So I've finally reached the point where, to continue collecting music, I will have to free up some hard drive space on my computer. I already hae all of my files backed up on an external hard drive, which at 2 TB also has plenty of space for whatever else I can foresee getting. However, my iTunes library has been built by selecting "add folder to library" in the dropdown menu in iTunes and selecting files from "My Music" folder. If I delete all of the music files from "My Music," but attach the external hard drive to the computer when using iTunes, will there be any issues with playing the songs or syncing because the files are coming from the external hard drive instead of the folder from which they were initially imported?

@chris200w said:

When you play a song, iTunes looks for the file in the directory where it was when you imported it into iTunes. If you delete or move the file, iTunes will tell you it can't find the file, and will give you the option to browse to the new location.

So to do what you want to do, you'll have to delete all the songs out of your iTunes library and import them from the external hard drive location. Either that or browse to them one by oned as you play them. But the first method is definitely more efficient.

Yup, agree.

Thanks, I was thinking that might be the only solution. Oh well, guess I know what I'm doing tonight!

@chris200w said:

Depending on how you have your folders organized, it might not be too bad at all. For example, I have a "Music" folder that contains separate folders for each artist. Each artist folder contains a folder for each album, where the actual audio files are located. If I had to import my whole library into iTunes, I would just drag and drop the entire "Music" folder into iTunes, and it would import all the audio files contained in the sub-folders. If you can do something like that it would be much faster than importing each album separately.

Yeah, that's the way I have everything set up, so it's only going to be a couple clicks. The only problem is time, as I've done it before and it can take hours.

and fwiw, using the itunes media folder to make changes to future additions to your collection is also a good idea. when you burn/download something new, go back and re-check the 'add to itunes folder' box, along with the one above it 'keep itunes folder organized', then add the songs to the library, make any adjustments you need to make vis a vis the track numbers, album art etc. and then copy the changed files from the itunes media folder, not your "my music" folder, into your portable, go back into itunes and delete them, uncheck the copy files to itunes box again and then load them in from the hard drive. that way the changes you made to the metadata will still be in effect.