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General discussion

ITunes storage on CP

by MarDel53 Oct 30, 2010 11:08PM PDT

My Itunes naturally is storing everything onto my computer. (XP3)80gig.
I have discovered that ITunes allows me to change the file location and that I can access my portable harddrive which is 500 gig. Is there an easy way to get everything from my computer onto the portable harddrive wherein ITunes accesses the portable harddrive instead of my computer? If I simply use preferences in ITunes and change the storage area, will it also put everything that is on my computer there also wherein I can delete everything or do I have to manually do this. Hope I am making my self clear on this.
Thanks for any help.

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2 Posts

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Re: portable harddisk

by Kees_B Forum moderator Oct 30, 2010 11:42PM PDT

Beware.

Data on a portable drive is MUCH less safe than data on internal drive. Such external drives tend to fail much more often. So ONLY do this if you have a good backup of all that music you don't want to lose.

Kees

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Only use the external drive as a backup for your library

by Pepe7 Nov 1, 2010 1:15AM PDT

While I agree that using an external drive as the primary iTunes library location is risky, it's not because of increased chance for hardware failure in the sense that the same hard drive when used externally would fail. It's because of the way the iTunes software works with the Windows OS. It's most certainly a little buggy and bloated per se.

IMHO and E you would be better served by installing a larger internal hard drive that more easily accomodates your iTunes library *and* making regular external backups of the whole shebang. If that's not possible, other options would be upgrading to a PC that can handle the larger internal drive, or paring down your iTunes library a little to keep the hardware you currently have.

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