, my Mac isn't capable of firewire 800. It will have to be 400. Will I still be able access as fast as though it's on the internal drive?
Cheers.
 
AeroBar said:
Hello Fellows,

Thanks for all the input.
Slight change though, my Mac isn't capable of firewire 800. It will have to be 400. Will I still be able access as fast as though it's on the internal drive?
Cheers.
Click to expand...

Speed isn't an issue. The only problem is that most external hard drives tend to go to sleep, so sometime it takes 5-10 seconds for them to wake up if you haven't used iTunes in awhile.
 
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