02-14-2007, 05:29 PM

Alright, I had asked a few days ago about two harddrives for different media types and got a responce that sparked some interest. Someone mentioned something about using aliases. I dont store my library on my mac becuase of space and portability issues, but rather and older PC and just stream through iTunes to my mac or an airport express (works great, btw). What I have found though is that you can keep your iTunes music folder organized and copy files to it and if you want to keep music and movies on a seperate hdd that it actually is possible. I have an 80g hdd for my movies and a 160g for my music. The way to use two seperate hdd's is add the movies and music to iTunes and let them copy into the music folder. Heres where extra steps come in. (preferably do this to your movies, as you will probably have less movies than music, but its your choice).

Steps:
1) Copy music and movies to iTune music folder as mentioned above.
2) Go to that iTunes music folder and find the movies folder and open it up.
3) All your movies added in iTunes should be here. Highlight them all and create shortcuts (assuming this will work the same in OS X, create alias).
4) Either delete the original movies or move them to your other hdd or different folder of choice, leaving shortcut/alias in movies folder.
5) You will get the "locate original file" error when they are tried to play in iTunes for the first time.
6) Click yes to locate original file and find the shortcut/alias and select that.
7) Your movies should now play while only having a 1kb file on your "music" hdd.

Hope this helps some people who are having the same or similar problem with iTunes and not having enough space, while still trying to maintain a fairly organized music folder.

02-14-2007, 05:32 PM

Just curious, why can't you show it where the original file really is and just not have an alias?

02-14-2007, 05:36 PM

Originally Posted by PowerBookG4

Just curious, why can't you show it where the original file really is and just not have an alias?

hmm... actually i never thought about that lol. im going to try becuase that would be alot easier. I will let you know in a few minutes if it works without re-adding it to the iTunes folder


EDIT** well, good call, It does work without adding it back to the iTunes music folder. Good call, thanks

02-14-2007, 05:42 PM

no problem.. Glad I could cut an extra step out of the process for you.