You can either move the whole library or you can just move the files you choose. I've always moved the whole library, but I believe if you just move a few files you can still play them, they just won't show up in your library. You can still navigate to the file and open it with iTunes no matter where it is. I haven't tried that recently to be able to really confirm, though.

What's your operating system? Might make a difference to how easy that is, I'm not sure.

What do you want to play them with? If you're just using a program like Quicktime or VLC to play individual files, then they should play fine from the external drive. If you want to use iTunes, as mentioned above it's a teeny bit trickier.

Speaking of media servers - I am getting a lot of "abnormal shutdowns" on my Seagate Blackarmor 220. Is that something I need to be worried about and/or can try something to fix? The Seagate website is not telling me anything, possibly because I am not looking right.

So I have spent the last few days looking online at potential new laptops. The best value ones all seem between $375- 500 CDN and to be 15.5" with Windows 8. Friday I decided to put digits to keyboard and went into a bricks and mortar store looking at laptops. And those 15.5" were HUGE. And ugly. And slow. So I decided to recalibrate my search. Nothing was small enough that had a DVD player was also under $500 that wasn't a touch screen, which I do not want.

Today I went into Future Shop (the CDN equivalent of Best Buy) and after giving the salesman assface for all the big or touchscreen laptops, he took started showing me his clearance section. He almost talked me into a ginormous Sony, but no. Then I was like...is that a MacBook Air on clearance? And yes, they had an open box 11" MacBook Air, which he was wiling to give me for $750 and he'd give me the 3 year extended warranty for half price. I normally wouldn't get an extended warranty, but since it was probably a return (there were a few signs of some use on the charger), I agreed.

TL:DR...I blew my budget and bought a MacBook. It's like I think I have money!

PS, I do realize I still need to get some kind of external disk player. Or slowly rip all my CDs at work...

Nice!

You can either move the whole library or you can just move the files you choose. I've always moved the whole library, but I believe if you just move a few files you can still play them, they just won't show up in your library. You can still navigate to the file and open it with iTunes no matter where it is. I haven't tried that recently to be able to really confirm, though.

I mostly wanted to move some of the files, but not all.

What's your operating system? Might make a difference to how easy that is, I'm not sure.

I'm still running 10.6.8.

What do you want to play them with? If you're just using a program like Quicktime or VLC to play individual files, then they should play fine from the external drive. If you want to use iTunes, as mentioned above it's a teeny bit trickier.

I have VLC and Quicktime, so I can play them with those if need be.

OK, well, experimentalist that I am I tried opening up a .mp4 file that's on an external drive using the iTunes on my laptop, and that did work but it copied the file to my laptop before opening it. So keep that in mind as you decide what to do.

M4v files are drm protected and will only play in iTunes, I believe (though they MIGHT play in QuickTime - it is worth trying). You should be able to move the files, manually remove them from your iTunes library, and then re - add them to your iTunes library. You will need to dive into the settings and make sure the setting for "copy media to my iTunes library" is NOT checked.

OK, well, experimentalist that I am I tried opening up a .mp4 file that's on an external drive using the iTunes on my laptop, and that did work but it copied the file to my laptop before opening it. So keep that in mind as you decide what to do.

That would be fine. My hard drive space isn't *so* tight that I can't let a file copy itself back over if I want to watch it. But I'd like to get a bunch of TV episodes/seasons off my hard drive to make more space. It's not like I watch them often, and if I want to, I can pull them back off the external drive.

That should be fine. Move them off. If you don't mind being a little manual about it, you can move them off then move them back into their original spot when you want to watch them; iTunes will never be the wiser. No need to mess with the library at all in that case.