[lschul]

I am thinking about moving my itunes library from my laptop to my external hard drive. I know I can't listen to music on my computer without the hard drive but that is OK. How do I properly do this?

[buffoon]

You've basically answered your questions. Create music folder, move it to external hard drive. Move old and new files there before and/or after.
When you want to play them, find the folder in your external and play the piece. Decide which player to use as default (itunes will pick them up). As you said, yr laptop has to do it, you just click a different drive to the original HDD on it.

[parasolution]

You will need to point iTunes in the right direction, in order to make it easier. Otherwise you will need to locate each song individually.

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced Tab

There you will find the iTunes Music folder location. Change the location to the new place you moved your music to.

[lschul]

Thanks, I have done that but now itunes is blank, even though I have directed it to the new spot. How do I get my music back into the program?

[buffoon]

sorry!!! I should have mentioned that aswell. Ischul is quite right. However, you now have your itunes music folder on one Drive and the itunes player on the other. It don't like that. You can create a playlist on your itunes player and drag the songs over from your external. That's a bit cumbersome though. If you want the music back go to "File" on iTunes, click import, browse thru the submenu til you find your new music location on the external HD, click that and iTunes will get them back. But they'll be back on your original PCs HDD which somewhat defeats your original object. I never tried this following, but you could move (actually copy is better) the itunes player to the external HDD aswell and then open up that drive every time you want to play itunes library. Remember that your itunes music is not in an ordinary music folder but in a specific itunes folder within your music. With me this location reads "C:\Documents and Settings\My Name\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music". You will probably find your itunes player (incl. the download, the itunes store,purchases etc.) in your programme files (mine is under "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop"). Once copied onto your external, open the itunes folder there, find the itunes icon within, right click to create a shortcut for easier use (better have that on the external aswell)..

[lschul]

I have my external HD turned off and can not play music with itunes so that tells me I have the music on the EHD only and now I have about 30% free space on my laptop as opposed to 5% earlier. Only problem is I can't play anything on itunes while the EHD is not connected but that's OK.

[buffoon]

Yeah, that's what I do. The EHD consumes energy and that's pointless when I'm not using it (to hear music for instance). I just turn it on when I need it. Good luck

[parasolution]

I'm confused, so there's no songs listed in your iTunes library? That seems strange, as moving the location of your music would not cause this. Its sounds like you moved all the databaase files when you moved your iTunes music folder to the external drive or somehow the dbase files got corrupt.

I'm assuming you have XP. If you do, double click on your "Music" folder. There you will find your 'iTunes" folder. Double click on the "iTunes" folder to open, you should find 3 folders (album artwork, iTunes Music and Previous iTunes libraries) and 2 files (iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library). If the 2 files are missing (iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library) you will need locate them. You have 2 options:

#1
If you think you moved the entire contents of the iTunes folder to your external drive, go to the external drive and see if you can find those files. If they are there, move them back to your iTunes folder in your "Music" folder. This will repopulate all the playlists and songs.

#2
If you still can't find it. Go to your "Previous iTunes libraries" folder and move the latest dbase file to the correct location.

That should be it.

[lschul]

I got it back by importing, but again, it only plays when the EHD is on. Also, I just thought of something else, if I buy a song in iTunes I bet I have to have the EHD on so it can find the right file path...what say you?

[buffoon]

Yep!!! Playing Itunes library actually means that it finds the file in order to play it. When you import files that doesn't mean you put them into the itune player. By importing it merely knows where to find them, in order to play them. So your EHD needs to be on, otherwise it'll find nuffin. Well, you've go more disk space on your PC now to work other things. Just turn the EHD on, when you want to play your music. If you buy a new song and define your itunes folder on your PC, it'll load it there but then you've got it on your PC HD again and have to move it. If you turn your EHD on when buying a new song, it should send it straight to your folder on the EHD, providing you've defined the path properly. Saves you work.