ITunes on macbook pro - resetting music file path when not on my network

Question

Hi there!
I suspect I know the answer to this already, but I hope I'm wrong! :-D
I have my macbook a while now, but I've only recently started using iTunes properly.
I have a home network, which consists of my macbook pro, a dell laptop running XP, a Nintendo Wii, a Sumvision Netbox NAS 1TB drive and a Logitech Squeezebox Boom.
I'm using the NAS as my music storage, iTunes rips music and stores it here.
This is all good.
The Squeezebox Boom (for anyone who doesn't know) is a neat little Wifi radio/mp3 player, it streams radio from the web, and also music from the NAS.
The software that controls it is called the Squeeze center.
At the moment I have this software linked to iTunes, so when I add music to my library via iTunes the squeeze center automatically scans the music library and updates itself taking in music details, play lists, art work and all, it's a great system.
The problem I have is when I take my laptop anywhere, iTunes changes the iTunes music folder location automatically to the internal hard drive, which means when I get home again I have to reset the file path and iTunes then has to scan the folder and organise everything again.
not only that, as soon as the squeeze center sees the file path has changed it points at the new location (on the macbook hard drive) and looses the library.
so when I reset iTunes, the squeeze center has to rescan everything again also.
It's quite annoying.
I have a work around in that I can tell the squeezecenter not to look at iTunes and hard wire it to the location, but I'd rather not do that.
Is it possible to get iTunes to keep the NAS music folder as the iTunes Music folder location even when the macbook isn't on the network?
Or will it always change the folder when I leave the network.
Many thanks for your help.
Paul.

Answer 1

I've had this problem for ages, only now it seems as though iTunes is no longer restoring my music folder to the NAS if I start it when the NAS is connected. This is proving a pain in the a** because I keep forgetting about it, going online and buying a load of music from the store and then I find I've got a gig to consolidate when I realise my music folder has filled up! Funnily enough, I've downloaded and edited an applescript that automatically checks every half hour whether or not I'm on my home network, if I am it mounts my network drive for me. I really miss the airport disk utility's automatic mount feature. What I think I'l do is create another one for iTunes, to serve as a shortcut to iTunes, but when it's run it will check to see if you're on your home network, if so mount the NAS (if it isn't already), if not, or if it can't mount it will ask you whether you want to run iTunes after warning you that your NAS isn't connected. The only potential problem I could see is when iTunes runs as a result of you opening a music file in Finder. However I'm sure we could associate the applescript 'shortcut' with music instead of iTunes? I'll post here if and when I'm successful.