iPhone syncing with disconnected library

[Astral Cars]

So I'm thinking of moving my music to an external drive as I currently have 288.7 MB available. I'm wondering what would happen then if I connected my iPhone without the external drive connected. Would media be deleted? Would it not want to sync? What issues would I have with this setup?

Alternatively, is there a way I can keep the playlist of music the iPhone syncs with on my computer? It seems like that would probably be pretty messy, especially since it's a smart playlist affected by last played, play count and rating.

Anyway, please share your thoughts. Thanks.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

I've got this exact setup and normally when I try to sync without the library mounted I get an error that say "BLANK could not be synced because it could not be found" but it is still on the phone.

 

[Astral Cars]

hmmm, that's unfortunate.

Does anyone know a way around that?

Or really any solution to solve my shrinking amount of hard drive space?

Ideas?

 

[Kadman]

Not sure why that scenario is unfortunate. That's what I do and exactly what I wanted to happen. It simply says that it can't sync the music because it's not available (I have 500+GB of music and keep it on a server in my basement). After that it continues on and syncs contacts, etc. The alternative is worse in that I thought there was a chance it wouldn't see the library and start deleting from the phone. I was happy when that didn't happen!

 

[Astral Cars]

Oh! I didn't realize it synced everything else after that. Then that should work well enough.

Now I just have to find a new HD

Does anyone know a good place to get a external firewire hard drive of at least 80GB and preferably is sorta small and also powered by the firewire port?