media library on external drive?

TubaFrog

My work computer's drives are getting filled up, so I'm thinking of getting an external usb drive to move all my mp3s onto and using that as my semi-portable media library. (So when I get fired I just grab the drive and run!)
Is this sort of thing a good idea?

I'm concerned about two things:
First, are these drives reliable for such an application, spinning all day long?
Second, will the player be able to put the songs in its library and remember where to find each? I'd suspect the drive letter could change, invalidating any saved pathname, so is there another way to name the drive so it could be found consistently?

Any alternate recommendations?

Faricazy

itunes does it

ArcSyn

TubaFrog wrote: »

My work computer's drives are getting filled up, so I'm thinking of getting an external usb drive to move all my mp3s onto and using that as my semi-portable media library. (So when I get fired I just grab the drive and run!)
Is this sort of thing a good idea?

I'm concerned about two things:
First, are these drives reliable for such an application, spinning all day long?
Second, will the player be able to put the songs in its library and remember where to find each? I'd suspect the drive letter could change, invalidating any saved pathname, so is there another way to name the drive so it could be found consistently?

Any alternate recommendations?

I do the same thing with my music and the Zune software. Unfortunately, I didn't consider the drive letter until I had already tagged my entire collection on drive "E". I suggest when you plug the drive in to rename it to something like "Z" or "M" for music, far enough away from A-F where USB thumbdrives and network drives won't interfere with it. So long as the drive letter is available, Windows should remember the hardware and always give it the same letter. (If you don't change the drive letter, worst case as I've had to do, is go into drive management and rename the drive back to "E" or whatever if something else used it - so it's not the end of the world)

Just make sure that it's the same letter anytime you add to your library so you don't have half of it mapped to E and half mapped to Z.

I've been using an external drive for about 4-5 months now and it's been fine.

ben0207

I do it with iTunes and my Mac, over a network drive (Airport Extreme with USB). It... it mostly works, most of the time. Adding new files can be a bit slow sometimes, but for general playback it's perfect, and even handles decent resolution movies nicely.

I will say though, it's not perfect, and I really wish I had the space to just keep the files on my MacBook. But yes, techncailly iTunes can do this and no it won't dmage your drive any more than it would damage your internal drive.