Help With Itunes/External Hard Drive

I think you can do this by simply setting your device to sync manually.

When the device is plugged in go to the summary page and under options check the manually manage music and videos check box.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1535

I like your thinking and really appreciate your help! I read through the link.

If I'm syncing manually, and only add new podcasts that have been downloaded to my PC, wouldn't that sync then remove (0ver-write) the music that was previously on the ipod?

Thanks again for your input!

Some of it may depend on the copyright protection on the files. I haven't tested that.

All my files are from my own CDs so I have never had a problem connecting to a computer that doesn't contain files on my ipod. I can still sync other files without it deleting files from my ipod that are no longer in my itunes.


Links to deleted files still exist in itunes until you delete them from itunes. It might cause error messages if you try to play them when itunes can't access them. I discovered this when deleting duplicate files. I had itunes find duplicates, deleted the actual file using file manager then went to itunes and deleted the link that gave me an error that file was not found.

You may find you can transfer to a new disk. Reset your library and then not have an issue when you turn the drive off. Itunes isn't checking all the links so it won't care unless you try to access that file.

The simple way to test this is move the location of a file you have in itunes and on ipod. See if this causes issues. If not, then try multiple files.

When I manually sync new music, I just drag and drop. Any attempt to do an autosync of video, books or music, gives me error message that everything on ipod will be deleted.

Oh.. and manually dropping a playlist on the ipod forces all the music files in that playlist to be added to ipod. It's easier than having to copy music one file at a time.

Thanks so much! This is worth trying at the very least. From what it sounds like, I should be able to drag music in from my external. I have subscribed to numerous podcasts. Will these still update automatically or will I need to somehow drag them to "Podcasts" to access them? Thanks again, just trying to get an idea if spending the money on a large external will work before I take shell out the cash.