Help me with my LaCie portable hard drive:

[brendangibson]

Just bought a LaCie to help me clear some space off my Macbook Pro. I have a few questions.

1) I have 60gb of music on my macbook pro. I moved over an album from my music folder, deleted it from my computer, and played it from my hard drive. it only played the song I chose even though all the songs stayed in my iTunes. Would I have to delete all my music and just choose an album to add to my computer when I wanted to listen to it?

2) How do i find the OTHER files that are displayed in my storage?

3) How many free gb should my computer have to be safe? I average between 20-30gb. I'd like to have 50 free.

Thanks.

 

[benwiggy]

Just bought a LaCie to help me clear some space off my Macbook Pro.

Make sure you have ANOTHER device to backup those files. You need TWO (or more) copies on different physical devices to have a proper backup.

I moved over an album from my music folder, deleted it from my computer, and played it from my hard drive. it only played the song I chose even though all the songs stayed in my iTunes. Would I have to delete all my music and just choose an album to add to my computer when I wanted to listen to it?

Not sure I understand this. However, if you manually move the files, then iTunes may not be able to find them without re-importing them. There are plenty of webpages with instructions on how to move your entire iTunes Library.

2) How do i find the OTHER files that are displayed in my storage?

Well, where did you put them? You can find your files using Spotlight, or just browse through the folders in your user domain in the Finder.

3) How many free gb should my computer have to be safe? I average between 20-30gb. I'd like to have 50 free.

The rule of thumb is usually 10% of the total capacity.
However, it's not a question of being "safe", but efficiency. The drive benefits from holding some free space, as there will be some space unused/unusable between files. The OS also needs some temporary storage space for its operation.
If there isn't enough space, then performance will get sluggish.

 

[satcomer]

Just bought a LaCie to help me clear some space off my Macbook Pro. I have a few questions.

1) I have 60gb of music on my macbook pro. I moved over an album from my music folder, deleted it from my computer, and played it from my hard drive. it only played the song I chose even though all the songs stayed in my iTunes. Would I have to delete all my music and just choose an album to add to my computer when I wanted to listen to it?

2) How do i find the OTHER files that are displayed in my storage?

3) How many free gb should my computer have to be safe? I average between 20-30gb. I'd like to have 50 free.

Thanks.

You copied and paste and that was you screwed up. To move your iTunes Library with iTunes itself. The article/video called How to move your iTune Library will show you how to move it the right way.