Holy smokes my external drive/itunes is driving me crazy!

I followed the directions from the article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
Before deleting the itunes library from my ibook I thought I would double check to make sure the music was sucessfully on the external drive (I had lost some music before) - NONE of the music was there.
I do have a large itunes library already on the external drive and I had assumed that the music files from the ibook would be consolidated into that - they weren't!
What am I doing wrong? I have not updated to itunes 7 b/c my start-up disk is full and I cannot, that is why I am desperate to move the ibook library over to the external drive...
Also, how can i keep itunes from downloading songs onto my ibook? I would prefer that all my new music makes it onto the external so that I do not have to move the music!
Thanks so much!

Hi Wesley. After you changed your library in the preferences (Preferences>Advanced>General), did you use the "consolidate library" command under the Advanced menu? If you did, iTunes should have put all of your music onto your external drive.
The problem, as was already noted above, is that if you start up your computer without the external drive attached, iTunes will "guess" your library to be its default, which will be in Music>iTunes>iTunes Music. It will do this without asking you, and it won't change back to your external drive unless you
A) Reset the preferences to the external drive again (Preferences>Advanced>General and choose your iTunes music folder on your external drive
and
B) Consolidate your library again (Advanced>Consolidate Library)
And then, from the sounds of it, you will want to go back into your internal HD, under Music>iTunes>iTunes Music, and drag all those files to the Trash. I say this because you mentioned the lack of space on your internal HD.
Not sure if you've already done this. If you have, well then I'm not sure what the problem is, but hopefully another knowledgeable soul on these discussion boards will be able to help.
iBook G4 1.2GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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I must say it's a bit of a relief to know someone is in the very same situation and that one another can relate. Writing my previous post, I forgot about polydorus' question regarding any constant backup process running in the background, and so I can answer this question here: No, there are no backup processes running in the background. This question, however, made me wonder what else could be slowing the external drive/iTunes down. There is a Dashboard software related to this specific external drive which starts along with every system startup. I quit this software before starting the syncing process again (I got an electricity cut off during the previous syncing, so I simply had to start it all over again :/), and now iTunes doesn't show in the Task Manager as "Not Responding". At least it doesn't happen until another application turns non-responsive, when it does, iTunes and Safari turn non-responsive as well.
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igbg: My driver is running on 6.1.7601.17514 drivers' version. Even if there is a newer version of these drivers (which, basing on your post, I guess wouldn't solve the problem :/), I can't update it now, while syncing
P.S. As for my music, I keep it on my D drive, and have no problems with playing it. It's only the whole rest (books, movies and photos) which is stored on the external drive

Holy smokes my external drive/itunes is driving me crazy!

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