iTunes tech help

[wharf rat]

So, I have this 9 year old Dell PC that is currently down to a miniscule amount of space on the hard drive.  I installed a second hard drive (I didn't do this since I wouldn't know a "slot" if it jumped out at me) with 40GB and I would like to move all of our music onto this second hard drive, and have that be the location that iTunes automatically downloads to.  This will free up tons of space on the original hard drive.
The problem is I don't really know what the hell I'm doing and my wife is freaking that I'll screw something up and the ipod won't "sync", whatever that even means.
Anyway, I'm not real great at keeping up with technology and such, so my question is:
Is there a setting in iTunes that I can just change that will force any music that's downloaded to download onto my newly installed hard drive?  And also, can I just copy all of the existing music to the new hard drive without messing up this 'sync' thing?
Many thanks to anyone who can pass along some guidance.

[bold99]

this is really simple to do....you need to consolidate your music and then set the drive you want your music to go to.  this article will show you how to do it.

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-hard-drive/

[tomEisenbraun]

Exactly what that article says to do. Just go to iTunes preferences, and then Advanced and click on iTunes Folder Location. Just pick a spot on your new hard drive that you want it to live in and go ahead and select that as your new folder location. It'll then upload all your new music there. Best trick I found for getting all your old music there is to go ahead and just open up your iTunes folder from the original hardrive and it should look something like a folder named iTunes with a few things in it, including one named iTunes Music. Grab this iTunes music folder and drop it in your iTunes. Since that folder has all the old music in it, it'll upload all of that into your iTunes which is now feeding into the new location. It'll take a while depending on how much music you have (I had 30-something GB of music--it took a few hours...), but all your old music will now be in the location and you shouldn't have any syncing trouble. You will have all your old music on the original hard drive, so you can figure out whether or not you'd like a backup or if you want to just delete it all. Once you've played with it for a few days and made sure that everything got included in the transfer, you should be fine to just delete all of it, but I know some people get a little worried about that. Hope that solved all your problems! The article will be handy because it's more in-depth and has pictures, but that's the short version right here.

Good luck!

[CTdeadhead]

that article is for Mac but since your on a PC.  I would recommend moving the folder that iTunes automatically imports files to the new hard drive, otherwise your files will continue to build up on the one you are trying to clean out now.  

You can do this by going to the new hard drive in "My Computer".  Click on the new drive and open it up.  Find a blank space on the screen, then right click, select "New Folder" (name it Itunes or something you will recognize.  

Next, go to My Computer and open a new window and find the file your music is currently in and drag it over to the new folder in the other window.  It may take a while for the files to copy.  It will probably require you to delete and reload the files to itunes.  This is so itunes knows where the files are on the new drive.  

To do this, open your itunes, highlight all the files and click delete.  It will ask you to "Keep Files" Or send files to recycle bin.  Select "KEEP FILES". Next drag the files from the new hard drive in the new folder back into itunes.   The file info will still be in there so you won't have to retype anythihg. this will tell iTunes to grab them from the new hard drive rather than where they were on the old one.  

then in Itunes click Edit.>Preferences>Select the Advanced Tab>Importing>and either type or paste the file location of the new iTunes file (your new Hard drive.  You files will be copied there from that point).

good luck, its really pretty simple but dont be surprised if it takes a while, but the space you'll free up will be invaluable.  

[CTdeadhead]

BTW, Wharf Rat You may also find it preferable to disable the automatic synching feature in itunes.  this way once your hard drive collection of music is bigger than the iPod, you'll be able to manually select what you want to put on the iPod just by dragging and dropping from the Library to the iPod.  Good luck, like your name btw.

[wharf rat]

Thanks a ton, everyone.  I probably won't get to this until the weekend, but at least I can read over these replies and the article multiple times so everything doesn't seem so foreign when I actually get to transferring everything.
I believe you all when you say it's pretty simple, but man it's sure a long way from sending/receiving "tapes" of special shows from fellow deadheads.... : :)
In keeping with the tech theme, once I get this iTunes deal figured out, I would like to catch up with the file sharing technology so that I can start capturing some of these glorious MMJ shows, but I'll save that for another time.  Thanks again!

[mjkoehler]

BTW, Wharf Rat You may also find it preferable to disable the automatic synching feature in itunes.  this way once your hard drive collection of music is bigger than the iPod, you'll be able to manually select what you want to put on the iPod just by dragging and dropping from the Library to the iPod.  Good luck, like your name btw.

Exactly. This is the best way to go.

[wharf rat]

Hey guys,

Well, the dork is back, with more questions!  Everything went fine with the transfer to the new hard drive and all was good getting new music on the ipod until last night.
I was buying some tunes last night and evidently I screwed something up.  First off, my wife told me to disconnect it last night before I came to bed.  I didn't do that, but I don't think that is what caused the problem.  My problem now is there are random songs and albums that have somehow been deleted!  If we go to our Library, about 100 or son songs have an exclamation point next to them.  I right clicked on a few and I get a message saying that the file could not be found, would you like to locate it?  When I click yes, it asks me to browse to the path where the music resides.  Unfortunately, when I get to the specific folder, the music files are no longer there.  As I said, sometims whole albums have been deleted, other times it's just a few random songs (e.g. Lay Low, One Big Holiday). :-/
Would anyone have any idea what might have happened or been through something similar?  Or does anyone know if these are definitely gone for good?  Some of the songs were purchased, others were bought from the itunes store.  Thanks in advance for any insight you all might have.  

[mjkoehler]

I can't help you there Wharf. Sounds like what you have there is demonic possession. knocks on wood, I have never had a problem with my ipod other then it only being a 60GB and I have about double that in tunes.

[wharf rat]

Thanks, mj.  I googled a few phrases and I managed to read a few forums where people were getting the same messages I am getting, but those folks seem to just have the problem of a broken link b/w itunes and the ipod (meaning they were still able to locate it on their hard drive).  Once they ran through the workaround, they seemed to be okay.  
Unfortunately I cannot see the file anywhere.  I mean the rest of the songs from Okonokos are in the proper location, but for some reason Lay Low, OBH, and a few others have just disappeared.  Damn frustrating!