iTunes with External AND Internal Hard Drive

[Butler Trumpet]

Is it possible to use the internal hd and an external hd with itunes... at the same time?

example.... having music show up in my iTunes music library that are stored on my iBook and also on a firewire drive.

thanks!

 

[JupiterTwo]

yep, but you'll have to manage the music yourself.

I think you can do it my selecting a new folder, consolidating the music there, selecting your second folder, but don't click consolidate. This way any new stuff will appear be auto managed to the new folder, but the old stuff will stay in the first folder.

maybe

 

[Butler Trumpet]

umm.... huh?

okay, first off... in iTunes, what does consolidate mean? I know that it says it will copy all of your music to the your iTunes music folder, but.... its already there for me because i have iTunes manage my music. So what's the deal with that?

and secondly, where do I put these new folders?

This is what I just did... and it worked... kind of.
I found a song, copied it onto my firewire drive, then deleted the original from the music folder.... then I created an alias and out it back where the original was.
iTunes got confused because the original wasnt there any longer, so it asked "would you like to find it?" i say yes, and point to the new file on the firewire drive... it then plays.

so that works, but I dont wanna have to do that with every piece of music I want to move over, because that is like..... 2000 songs or so.

thanks again, hope some of this can help

 

[balamw]

I find it strange that there isn't an iTunes equivalent of iPhoto Buddy, that would allow you to manage multiple libraries easily... (e.g. internal/external/both).

You could move the files manually in Finder, delete them from the iTunes library, make sure "keep iTunes library organized" is off and then "Add to Library". You'll lose playcount and playlists, etc... but won't have to select each file individually.

B

 

[Butler Trumpet]

alrighty, I am away from my place tonight and my external HD, so I will try it tomorrow and let you know how it goes.
thanks!!

 

[Butler Trumpet]

yep... that works great...

copied music files to my external, deleted the originals, then deleted them from itunes, then went to "add to library" found them on the external, and they worked great!

thanks for your help... now I have space on my ibook again... yay for that

 

[drater]

yep... that works great...

copied music files to my external, deleted the originals, then deleted them from itunes, then went to "add to library" found them on the external, and they worked great!

thanks for your help... now I have space on my ibook again... yay for that

not to upset you, but don't be surprised if you run into a problem with this. i did this for my ibook and itunes used to freeze up on me, it sucked so much. had to diconnect and reconnect all the time.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

yeah, well it seems really good so far... i have restarted itunes a few times, to make sure, also unhooked both my ipod and external.... no freezes yet.
but thanks for the warning

 

[ObsidianIce]

You shouldn't get any errors, i have about 8k on an external drive and then about another 3 on my internal drive and i've been running it this way for close to 8 months i think, ever since i bought an external. works great and i never had a problem playing songs, worst thing that ever happens is a slight lag when it goes from a song on the internal drive to the external

 

[Dane D.]

You can have has many drives as you want.

I don't let iTunes copy my music into its folder. I manage my music manually, because I have 4 HDs (3 internal and 1 external firewire) and spread them across all 4. Been doing this for over 2 years and not once has it crashed iTunes.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

yeah still no problems.....
more people should do this... it really works fine, and frees up SOOOO much space

 

[skimaxpower]

Works great

You should have no problems. In fact, the performace may improve if you're using a notebook or mac mini because they have slower internal hard drives.

Just make sure to turn off the "copy new files to library" feature within iTunes or you'll get duplicates - one on each hard drive.

Also, you may find the shareware iTunes Library Manager plug-in useful. You can have two libraries - one for "external drive attached" and one for "satellite" mode.