External Hard Drive for Itunes?

[foxcraft]

External Hard Drive for Itunes? Help please!
Again, as I still consider myself a newbie, bear with me if this is a simple question.

As I wrote in the past, with all my tunes, I have only 5.8 Gig left on my laptop. I'm wondering would it work if I purchased a external hard drive for my laptop (running WIN XP, Compaq), and then store all of my itunes on the external HD, then when I want to use the ipod, just hook the external HD up to my laptop.

Would this work? I think it will as I remember reading a post in the past, but I cannot find directions for doing so now. And if so, are there any recomendations for a good external HD that would work best with itunes and my computer? Anything I need to know first before hooking it all up? Yes, I do have backups of all my itunes on discs.

How do I transfer my tunes and listings (how often listened, ratings, etc.)?


Any advice is greatly appreciated

[jessica.]

Yes it will work. I had 10 gigs left on my powerbook's internal so I bought a lacie external and now all I have to do is remember to turn it on when I want to use my itunes---since I don't use it everyday. Now on a mac it will relocate path for you, at least it did for me. On windows you have to tell itunes where your path is.

[foxcraft]

Thank you.

Can you or someone please post basically how I would set it up/transfer all itunes over? I'm told it's "easy", but nobody is telling me just how to do it. I'm wondering if I'm being set up only to have to return it? The external HD is to arrive overnight tomorrow.

I like my computer simple. I don't have much on it, and I waited and thought over a year on getting an ipod as I feard I'd not be able to set it up and work it. But it's simple. Now I'm wondering if I did the wrong thing by getting the ipod as I used up basically all my memory on my computer, and while I can't afford another computer, if the external HD will not work, the ipod (60 gid photo) is going to be junk as when it comes down to it my laptop I need both for work and home use more than the ipod (thus 400 bucks of nothing I'll have) :(