[Neub Detat]

hi
i have an aluminum 12" PB running 10.4.5, w/ a 60GB hard drive. i have recently bought a 8Megapixel SLR and started to rip a bunch of my CDs. Needless to say i am running out of room on my hard drive.

Can anyone suggest a way to offload some of these libraries (iPhoto, iTunes) to an external drive i already own (a 160GB USB2 LaCie), or describe some other method to better manage my HD space? I could upgrade to an internal 80GB but it would only pospone the inevitable.

thanks, cs

[Jens Peter]

You can move your music and pictures to an external hard drive, but then you need to have it pluged in when ever you want to view/edit your pictures or listen to music....

in iTunes change the folder location (Preferences -> Advanced) to a folder on the external drive, and in iPhoto I believe you should just move your iPhoto pictures folder to the external drive, start iPhoto and then it promts you to either quit, create a library or find a library. then you can select your library on the external drive.

(But remember to back up your content before moving it around -- it could go wrong!)


Oh - this question should have been in the Applications forum....

[rkv]

I suspect there is some subtlety to your question which I may be missing but here goes on the two methods I have used.

First, iTunes because it has a very simple mechanism. If you check iTunes Preferences in the Advanced tab there is a setting for your music location. This allows you to change the location where iTunes looks for your music. The default location is for your Music to physically be stored in your home directory under Music:iTunes:iTunes Music. It it is the "iTunes Music" subfolder which contains your music. You can drag this folder to a location on your external disk and then in the Advanced tab of the Preference panel change the location to be that where you have moved the music. Note, by doing this you will not be able to play any of your music when the external drive is not attached.

Should you only want to move some of your music, there is a more manual way of moving selected portions of the music. However, this will allow you to have access to some of your music. That is by only moving portions of your music found in folders within the "iTunes Music" folder and using finder aliases.

Aliases may be created from the finder "File" menu or with control mouse click on the folder. They are a means of tranparently (though manually)redirecting the file system to another location.

If you look in the "iTunes Music" folder you will find folders which are for specific albums or musicians. You can drag these folders from your "iTunes Music" folder to your external disk. Once it is on the external disk, make an alias of the dragged folders and place the alias in the original place. While doing so, remove the " alias" from the automatically generated name so that the name of the alias folder will match the original name of the folder and the alias is in the exact location of the original file with the identical name. At that point you can run iTunes. If your external drive is mounted it will find all of your music. If the external drive is not mounted it will only find the music which is on your internal drive.

iPhoto does not appear to have a preference. Therefore you need to use the alias mechanism to redirect things. Similarly, you can choose to move all or some of your photos. If you wish to move all then you could move "iPhoto Library" from the "Pictures" directory in your home directory. As with Music this means that iPhoto will not really work if your external disk is not attached. A preferable approach might be to move only your older pictures, particularly since iPhoto will normally load pictures into subfolders by calendar year. To see this starting in your home directory navigate to "Pictures:iPhoto Library: Data". In this folder you will see folders identified by year. I would suggest leaving the 2006 folder on your internal drive. You could move prior year folders to your external drive, make an alias of the moved folders and move the alias back to the original location. Remember, the name must be identical to the original name once the alias is in the original location. You need to rename the alias by removing the " alias" suffix which is part of the automatically generated name. The benefit of only moving the prior years photos is that you will be able to continue to use iPhoto and load new pictures without the external drive being attached.

Sorry for being so long winded, I hope this helps. I have used this configuration successfully for some time now. It is a bit manual in nature but does work. Of course it would be best if iPhoto and iTunes had ways of automatically merging several folders which you could define in a preference pane into a single library. Anyone found a simpler way of doing this?

BTW, technically this question should probably have been in Applications forum. You should look their under iTunes and iPhoto for additional advice.

[amazing]

Is iTunes the main culprit? If so, the easiest way to get immediate relief is to get a 60 GB iPod (perhaps you already have an iPod?) and listen to your music off the iPod. You set the iPod to manage "manually" and then delete everything except your most essential stuff off the HD. Of course, you'll want to have everything backed up onto DVD beforehand, which is always good advice since you'll want to have your hours of importing backed up.

Another easy way to get additional space: If you don't use Garageband, delete all it's files. You'll save 5 GB instantly. If you need it later, you can always reinstall.

[Neub Detat]

all- thanks for all the sound advice, seems its simpler than i thought.
and sorry for posting to the wrong forum- the sure sign of a newbie!
cs

[iREZ]

my 12" powerbook once was my only computer. i basically got an ipod with as much storage that i could afford, loaded it up with all my music, burned cd's on to cd's, used my cousins external dvd drive to create dvd backups as well. a year later i got an external drive and loaded up all my music there and had itunes redirected to read off of the external (the whole alias method seems like a waste of time...no offense rvk). all you have to make sure is that you have two sources to your backups (ipod, cd's, dvd's, external hard drive), this goes for both your music and photos, ive seen the repercussions of people who didnt follow the rules and they're paying dearly for it now.

[mintcake]

I have a network drive which hosts my music and photos, with aliases in my 'Pictures' and 'Music' folders which point to my iPhoto and iTunes libraries respectively. It works absolutely fine, and means I can share the same library between all the machines on my network without any syncing (and without any wired connection to the drive in question, which is attached by ethernet to my Airport Extreme base station). iTunes works well over the network, iPhoto not so well, it's slow at the best of times (even when hosted locally). Consider using a better catalogue app such as iView Media Pro if you're thinking of creating a big photo collection.