11-06-2010, 09:41 PM

I just bought a Western Digital 1TB "My Book" for Mac external harddrive.

What I want to do with it is save all of my music files onto it, and have iTunes play them from there. I'm trying to free up some space on my internal HDD and also plan on purchasing 4 gigs of ram for this upgrade.

Which ever way I do it, there doesn't seem to be a way to "stream" I guess you could say-- from the external.

Any tips?

11-06-2010, 10:33 PM

Just add the music to your iTunes library from your external HD. It won't be able to play when the HD is not plugged in. You don't have to add it to your internal HD in order for it to play. It's like playing a movie from your external HD. You just double click it, and the extension it is, triggers the corresponding program to open it.

11-06-2010, 11:55 PM

Check out this article: LINK It shows you how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive and stream the music from there.

The Apple KB also has several articles on how to do it.

11-07-2010, 12:14 AM

Alright so I can't really go by that link since I already moved the music file to my external harddrive.

It's weird... I went to "add Library" and then I selected the external hdd. All of the songs are in the media folder- but when I double click a file it brings iTunes up- but doesn't play the song.

This is the screen that iTunes is stuck on-- It doesnt show ANY files.

11-07-2010, 01:29 AM

As the lolcats say, "yr doin it rong."

1. COPY (not move) the entire iTunes Music folder to the external drive.
2. Launch iTunes with the option key held down. It will ask you if you want to open or create a new library. Navigate to the external HD's iTunes folder and open.
3. Quit iTunes.
4. Put your original iTunes Music folder in the trash. DO NOT empty the trash yet.
5. Open iTunes (normally) again. If your music library shows up and is sourced to the external (which you can see under iTunes' prefs: Advanced), you can quit iTunes and then empty the trash.

11-07-2010, 05:21 PM

I've tried everything. What I did was copy my iTunes media folder to my new HDD. The original is sitting in the trash bin as we speak. So then I open iTunes while holding the option button and that makes you have to choose a library. So I am selecting the extral hdd.. and thats not working, then selecting the folder in the hdd, and thats not working.. Its saying its not an itunes library. .... but its exactly what was copied out of my original itunes library.

11-08-2010, 04:55 AM

You didn't follow the instructions listed above.

Please re-read point 1 until you understand that you need to copy the ***ENTIRE*** iTunes Music folder (and everything in it) to the external drive for this to work.

11-08-2010, 05:25 AM

Chas is correct. If all you copied were the music files, it will not work as that is not a proper iTunes Library. You have to copy the entire iTunes folder to the external. Then point iTunes to it and it should work.

11-08-2010, 10:23 AM

I copied the entire iTunes music folder to the external.

Unless you're talking about the entire media folder which would then include iTunes movies, tv shows, ringtones, and of course music.