Stream music from an external hardrive to my Apple TV?

Hey guys,
I've just bought Apple TV and I want to know if it's possible to stream music that I haven an external hardrive through iTunes without having to copy the files onto the internal drive of my MacBook pro . My idea is to have all my media on an external 1T hardrive and stream everything through Apple TV using homeshare therefore freeing up all the internal space.
Also if this is possible, how can I do it?
Thanks in advance!!

Yes doing that puts all your content on the external drive.
You can put content onto more than one drive. You can do it in a few ways.
You can put certain content on one drive and other content on another, but this requires managing manually and can be a bit of a pain.
You can also just start using a second drive when the first drive gets about 90% full (never fill a drive).
Or you can use disk utility to RAID a couple of drives as a single volume.

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I know how to stream just fine, that's not the problem. This is what i do to stream, i go to itunes > pref > advanced > uncheck "copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library." Boom, that works every time.
Here's the problem: I'm trying to setup my non-computer savy friends apple tv to stream through his laptop. He has an external 1Tb containing all his movies, and the movies stream just fine the first time i setup the process. But here's the deal breaker, If he opens itunes without the external being connected to his laptop (like any sane person would do with a wireless machine), all he11 breaks loose. Next time we go to play a movie through Apple Tv an error will display saying "unrecognizable file format," additionally, i click the movie in itunes and itunes can't locate the file.
Here's what i believe is wrong: iTunes is auto-syncing with apple TV every time itunes opens, thus, when the external isn't connected, the files can't be located messing up the whole **** schibang.
Here's what i've tried: clicked itunes > pref > apple TV > disable auto-syncing for apple tvs (unfortunately, this didn't seem to resolve the issue although it seems like it should have worked)
Would this do the trick?: Go to itunes > pref > advanced > and change my itunes music folder location to the location of the external and then stream as normal like i noted in the very beginning of this rant?...
I've also thought of keeping the iTunes music folder location set to the default and adding aliases into the actual folder in finder which then link directly to the external...
Please don't tell me that streaming from an external that isn't always connected to apple tv is impossible or i will for sure cry myself to sleep.
Any other suggestions would be much appreciated. Thx!

I know how to stream just fine, that's not the problem. This is what i do to stream, i go to itunes > pref > advanced > uncheck "copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library." Boom, that works every time.
This is not what allows you to stream... this allows you to put files (actually that path to the file) into the iTunes library without it being in the iTunes folder but that has nothing to do with streaming...
having the external connected or not connected should not affect your ability to stream later when the drive is connected... i have a feeling you actually may not know how to get streaming working and are actually syncing.
you have two ways to stream
1) link the iTunes library to the appleTV to the as a purely streaming library or
2) link the iTunes library to the appleTV as a syncing/primary library, go to the summary tab in iTunes and uncheck +show only synced items on appleTV+ (very important), then go to the media tabs in iTunes (click on appleTV under devices in iTunes tabs appear on the right) then turn off syncing for each type of media you don't want to sync
the two above methods is how you stream... what you described in your post doesn't allow you to stream.

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Sorry, not sure if I understand what you are asking.
Are you thinking of moving your iTunes / Media Folder from your Mac to the Time Capsule?
If you do this...when...not if...the Time Capsule drive has a problem....you lose everything because you have no backup for the iTunes library.
A much safer plan would be to add an external hard drive to your computer and move the iTunes library there.
Then, if you are using Time Machine for backups, it will back up both your Mac and the hard drive. Now you have "originals" on one drive and backups on another.
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3rd generation ATV
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I did not read the rather long post. If you wish to reinstall OS X 10.4, use your software install DVD. Backup is essential. To minimize your risk, I would use an archive and install:
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Incidentally, I do not agree that the printer problem is best solved by reinstalling OS X. I have had HP printers for sometime and, on one occasion, had difficulty after an upgrade. HP technical support walked me through uninstalling all traces of the HP driver and then reinstalling.
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downpat wrote:
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Stream music from an external hardrive to my Apple TV?

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