using music on external hard drive

hello fellow mac users, I recently bought an external hard drive (seagate 500GB) to store music. not being the most computer savvy guy around i can not figure out how to best use the hard drive with my MacBook Pro. Every time I click a song in the hard drive it will play the song in itunes and and also copy the file onto my computer. I would like to be able to view all the music in itunes without copying the file as there is 200GB of music on the external hard drive,

any advice or ideas on this issue would be greatly appreciated

James

In your iTunes preferences under advanced, uncheck 'Copy music to iTunes Music Folder' and select your external drive as the source of your music files.

Actually you should leave Copy music to iTunes Music Folder, that way when you import music it will go directly to the external. And yes, go to iTunes>Preferences>Advanced tab and change the location of the iTunes library to the external. Hit OK and then to to the Menu Bar and hit Advanced and Consolidate Library.

thanks guys,

still not having any luck, In preferences I changed the itunes music folder to the external hard drive, a window opens up and says updating itunes library, once this is done it a new window pops up says "would you like itunes to move and rename the files in your new itunes music folder to match the ""keep itunes music folder organized"" preference", i clicked yes, then i then click consolidate library in the advanced tab, a window pops up that says copying files, once this finishes a window pops up thats says "copying music failed. you do not have the privilege to make changes". as far as I can tell my Macintosh HD still holds my itunes music file with all my music in it, and in the external hard drive i cant find any changes, again thanks for the quick reply and I appreciate your help.

still loving mac

James

Try doing it the way I describe here...

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116223

My question is I have a seagate external harddrive with about 10 thousands songs ok, and I do not want to down load all of them just a couple of maybe 200 songs to my 8gb IPOD TOUCH please someone tell how to do it I am no expert on this stuff.

I just want some music so when I go walking ok

plz help memmmmmmemememememememememem

I don't do this often but either of the following should get the job done for you.

1. Create a playlist in iTunes (Command + N). Drag songs into the playlist that you want to move onto the touch. With your Touch plugged in select it in iTunes and go to the Music tab. Select sync music and sync selected playlists. Now you can choose your playlists.

2. Use the same procedure as number one above but create a Smart Playlist rather than a regular one. When the Smart Playlist setup window appears you can set a series of rules for iTunes to select songs. One nice option here is that you can limit the playlist to a certain number of songs or limit how many GB of music is synced.