BIGBERTHA

Just bought this 160GB hard drive last night: http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pro...10063479&catid
It is USB only. I’m not necessarily looking for a drive that can boot OSX so I figured USB would be sufficient. I’m mainly looking for a place to store my ever-growing music collection.
I now want to transfer all my music from my internal HD to my external HD and redirect the path in which iTunes uses so as to add/remove/play my music.
I also want to make sure that I don’t lose my playlists, cover art, etc. in the process. Any thoughts on how to proceed?
Will I be able to play music through iTunes without skipping problems, even with only USB connection?
Also, will this affect iTunes to iPod transfer speed?
Did I make a mistake buying a USB only HD?

Derrick

I use an external Firewire drive to hold my iTunes library ... USB shouldn't make a difference as far as I know.

1) Copy your 'iTunes Music' folder to your new hard drive.
2) In iTunes Preferences ... under the Advanced Tab ... point iTunes to the new path where your 'iTunes Music' folder is now residing.

I believe the iTunes Library file which contains all your playlist info needs to stay where it is (on your computer in the 'iTunes' folder) ... to test that everything is working on your new drive ... do the following:

1) Rename your original 'iTunes Music' folder on your computer to a slightly different name.
2) Fire up iTunes and play a song ... it should play if everything is working.
3) Another test is to try importing a song ... check on your external HD and make sure the song has been written to the drive (and not on your computer).

I hope this helps.

FYI - I would recommend budgeting for another external HD of the same size so that you can back up everything easily.