Storing music on an external to free up internal space help

[angelinaeve7]

I have a lot of music on my macbook and want to download more. I just bought a 520 GB hard drive. How would you recommend storing this music so that it would be easily accessible from the external and backed up yet cleared from my computer? there has to be an easier way than what I had with my pc......(everytime I wanted to hear a song from my external or put one on a cd I had to go through all these folders - transfer the song from the external to the computer and wait)

 

[Matek]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say - you say you want it backed up, which means you definitely need it on two different locations, both the internal and the external drive.

If that's not what you meant and simply want your music on your external drive, go to iTunes (assuming that's what you use for music) -> Preferences -> Advanced -> iTunes Music Folder location. If you're managing the collection manually, simply move it to the external drive.

(everytime I wanted to hear a song from my external or put one on a cd I had to go through all these folders - transfer the song from the external to the computer and wait)

You DON'T have to do that in Windows, you just didn't know better. You can easily store it on an external drive and play it from there.

 

[BobZune]

If you want Time Machine to back up the music from the external drive, remove the external dive from the TM options "Do not backup" list. [You can add other exclusions if needed (e.g., non-music files on te external)].