Can I use my portable external hard drive to run Itunes?

How do I use iTunes with an external drive?

• How do I use iTunes with an external drive? Okay, so I have a really old, really annoying laptop. It's a dell mini laptop, and only has about 14 GB total space. (also I'm running Windows XP.) Since that's so little hard drive space I only have about 1 GB free space at the moment. I downloaded iTunes onto this laptop because I have no other computer to put it on. I've also never plugged my iPhone into this particular computer. I also have not upgraded my phone in quite some time, and need to upgrade. To my understanding when I do upgrade, everything will be erased. My iPhone is a 3Gs.(not sure if that matters or not, just thought to include it.) So I need to create a backup, and said backup is around 11 or 12 GB of memory... see my issue? lol Now, Q1) Can I just remove iTunes from this laptop completely, then re-download and re-install onto my external hard drive? Will that work, and will iTunes run normally after? If so.. Q2) how would I go about doing that? Because I've attempted to just copy the iTunes folder from my C:\Program Files, and that didn't work. If its not possible to run iTunes from an external hard drive then.. Q3) is there a way to, when I go to create my backup, to just have the backup created onto my external hard drive, not my computer? Again I don't have enough space on my computer hard drive, so I cant just transfer later. :( Now for my iTunes library.. In iTunes I clicked edit--->preferences--->advanced---> and I changed the iTunes media folder location to a folder located on my external hard drive, and also checked "Keep iTunes media folder organized" Q4) Since I did this, will my entire library go to my external hard drive, or just my media files? Did I even do this right, or are there more steps that I am not aware of? I would just check my external to see what was transferred, but this is a new iTunes, so there was nothing on it that would be transferred to my hard drive before I sync my phone. I cant sync my phone because I need the backup so I don't loose anything. lol fml. Anyway, Q5) Since I did this, later on, whenever I sync my iPhone, will my library, or media files, or w/e be transferred automatically? Or do I have to transfer manually every time? Sorry if this is too much, I'm not one who's all about technology, and not very proficient in the computer area; bare with me. lol. Q6) Is this easier than I'm making it, and is the iPhone backup considered to be part of the library, which would make it be automatically created onto my external? Q7) Where is the back up created anyway, and how would I access it? I would also like to know, Q8) Will my app data be backed up when created? For example, I have a screen play I've been writing, but all that work is on an app that I downloaded. Will that be backed up or no? Q9) What exactly is backed up.. Again, sorry if this is a lot to answer, but I tried to just google the solution, but either nothing worked or the instructions were too confusing. I really need to upgrade my phone, and need this backup, please if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. Also, when you answer, can you make it as simple as possible? Again I'm extremely dumb when it comes to computers let alone iTunes... Thank you lol :)

• Answer:

  save you songs on the hard drive so when you plug it in you can just open them up in iTunes