Two users/same pc (win7) and itunes library on external HDD

I've been running my itunes library off an external for ages now and everythings been fine.  That was until my wife bought herself an iPhone and now I need to find a way to share my library with her and have it automatically reflect any changes that I've made without moving my library collection (2.25TB) to the PC's HDD.  At the moment I have just setup her library so that it points to the same location as mine but the major pain is that if I add an album to my library, I have to then close itunes, logon as her and re-open itunes and add the album again.  This seems a little tedious and has to be a better way.  All the forums I've read about sharing the library between users, want the music moved to the shared music folder and I've tried everything to get around this... Any help is greatly appreciated

The only format drive that will work with both a Mac and a PC without you using additional drivers is an older format called FAT.  Disk Utility can create this.  Otherwise if you use Windows' NTFS you need something like NTFS3G or MacFuse, and if you use OSX's HFS format you will need MacDrive on Windows (others may also work for both PC and Mac -- those are just the ones I could remember).
Theoretically the Mac should have been able to read the .itl on the Windows NTFS drive but maybe since it found it could not write to it, it reverted to default.
Note, if anything happens to the FAT32 drive you will need to repair it using Windows.  I also assume you aren't usign this drive for huge files because FAT32 has a 4GB filesize limit.
You will have to completely erase the drive to partition and re-format it.
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
do not confuse moving your whole folder and library with moving just media files as in
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Quick answer if you let iTunes manage your music:  Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive.  Start iTunes with the option key held down and guide it to the new location of the library.
Macworld - How to transfer iTunes libraries between PC and Mac - http://www.macworld.com/article/46248/2005/08/shiftitunes.html

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