Running iTunes from External

[trudeljb]

I have set up my iTunes to run from an external hard drive. It is working fine if i hold down "option" while turning iTunes on, as all of my songs show up. However, I have new music to add to my library, and anytime I do that I get the good ol beach ball and it says that iTunes isn't responding. Any ideas on how I should go about adding songs to my library?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[TwinCities Dan]

Seems kinda backwards?

Holding option while adding songs to iTunes will point to the external drive and you won't have to hold option at startup.

 

[trudeljb]

Maybe I wasn't clear exactly what I meant. I had read on a different forum, that to run my iTunes from an external, it was easiest to cold option + open iTunes and then it runs my library from the external. So then, once I have that open with all of my songs, it never lets me actually add songs.

 

[TwinCities Dan]

I understand, but it still seems backwards to me.

Where are these new songs coming from? If you want to add them to your iTunes library (which you built on your external) you are going to have to let iTunes copy it over to that drive or hold option and let iTunes point to the song's current location.

 

[trudeljb]

The songs are just sitting on my desktop right now. Not quite sure I understand exactly what you mean. If you would, give me directions on how you would try to add them, so I could try that? Please.

 

[TwinCities Dan]

If you drag them from your desktop to the iTunes window, iTunes should copy them to your external drive and then they show up in you iTunes library.

 

[trudeljb]

That's what I expected to happen, however every time that I try to add songs to my existing playlists and library, the beach ball appears and never allows me to actually add the songs. The songs that I already had there will play with no problems, yet adding to that doesn't seem to work still. Any ideas?

 

[saving107]

Why not just set up your iTunes to boot up from the external drive every time (automatically). This is how I have mine set up.

 

[gtr053]

As I was reading my way down to the bottom, I was going to suggest that. That's exactly what I do and it works flawlessly. Heck, I swap between two libraries on an external hard drive often and I've never had a trip to the beach if you know what I mean.