How to save music tracks onto an external drive

Question

Thank you for helping me with this question...
How do I save my music files onto an external hard disk drive? It seems that there is no way to avoid having to save my tracks onto the C: drive, yet I am quickly running out of room. I would like to transfer all of my music to the D: drive and set up iTunes to automatically save all future music onto the D: drive, but I lack the technical knowledge to do this myself.
Thank you,
-Will
dell   Windows XP   external hard drive

Answer 1

If you want to make another drive (direct or portable) on your PC the main music location for iTunes, move all song files there, as well as any future imported music from CDs, here is one method (see the links below):
You will maintain your playlists, ratings, comments, etc. This will only move your music folders location, NOT your iTunes program files. It is my opinion that programs (i.e. – iTunes) work better when installed on your main hard drive. At the very least, it makes it easier to manage all your programs if they are centrally located on one hard drive (the Windows default standard).
See these links for some step-by-step info:
iLounge: Moving your iTunes Library to a New Hard Drive
MacMuse: iTfW: Move iTunes music/Library to new drive
iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder
If you are moving the music to an external hard drive or network drive, after the transfer (and to work correctly), the drive must be running prior to your opening iTunes. If not, iTunes will reset the location of your music folder location to the default location (usually: ‘C:\...My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music’). If this happens, you need to manually change the path back to your external location, or future CD ‘Imports’ will be deposited on your internal HD.
Also make sure that the new drive always loads as the same Drive Letter, otherwise you will lose the references within iTunes.