itunes - make library on external SSD
 

hoping someone can help me

ive searched hours for this and cant find a solution. Here is what I need to do

My laptop died. It had an iTunes library with about 100,000 songs.

Luckily I have an external drive with the original files on it

I got a new laptop and installed iTunes

I want iTunes to run music off the external drive. I do not want to put a library on this laptop -not enough space

All the tech help I find online is specifically focused on moving the iTunes library on one's computer to an external SSD. This is not what I am doing as I have no library on this laptop to move

I can not figure out how to create an iTunes library on the external using the music that is already stored there without first moving it to the laptop and then back again to the external SSD

Im using Windows 10 and whatever the latest version of iTunes is

Thanks for any help

crap never mind. I managed to make this happen accidently some how

There should be a setting for "keep itunes media folder organized." I think if you disable that, it will keep itunes from copying files over.

I have a bunch of files on a NAS which is mapped as a drive and can play them from the NAS.

I have said it many times.

Of ALL the software I have used since 1980 iTunes is the worst POS of them all. It is engineered to make it difficult if not impossible to do simple things.

Yes. Ive used it since the beginning and it is indeed a mysterious headache anytime I need to do something simple. A decade ago, I didn't mind it.

My library and songs are in a network drive. Let me find my settings.

that's ok. I got it working. Seems to be working fun. Not sure what I did because I wasn't following along with instructions. but thanks

Since the OP has solved his problem I'll iggyback on with a related question:

Years ago, iTunes was sucking up HD space on my laptop, so moved it over to an external drive that I had split into two partions. Later, I found that the partition with iTunes was corrupted and I could not access anything on it. my library was of course no longer on the laptop. The sole repository of my entire iTunes library was, and remains, my ancient iPod Touch. But I know of no way to copy my music library from the iPod to another computer, because from everything I've been told, the parent/child relationship between an iPod and anything else is such that the iPod is always the child, and if I try to write the iPod library to another device, what will happen instead is that the other device will overwrite the iPod and erase my library.

Is there any way out?

I believe there is software on the market not from Apple, that can do it. I have never tried to do that. Apple makes everything hard with iTunes, and you will need to read up on third party programs to to what you want. Good Luck.

I have seen email from Aieesoft that claimes they can do it. I have never tried their software.

Plug in your SSD drive
see what drive it uses for it, what direction is "ITunes"
Then set ITunes to look there

on my Mac it's under
ITunes
Preferences
Advanced
Then point this to the external drive by setting the "ITunes Media Folder Location"