iPod Sync from external hard drive?

[Tommyg117]

Is it possible to store all of my itunes library, including movies and cds, on my external HD and sync them directly to my ipod so as not to fill up all of the hd space on my computer? I have an 80 gig hd on my powerbook and I have like 60 gb of music and movies. This would really clear space! Is there any way i can do it?

 

[snowmoon]

Is it possible to store all of my itunes library, including movies and cds, on my external HD and sync them directly to my ipod so as not to fill up all of the hd space on my computer? I have an 80 gig hd on my powerbook and I have like 60 gb of music and movies. This would really clear space! Is there any way i can do it?

Yes, but iTunes would be almost useless without the external HD attached... just a thought.

 

[skybolt]

I have all my music and photos on an external, and point iTunes and iPhoto to that drive. When I sync my iPod, it collects the info from the external just fine. Obviously, the external has to be on and mounted before the sync, but all is well. Good luck!

 

[JonHimself]

Yes, but iTunes would be almost useless without the external HD attached... just a thought.

Just because I'm considering doing this with my growing music/video library and the fact that most of my movies are on external drive anyways, why would iTunes be useless?

 

[Tommyg117]

how would I go about doing this? "This" meaning having itunes draw from my external HD. and is it possible if I were to keep all my music files on my computer but put the MOVIE files on the HD because they take up a lot more space on my computer than the music files do. That way I could still listen to music without the external HD attatched, I just couldn't play the movies? is there any way to do that also? If so, how?

 

[Tommyg117]

oh also, in response to jonhimself, unless you HD is actually connected to your computer, the songs and movies on it will not be able to play. iTunes, when you click on the song you want to play in the library, it is a link to play the song in your music folder, so if your music folder is on your hard drive which is not connected, iTunes will not be able to find the song and therefore not be able to play it.

 

[erikholz]

yiz

go to preferences, then advanced, then choose your itunes media library on your external drive, then uncheck copy files to itunes media library when adding to library, then go to files, then choose add new folder choose the itunes media folder on the external drive.

 

[littleman23408]

Thanks OP for mentioning this. I was about to go out and buy another hard drive to replace mine. It's 95% music on my hard drive now. So, I am going to use one of my external drives as my reference.

 

[BrennerM]

I split mine: I have my music on my internal and video on external. Whenever I add content from the external drive, I drag it into iTunes while holding down the Alt key (I have a PC laptop, not Mac) and that way iTunes does not copy the file to the internal drive.

Works perfectly for me, my internal drive doesn't have near enough capacity to hold my videos but this way I can play music from my computer without connecting the external drive. And when I sync my iPad if the external isn't connected it just leaves the videos alone that are already on the iPad.