Help - Use of external hard drive

Dear all,
i am having a problem. I have a vast collection of music on my external hard drive. I wish to play the music on it through itunes, but do not want the files themselves to sit on my computer's hard drive - I want them to remain on the external drive.
However, whenever I open a file on my external hard drive, it automatically makes a copy of the file on my compueter's hardrive at music>itunes.
Any suggestions how I can solve this problem would be appreciated.
James
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Or
You can create your iTunes Library on your external HD, simply by going
Preferences -> Advanced -> iTunes Music Folder Location
Click on the Change Location button then navigate to the new iTunes Music Folder.
The advantage to this method is that it allows iTunes to manage your files, if that's what you wish.
Regards
TD

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