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Two External + Internal HDs for one iTunes library

Bubbasteve

Bubbasteve

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 23, 2004
1,163
0
Charleston, IL
I have a question that has most likely been answered in this forum a countless number of times but why not make it a countless number + 1...

I currently have a 250GB external HD which is home to all of my iTunes media (music / movies) -- but with my increasing collection size my HD is running very very low on space so I bought a 500GB external to replace it's duties...

My question to you fine people is this:

Is there any way that I can split up my media so that my movies are on my 500GB external, and my music is on my internal and/or 250GB external? or maybe make it so a little bit of each is on each of my HDs so I in a sense have a 1TB drive minus the fact it's split into 3

If I can in fact do that then how do I go about doing it?

Thank you all very much!
 
Assuming you still want iTunes to manage your files, then use aliases. Drag large chunks of your files to other drives but create aliases to them in the folder from whence they came. iTunes is the George Bush of music apps. It'll be fooled pretty easily, so long as the aliases have exactly the same name.
 
TheAnswer said:
You can create more than one library (one on each drive)....then switch between the two by holding down option when you open iTunes to select the drive. See here.
Click to expand...

I'm familiar with this method but my understanding is that if I want to watch movies I have to quit out of iTunes and do that method and then when I want to listen to music I have to use that method again to switch back libraries -- I don't necessarily mind doing that but I'm fishing for alternatives ... plus I have an AppleTV so I would take it that I would have to keep switching libraries if I wanted to listen to music or watch videos

bump for help :eek:
 
mad jew said:
You've been here a while. You should know thread bumping isn't allowed.

Are aliases not an option?
Click to expand...

I like to consider myself a rebel and by that I mean "my bad"

I hate to sound like a complete n00b but I have not the slightest idea on how to do that :eek:
 
Ahh, fair enough. An Alias is like a Windows Shortcut. You can make them by selecting a file and then clicking on Make Alias from the File menu. Do this for some of the larger files or folders in your library whilst iTunes is closed. Move the original files to wherever you want them and rename the (much smaller) alias(es) to whatever the original files were called. In other words, take off the alias tag at the end. This should suffice for iTunes (and iPhoto). Admittedly it's not a perfect workaround though. :eek:
 
I created an alias of one of my artists' folders on the external HD, then dragged the original folder to my local HD. After that, I cut of the " Alias" suffix from the alias, including the whitespace of course. When I open it, OS X keeps asking me for the current location of the original folder the alias points to, so I select the folder I got on my local HD now.

Using the alias in the Finder works fine, but iTunes seems to disagree. I also tried to drag the original folder on my local HD first and create the alias afterwards, sparing the "point to the original folder again" step, but to the same success.
 
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