IPOD and external hard drive

[Rendog]

Hello, i want to know if it is possible to have an ipod 'sync' with an external hard drive...

Here is the situation, i have a housemate who has asked me to reformat her laptop and so she has an external hard drive to back all her stuff up including all her music. Now her music isn't all in the same place (not a very big hard drive and it is partitioned).

What would happen if I reformat her laptop with a clean install of Windows, reinstall iTunes etc, but add all the music in from the external hard drive in the iTunes library? Would iTunes copy all the music back over or will it be able to read it straight from the external HDD?

Say if iTunes will be able to read straight from the external HDD, what would happen with the ipod? does it get wiped and start all over again syncing with iTunes, or will it just carry on as normal as if nothing has changed?

I'm getting really confused so any help would be greatful.

Many thanks

Andy

 

[young lad]

Well with my ipod i deleted the libery but had it all on my ipod then added some more music on to itunes updated the ipod and it only had what was on itunes so it deleted all that was on the ipod if that helps at all?

 

[mj3zero]

Hello, i want to know if it is possible to have an ipod 'sync' with an external hard drive...

Here is the situation, i have a housemate who has asked me to reformat her laptop and so she has an external hard drive to back all her stuff up including all her music. Now her music isn't all in the same place (not a very big hard drive and it is partitioned).

What would happen if I reformat her laptop with a clean install of Windows, reinstall iTunes etc, but add all the music in from the external hard drive in the iTunes library? Would iTunes copy all the music back over or will it be able to read it straight from the external HDD?

Say if iTunes will be able to read straight from the external HDD, what would happen with the ipod? does it get wiped and start all over again syncing with iTunes, or will it just carry on as normal as if nothing has changed?

I'm getting really confused so any help would be greatful.

Many thanks

Andy

So you're dumping her mp3s to the external , reinstalling and then adding external to the library. I'd guess it will work fine, but the Ipod will take a while to re-sync. A problem might arise though if you unplug the external and do a re-sync. I have still to comes to terms with the clunky nature of Itunes myself. I like the sync' feature but I don't like having to keep a copy of the mp3s on my HD as it's a waste of space.

Be interested to hear how you get on.
mj

 

[amx]

When you start iTunes for the first time and plug the ipod in, it will ask you if you want to synch (at least it did with version 6.0.0), if you chose 'no', it won't touch the songs on the ipod.

Copying the data back and fourth from the internal HDD to an external is no problem, that's how i've run iTunes on my system from day 1. However, it won't pick it up automatically unless you copy it back to the library folder in 'my documents', although i've never tried to change the default directory.