Tricking iTunes into thinking an external hard drive is an iPod? Possible?

Hi
There is a lot of info out there about using your iPod as a hard drive, but I am wanting to the opposite, namely use my external portable hard drive as an iPod (this says something of my contrary nature).
The reason being that my iTunes library is made up of Apple Lossless files, and I would like to take advantage of the "convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps" feature in iTunes, but by syncing to a portable external hard drive rather than an iPod.
I am aware that there are various methods of converting all my Apple Lossless files for use on an external hard drive, but none of these (as far as I am aware) synchronize with iTunes (i.e. update tags/ratings in the converted files if changes are made in iTunes). Because I would need this feature, I am wondering if there is a way of tricking iTunes into thinking that my external hard drive is an iPod (here my devious nature comes to the fore), or some other method of achieving what I am looking for?
Thanks for reading
Nick

I just need my 128kbps tracks to be updated if changes are made in iTunes, such as tag changes, rating changes, tracks being deleted, new tracks being added.
When you play the ALAC songs or change ratings and such, you want to sync that info to the 128 songs on the external?
And wen you add/remove anything from the internal, you want those to be converted/added to the external?
Absolutely no idea how this could be accomplished.

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Message was edited by: Eels290776

Eels290776 wrote:
if my external hard drive is not connected to either of my machines, and I download something onto my iMac and then something different onto my Macbook, where are my machines going to be storing the new downloaded media
when the drive is not connected, +iTunes media folder location+ will default back to <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music/iTunes/iTunes music (or media)
and when I next connect the external hard drive how will I easily get the newly downloaded media onto the external HD
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apple-lovin-it wrote:
Sometime ago I put, or as you will see, thought I'd put, all my itunes music on an external hard drive, I used the instructions as outlined on the Apple website, and it all SEEMED to work fine, except that when I choose "organise library" or as it used to be known "consolidate", itunes copies about 300 or so tracks and thats it, but I have over 10,000 songs, vids and podcasts. Also if I go into Spotlight/Finder, there are a lot of iTunes files on BOTH the external hard drive AND in the itunes folder on the INTERNAL hard drive, now I'm worried about copying one from the other in case I lose some stuff, any ideas?
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Tricking iTunes into thinking an external hard drive is an iPod? Possible?

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