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Running programs off an external Hard drive (namely iTunes)


flameboy

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Does it work, My hard drive on my laptop is seriously running out of space and with a new Ipod coming for Xmas I need more storage for all my mountains of CD's and to download my regular podcasts.

 

So will I have to uninstall itunes and reinstall it on the new hard drive or is there a way to get itunes to redirect and save in a different folder.

 

Was looking at a couple this;

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/customer-reviews/B000MES2UE/sr=1-1/qid=1196262634/ref=cm_rev_next?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=560798&s=electronics&customer-reviews.start=11&qid=1196262634&sr=1-1

 

Seems to have had a few negative reviews but they sound like faulty drives has had a ton of positive ones.

 

And this one;

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-120GB-Passport-External/dp/B000IAZ566/ref=pd_sbs_ce?ie=UTF8&qid=1196263276&sr=1-30

 

Don't wanna spend more than £50 and needs to be USB powered for ease of use. Also wanna try and stick to buying off a reputable seller so if I have problems I'm ok.

 

Cheers for any advice that can be given.

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It is easy to just keep the media from an iTunes library on the other hard drive. Just throwing the application on the drive won't do anything, the media will still be on the boot drive.

 

A better way to conserve space would be to move your old files onto the drive and do that every month or so.

 

Are you on a Mac or a PC?

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flameboy! I had bad experience trying to run itunes from an external HD.

Sometimes if you load itunes before it is on, it doesnt recognise it OR the drive letter changes and it cant find your library! you can set it to the right place BUT you will need to readd eveything... not a good experience.

 

Though with 2.0 usb it is good to say put all your videos i.e. movies anime etc on it caus its fast enough. just not music..

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flameboy! I had bad experience trying to run itunes from an external HD.

Sometimes if you load itunes before it is on, it doesnt recognise it OR the drive letter changes and it cant find your library! you can set it to the right place BUT you will need to readd eveything... not a good experience.

 

Though with 2.0 usb it is good to say put all your videos i.e. movies anime etc on it caus its fast enough. just not music..

 

ah damn it...I just don't have enough space on my hard drive to put it all on.

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If you only have a 30 gig drive you really should replace it. Its not that much hassle. Just back up, Replace the drive, re-install whatever OS your running, and restore from backup.

 

Though its easy enough just to put all your itunes media files on an external hard drive. You have to tell iTunes in the preferences not to copy the files to the music folder when you import them. Then move all the files from your music folder to a folder on your external HD. Delete everything from iTunes and then re-import it from the external HD.

 

You don't actually run iTunes from the external HD you just have the media there. The iTunes application file should stay on your boot drive. Now if a Mod could re-name this thread to make the title accurate.

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nonno it is the fact that itunes has to look for the media in another place namely an externa driver, that is the problem.

 

if the drive is on before itunes = problems

if the drive gets another letter = problems

 

both cases you ahve to re-add the media again in one mass OR go through each one and locate the media..

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nonno it is the fact that itunes has to look for the media in another place namely an externa driver, that is the problem.

 

if the drive is on before itunes = problems

if the drive gets another letter = problems

 

both cases you ahve to re-add the media again in one mass OR go through each one and locate the media..

 

Just assign the external HDD a letter so its always the same one. Make sure the HDD is on got to Control panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Managment, Then in the left hand panel click Disk Managment right click on the external HDD and the assign it a drive letter. Every time its turned on it will use that drive letter thus iTunes wont get its knickers in a twist.

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well have preordered a drive for collection from comet tomorrow. Gonna get that and change in my preferences to locate my music folder on the other drive. Does it auto download podcasts to new location as well?

 

Next question is should I reformat it to NTS (or whatever) or keep it at FAT32.

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Microsoft really should have got rid of the drive letter system. (or did they in vista?)

 

Thankfully it's still there, i'd worry about what they would have replaced it with in Vista. The OS is full of great ideas, but many of them complicate things by trying to simplify them (the Start menu, for instance)

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