Music stored on hard drive and iPod

Question (and Im new, so be gentle, please!):
Do I have to have all those tunes stored on my hard disk to use them on the ipod, or after Ive copied the songs to the ipod, can I free up my hard disk by deleting the music from the HD??
Thanks!
Acer Aspire laptop Windows XP

just a note.
i would not delete the songs. i have had 6 iPods (just buying one, i just kept swapping it out) and every time you get a new ipod or if you have to restore it for some reason, you would have to get those CD's.
Best thing to do is get an external hard drive (doesnt have to be big at all, just big enough for the music and any more you might add. 250gb will be definatly big enough.) and move your music to that. Then just leave it plugged into your computer and you can listen to that music through iTunes, or just bring it out and plug it in if you need to reload that music.
Also, then you can have a back up for your important documents, photos, and you are essentially making your computer bigger. Watch the ads in the stores. They weekly go on big sales

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See these.
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Purchased music can only be downloaded once.

If I subscribe to match, can I remove music from my hard drive and still listen to it?

I'm interested in Match, but want to know if the music has to be on my computer to access it on my iPod/iPhone? In other words, once I sync my library (over 100,000 songs) can I remove them from my hard drive (of course having them backed up on my own) and still access them?

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Hi
This isnt an answer to your question but you might be able to help me! I have previously been using my ipod on my desktop and have recently changed to laptop. I have downloaded Itunes on there and have bought from itunes store and uploaded some CD's. When it comes to connecting my ipod it wont let me sync without deleting everything that is on my ipod already!!?? I dont suppose you know how i can get around it do you?

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dividedbyzach wrote:
How is that possible? The itunes music folder is now called itunes media folder and that's what was dragged to the trash and deleted:
I can only go by what you wrote.
"I deleted everything in my music folder"
locate your original iTunes Media folder, and drag it to the Trash.
there is no longer any itunes music or media folder on my mac, only the external hard drive
I quoted from the article. That is not what I am telling you to do now.
. If I had dragged the wrong file to the trash previously, it would have given me a warning, no?
No.
On your Mac, you should have an /Music/iTunes/ folder, yes?
If so, follow the steps I posted above.

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I would like to remove then delete the songs I have on my Hard Drive. It's taking up a lot space. I am currently using operating system Windows XP and the latest version of iTunes. Can someone suggest the best way of doing this? I would like to use a jump drive to do this but any other suggestions would be appreciated. There are hundreds of songs on my hard drive. Thanks!

I'm not sure I'd want to risk my tracks on a USB flash drive, but if you have one large enough - if your iTunes library takes up too much space on your hard drive, is it really going to fit on a USB flash drive? - you can find instructions here:
iTunes: Moving Your iTunes Music Folder
Don't delete the tracks from the old location until you've confirmed that they're working correctly from the external drive. And IMPORTANT: do not delete the iTunes folder or the preference files it contains from your boot hard drive; delete ONLY the tracks themselves (i.e. the contents of the old iTunes Music folder).
Forum Tip: Since you're new here, you've probably not discovered the Search feature available on every Discussions page, but next time, it might save you time (and everyone else from having to answer the same question multiple times) if you search a couple of ways for a topic, both in the relevant forums, in the User Tips Library and in the Apple Knowledge Base before you post a question.
Regards.

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Hey,
Lately my ibook is not recognizeing my ipod, my wifes ipod or my two external hard drives...the problems started when I was trying to share a external hard drive with a PC (instead of a nice closed mac system). Anyway I get power from my USB and Firewire but they don't come up in finder, or itunes or anything. Everything used to come up fine...help

Generally, it helps to power down and unplug everything from receptacles for ten minutes or so, then one by one power up. Provides a reset.
Also, "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device" here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
or, this post by Rod Hagen in this other thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2335366&#2335366
Message was edited by: myhighway

Importing music into iTunes is taking up a lot of space on both my hard drive and iPod.

Is there a way to make the files smaller?

It is possible that Windows wasn't able to calculate the correct size and decided to show some random (?) number instead.<br />
Such issues have been reported in the past.
You can check these locations to be sure as you may have multiple files in the Firefox Profile Folder
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
You can find the location of the cache on the about:cache page.<br />
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Music stored on hard drive and iPod

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