iTunes and offloading files to an external HD

[skinnylegs]

I have a MBP as my primary rig. I'm reaching my HD capacity (150 gigs) and thought I would offload files to an external HD. So, I transfered all the files within my Home>Music folder to the external drive which shaved off about 30 gigs.

Only one problem.....

Now when I go to iTunes it is <obviously> empty. Is there any way to have iTunes use the external drive to search for and play music/movies?

 

[kornyboy]

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Yes, you can start iTunes while holding the option key down and you will be prompted to choose or create a library.

If you want itunes to reference the music on the external drive so that you can still have some media stored locally, you can tell it not to copy music to the library when dropped into itunes in the preferences. This way you can store everything however you want and just drag it back into iTunes so it will show up there.

 

[skinnylegs]

Thank you so much!

When I look in Preferences it references my external HD (My Book) which is awesome. However, I'm still a bit confused. When I download new movies or music will it *automatically* put them on my external HD or is there something else I need to change within Preferences?

 

[kornyboy]

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It is going to put them on your internal drive. I usually just drag them over to my external drive and then delete the one from my iTunes library and drag it from the external drive to the library. It's a few steps but it keeps you from having 2 iTunes libraries.

 

[Inked]

I just copied the iTunes library folder to my external drive and then created an alias of it within the iTunes folder, works just fine.

 

[skinnylegs]

I see where you're going and it makes sense. Not such a big deal since I backup nightly anyway. I just need to get into the habit of deleting stuff in the Music folder on the MBP.

I'm curious.....

I'm thinking of offloading my pictures as well. Does this process work similarily with iPhoto?

 

[skinnylegs]

I just copied the iTunes library folder to my external drive and then created an alias of it within the iTunes folder, works just fine.

Wow. Intereting. I'll give that a try!

 

[Inked]

I see where you're going and it makes sense. Not such a big deal since I backup nightly anyway. I just need to get into the habit of deleting stuff in the Music folder on the MBP.

I'm curious.....

I'm thinking of offloading my pictures as well. Does this process work similarily with iPhoto?

Yep, done exactly the same thing with my iPhoto library, they are both stored on my external drive and shared wirelessly attached to my AEBS

 

[Inked]

Sorry, meant I moved the iTunes MUSIC folder to the external drive - not library

 

[kornyboy]

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I see where you're going and it makes sense. Not such a big deal since I backup nightly anyway. I just need to get into the habit of deleting stuff in the Music folder on the MBP.

I'm curious.....

I'm thinking of offloading my pictures as well. Does this process work similarily with iPhoto?

I haven't tried it with iPhoto. If you give it a shot let me know if it works.

 

[Inked]

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I haven't tried it with iPhoto. If you give it a shot let me know if it works.

iPhoto definitely works