SweetMacTips

iTunes and an external drive

You just recently got a question essentially about partially hosting an itunes library on an external drive, and your answer was that it is not possible. Actually, it is very possible. I do that very thing with all of my movies. What you do is you locate the original files in the finder, and delete them out of the library (not the original folder, obviously). Then you move them and organize them the way you want on the external drive, and simply hold option while dragging them back into the library. The little green plus-sign won’t show up, because they won’t be making a copy into the itunes library folders, itunes will just read the file from its current location. Yes, its a pain to do manually, but if this is what a person wants, then this is the simplest way to achieve it. As long as you don’t try and play the file while the external drive is not hooked up, itunes won’t freak out about it, either.

This is exactly why I enabled submissions. I just totally learned something.  Awesome tip!!! (Though, in my defense I mentioned a utility that will manage multiple libraries.) Depending on your skill level, this may be exactly what you’re looking for.