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Can I run iTunes from my external hard drive?

G

GSG36

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 20, 2011
4
0
Perth
Hi guys,

I've recently moved and don't have a laptop or desktop anymore. I have all my Itunes backed up including music etc onto my external hard drive.

The point I suppose I'm trying to ask is - Could I take my external hard drive, run MY itunes off it, connect it onto any computer and be able to sync my Ipod, etc. I'm dying to get iOS 5, and can't afford my own laptop right now!

Cheers
 
Yes, you can play music and movies from an external drive with no problems.
 
AlphaDogg said:
That's not what the OP was asking. AFAIK, you can run your itunes library off of an external hdd.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is what the OP asked. Many people have their iTunes library on external drives, and it works fine, whether playing music or movies. I have part my library split between my internal and several external drives. All they would have to do is launch iTunes on any computer that the drive is connected to, and select the library stored on the drive.
 
Ok cheers guys, so how do I go about doing that? Do I just download itunes and change the save location onto the external drive?
 
miles01110 said:
Read again. The OP is not asking about playing music or movies. He is asking about syncing their iPod, which should work as well.
Click to expand...
Yes, I realize that. I was simply pointing out that it would work, even with music and movies (since many who are considering this also have a concern about smooth playback from an external drive).
GSG36 said:
Ok cheers guys, so how do I go about doing that? Do I just download itunes and change the save location onto the external drive?
Click to expand...
Yes, but you may also want to uncheck these options in iTunes > Preferences:
iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > organize & copy checkboxes.PNG​
 
And this will all be possible, regardless of an Itunes already being ran on the computer?
 
Tried doing this but it doesn't seem I can get Itunes to run solely off the external drive. Any help? There is an itunes already on the computer and I don't want to affect that.
 
Copy your current iTunes Library folder to the external hard drive, then hold Option key and open iTunes. It will ask you if you want to create a new library or choose an existing one. Choose exisitng and point it to the library on the external.
 
GSG36 said:
Tried doing this but it doesn't seem I can get Itunes to run solely off the external drive. Any help? There is an itunes already on the computer and I don't want to affect that.
Click to expand...
Are you saying you want the iTunes app to be on the external drive? That won't work. You can have your iTunes library stored on an external drive, which can be accessed by any computer that has iTunes installed. But you can't have the iTunes app run solely on the external drive. iTunes has other components that are stored on the internal drive. If you ran another copy of the app, it would interfere with those components. You can store your music and library files on the external drive, but you would need to use the iTunes app already installed on whatever computer you're using.
 
GGJstudios said:
Are you saying you want the iTunes app to be on the external drive? That won't work. You can have your iTunes library stored on an external drive, which can be accessed by any computer that has iTunes installed. But you can't have the iTunes app run solely on the external drive. iTunes has other components that are stored on the internal drive. If you ran another copy of the app, it would interfere with those components. You can store your music and library files on the external drive, but you would need to use the iTunes app already installed on whatever computer you're using.
Click to expand...

This is something I've been working for quite a while on my PC but so far I fail lol.

I've been going by this tutorial & so far it doesn't work as he says. Though I have discovered some of my mistakes & have gotten a little farther. My biggest issue is when I click on the batch file on my desktop it does nothing. If I click the batch file within the external drive it loads iTunes on my internal drive.

I'm not sure what would have to be changed for this to do anything on a MAC. Though I still can't get it to work on a PC & that's what his instructions are for lol.
 
Hello, I need to bring this topic back up again, and I see this on another thread here - Can iTunes run off of an external hard drive? from August 19, 2007 and I want to add my question to it - I have 3 MBP's (2012/2011 - 13, 15, 17) each running small 128 GB SSD's and I use external 1 or 2 TB SSD's for my data storage and backups and interchange them between all laptops.

My goal is to have my iTunes on all 3 laptops connect and recognize the external iTunes and be able to interchange the external on any of the laptops I'm using at the time. So I won't be running the computers simultaneously and connecting to the iTunes external at the same time (although I now wonder if that would work?) but using the external iTunes separately.

Would any changes or additions to iTunes be shown across all laptops if I made the changes into one of them? Would the iTunes Libraries remain in the local default Music folders for 3 Libraries total in 3 laptops or do I point each local Music folder to 1 Library located on the external drive? And if so, would they sync up if I made changes into one of them? I'm running Sierra and iTunes 10.0 across all platforms, thank you.
 
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