iTunes music on external hard drive

tilt

Hi



I am new to iTunes, so forgive me if this question is dumb. I am thinking of buying an external USB/Firewire hard drives. I want to rip all my CDs using iTunes onto that hard drive instead of onto my local hard drive. Is it possible to do that?



The reason I want to do this is because then I can carry that hard drive anywhere around the world and hook it up to any computer (PC pr Mac, makes no difference) that has iTunes and listen to my music.



Is this possible or does iTunes HAVE to have its music only on the local hard drive?



Thanks and cheers

ipodandimac

you can certainly put your music on an external drive, but if you want to use itunes to play your music say, at a friend's house, you have to import all your music, wipe out his itunes library, create a new account on his computer, or use Finder to play music from.

vox barbara

Quote:

Originally posted by tilt

Hi



I am new to iTunes, so forgive me if this question is dumb. ...



Is this possible or does iTunes HAVE to have its music only on the local hard drive?



Thanks and cheers

No dumb question here

It is possible. Same here. You have to tell

iTunes, where the tunes have to be stored.

(iTunes -> pref->advanced-> locate the volume,

where iTunes stores all files.



Pay attention, you always have to run

the external too. If this is a non-issue, than you

are fine.



Can't say anything about windows comabitility



cheers

ipodandimac

Quote:

Originally posted by Vox Barbara

Can't say anything about windows comabitility

oh i forgot to mention that, while using drives across platforms should work, it will corrupt your data if it ever randomly decides to stop working. i would always have a backup of your whole music library for that reason if you're going to to be using windows and os x.

tilt

Thanks Guess buying a 60 gig iPod would be the best way to go



Cheers

whiterabbit

It'll work on widows just fine. It's pretty much the same as Mac. On each computer you go to, you will just have to go into the advanced preferences in iTunes, and set the "iTunes Music folder location" to your external drive.



Note that you will not be able to play both libraries at the same time. Say you're visiting your friend's who has iTunes, and you want to play some of your tunes, so you change the library to your drive. You will have to change it back before you can play any of his music. You can't browse both libraries together.

tilt

Thanks Whiterabbit. That's good enough for me



Cheers