iTunes + external hard drive + iPod movies = headache. Help?

Hey folks,

I'm in need of some assistance. In theory, this should work just fine. But iTunes and I have a history and it's not cooperating again.

Present setup:
-Macbook (with a hard drive that is almost full)
-Music is saved on Macbook
-All is well

What I want the setup to be:
-Brand new WD 500 GB External hard drive
-An iTunes folder has been created on the external drive
-All my music was copied from my laptop to the external drive into the iTunes folder
-iTunes was updated with the new location
-Everything is fine UNTIL I unplug the hard drive, at that point iTunes resets itself to the Macbook folder. When I plug the external drive back in I have to reset the preferences to that location again and it updates my iTunes library - which is a pain to say the least.

It gets slightly more complicated at this point ... I'm in the midst of moving roughly 60 movies onto my iPod. I have a folder on my external drive named "iPod Movies." I was able to transfer 27 movies onto my iPod just fine last night. Now, when I transferring movies into iTunes I get this error, "Attempting to copy to the disk "My Book" failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."

Basically, I want my external drive to be my iTunes/iPod drive and it certainly is not working that way. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

You might need to simply delete the iTunes Library folder on the Macbook. As long as everything is on the external, you should be OK.

baggss said:

You might need to simply delete the iTunes Library folder on the Macbook. As long as everything is on the external, you should be OK.

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Good idea, question though, my "iTunes folder" is actually just the music tab in my Macbook. So, do I just delete the contents of the Music folder?

Thanks for the quick response.

Yes, if that is all that is in there. Your not going to irretrievably lose anything since it is all backed up on the external. Just for grins though, you may want to back up everything in that folder, except for the music files themselves, to the external just in case.

baggss said:

Yes, if that is all that is in there. Your not going to irretrievably lose anything since it is all backed up on the external. Just for grins though, you may want to back up everything in that folder, except for the music files themselves, to the external just in case.

Click to expand...

That doesn't work unfortunately. Everytime I unplug the external drive (with the Music folder being empty), iTunes automatically creates a NEW iTunes folder in the Music folder. Any idea how to get rid of this?

To be honest, no. Maybe you just shouldn't open iTunes without the drive being attached (not the best answer, I know). If all you music is on the external drive, it seems like iTunes would be useless anyhow.

Fair enough. Any recommendations on the movie fiasco? That's my main concern at this point.

Is "My Book" the internal or external drive?

baggss said:

Is "My Book" the internal or external drive?

Click to expand...

"My Book" is the external Western Digital drive.

Ok, how are you copying the movies into iTunes? Are going FILE > ADD TO LIBRARY? Have you already moved the Movie files to the external drives and are simply adding them to your iTunes library?

baggss said:

Ok, how are you copying the movies into iTunes? Are going FILE > ADD TO LIBRARY? Have you already moved the Movie files to the external drives and are simply adding them to your iTunes library?

Click to expand...

I'm dragging the movies from their folder directly to the "movies" tab in iTunes. Yes, the movie files are on the external hard drive and I'm trying to transfer them to iTunes and I keep getting that error.

Thanks for the continued help!

Try adding them via FILE > ADD TO LIBRARY and see what happens.

baggss said:

Try adding them via FILE > ADD TO LIBRARY and see what happens.

Click to expand...

That didn't work unfortunately. I have a feeling it has to do with the fact that I'm reading and writing to the external drive. Meaning my iTunes library is now on the external drive + the movies are all on the external drive as well.

I'm going to try adding a movie from a flash drive and see if that works.

Grrrr, that didn't work either. Apparently I can't write anything to this external hard drive according to iTunes. Any ideas?

I think I may have got it...

I moved a movie from the "iPod Movies" folder on the external drive to the "iTunes/Movies" folder on the same drive, and at that point I was able to drag and drop the movies right into iTunes. Interesting. I'm going to try this with the rest of these and see if it works.

EDIT: It appears to have worked. The movies are in the midst of transferring over to my iPod. Thanks very much for your help baggss.

I know what a hassle dealing with an external hard drive like that can be. In the future if you upgrade buy an internal drive and that way you can get a better deal than paying for an external and put that in your computer and if you want you can by an external enclosure for the internal drive and make it an external drive. Just a thought to mak eit easier in the future.

gnrfsu said:

I know what a hassle dealing with an external hard drive like that can be. In the future if you upgrade buy an internal drive and that way you can get a better deal than paying for an external and put that in your computer and if you want you can by an external enclosure for the internal drive and make it an external drive. Just a thought to mak eit easier in the future.

Click to expand...

I hear ya. Though an internal drive that would fit my Macbook would have been notably more expensive (I paid $85 for a 500 GB external drive). Besides, I know of no internal laptop drive that's 500 GB .