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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.
I'm having QNAP RAID problems. I have disks 1,2, and 4 in a RAID 5 configuration, and disk 1 is unhealthy. I have no idea why disk 3 didn't make it into the array--I tried to put them both in at the same time and managed to bollix the unit for about a month.
Now I've tried to add 3 to the array--won't take. I've tried pulling the unhealthy disk and replacing it with #3, no dice. I've made #3 a global spare, but that doesn't make anything happen.
Am I missing some principle, or is anything weird about QNAP's implementation? I don't want to start all again.
I've managed to get my new computer to transfer files to my TiVo through Vuze, but they're not in the right format. It's sending HD files to my Series 2 TiVo and on my SD TV they display one tiny corner of the image as huge lines. Googling says that it should be Mpeg2 for Tivo, and I've tried converting files to that, but they still don't display properly. Does anyone know what format I should be using?
I'm just looking for a temporary solution until I can sort out what to do with the rest of my home media.
I've had great success transferring all sorts of video formats to my TiVo using pyTivo. It's free, but it's not the easiest software to set up.
Thanks Jon, I'll check it out.
