Understanding iTunes

Afternoon guys,

Im a recent PC to Mac switcher and I'm just trying to catch up on the little (and not so little) differences between the two platforms.

One thing I'm struggling with is iTunes. I have all my music in one central place on a nas drive which bar backups to an external drive is where I want it to stay. I've noticed though that if I map to the share the music is on and open a song or album itunes copies the files to my macbook, something I don't really want it to do.

I'd like itunes to have a list of all my music so I don't have to browse to the share every time I want to listen to an album but I want it to stream it from the Nas rather then locally. I'm assuming this is possible but could do with some pointers, I don't really want to do too much experimenting where my music collection is concerned!

Many thanks

Open iTunes, Preferences, Advanced and in the box change the location of the songs to the folder on the network drive. You can, I think, also try leaving the default location and unchecking the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" option, but I'm not sure what happens when you add new music to iTunes. I think in that case a newly added song will be stored on the default drive, not the NAS drive, which may not be what you want.

Hold the Option key while starting iTunes. Select Choose Library - point to your NAS.
In Preferences, Advanced, verify that the NAS is showing.
Un-check Consolidate Files. Once all of your music is working properly (source is the NAS), re-check the Consolidate Files.