macOS External hardrive

[krewelement394]

I have a question, i just bought a 500GB external hardrive, i have a ton of pictures and music mostly pictures, 16 GB of pictures! i want an external hardrive to move them all in there! i wanted to know if i can move them in there and still use them on my mac with out having them in my mac again! what i am saying is can i open them in iphoto as long as i have the usb external drive plugged in, but at the same time not MOVE THE PHOTOS in my mac? i dont want them in here anymore (my mac) this is why i am asking this, i have a network set up with my windows machine and i have a shared folder that has all my music and photos, i thought i could listen to my music and view my photos with out having to have the actual file on my mac...! but they are in my mac PICTURE and MUSIC folders.... how can i just make it so i can just view and listen to music and pictures with out moving a copy, or original file to my mac!?

sorry if i made it confusing but i dont know how to explain...! it other than that....

 

[chilipie]

If you move the pictures etc. to the external hard drive, you will be able to open them on your Mac as long as the hard drive is plugged in - you won't need to move them back every time you want to look at them.

 

[krewelement394]

If you move the pictures etc. to the external hard drive, you will be able to open them on your Mac as long as the hard drive is plugged in - you won't need to move them back every time you want to look at them.

OK AND IF I PLUG IT INTO MY DESKTOP... which i have it shared with the network) and i set up the external drive to share, will i be able to access my pictures and other documents with out making the files go to my macbook!?

 

[ChrisA]

OK AND IF I PLUG IT INTO MY DESKTOP... which i have it shared with the network) and i set up the external drive to share, will i be able to access my pictures and other documents with out making the files go to my macbook!?

Yes it should work but be very careful not to get into the library from both computers at the same time.

 

[krewelement394]

Yes it should work but be very careful not to get into the library from both computers at the same time.

first of all... what do you mean...? :O
as in not to open the same file at once on both my computers...? and sencondly why not...will something bad happen :[ i mean i wont do it either way but just curious....so i wont do it for some reason sometime in the future...!