Play music from an external hard drive
- — 18 September, 2009 02:53
Daniel Shaughnessy wants iTunes and Windows Media Player to see the music on his external USB hard drive.
This can be done, but there are two caveats: You have to tell these programs that a particular folder on the external drive should be part of their music "library." And you have accept occasional error messages when the drive isn't plugged in and the program can't find the music you want to play.
Here's how to add the appropriate folder to the library:
In Windows Media Player 11, with the external drive plugged in, press F3. Click Advanced Options, then the Add button below the list of folders. It's all pretty obvious from there.
In iTunes 8, select File, then Add Folder to Library (in iTunes 9 this appears simply as "Add to Library"). Select the folder from the resulting Browse For Folder box. If the external hard drive is your main source of music, you can select it as the primary library source by going into iTunes Preferences, clicking on Advanced and hitting "Change" next to the iTunes Media Folder location. From here, you can also allow iTunes to reorganise your music collection or automatically update the hard drive with any music you add directly to iTunes. If you choose to do this, however, you must make sure your external hard drive is connected whenever iTunes is open.
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Comments
James Hutchinson
Tue 20/10/2009 - 09:53
"Copy Files" setting
Hi Deneen,
Under the small iTunes Media Folder location box, there is a setting called "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" which normally copies any music that is dropped directly into iTunes into the default music folder (in Windows it is User/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music). However, if you have correctly changed the iTunes Media folder location, any music that is dropped into iTunes should automatically copy to the external hard drive, provided the "Copy files" setting is enabled and the hard drive is connected. Are you still having problems with music copying to your internal HDD?
jky
Fri 17/12/2010 - 00:31
My TV is wire connected by router to the PC.
I have external HD (1 tera) connected by USB to the PC
I using the windows media player 11 to sign the library from the external HD. I succeed to see the movies on TV from HD.
But when I shut down the TV and PC and tray again, TV can see the files from internal HD but not from the external HD.
Do you have any idea how to fix it?
deneen
Tue 20/10/2009 - 07:05
ext HDD and iTunes
You said to do 2 things in iTunes:
1. select File, then Add Folder to Library (in iTunes 9 this appears simply as "Add to Library"). Select the folder from the resulting Browse For Folder box.
2. If the external hard drive is your main source of music, you can select it as the primary library source by going into iTunes Preferences, clicking on Advanced and hitting "Change" next to the iTunes Media Folder location.
I did both of those things. I do not want these files to take up space on my internal HDD. How do I assure myself that iTunes didn't copy those files to my internal HDD?