Q&A: Can iTunes Use an External Hard Drive?

Q: I have found that I have quickly used up my hard drive space in my Mini with all my itunes stuff, movies, music and TV shows, and of course Podcasts.

What do you think is the best solution for this ever growing problem?

I have two large back up drives attached to my mini, but I find it a pain to keep moving stuff back and fourth to load up my ipod. Then I forget and inevitably something gets erased.

Can itunes use one of these larger drives as the source for all my itunes "stuff" so I can keep my mini a bit cleaner?

Bill W. - via email.

A: I had a very similar issue recently, and I have moved my iTunes & iPhoto libraries to my external drive, since they are both HUGE, and were eating up the bulk of my 160GB drive in my iMac.

The only down side I have found so far is my external drive spins down to conserve it's life & power, and when I go into itunes, there is usually a 5 second delay while the drive spins up. You may or may not experience this problem, it kind of depends on the drive, energy settings, etc.

You will also need to keep this drive connected to your Mac, whenever you want to play anything from iTunes.

Apple actually has a decent article on it to step your right through it:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748

It's essentially moving your songs to the new drive, then telling iTunes the new location, so you don't lose any data.