Currently I’m working on actually getting the audiobooks onto my external hard drive. I’ve continually run into problems with iTunes defaulting back to my C Drive rather then the external drive. After a post on the Educational Technology Listserv Ed-Tech, Dan Craig replied with this:

“It’s kind of a pain, but I’ve been going through this since getting my first iPod. I’ve never wanted to store my collection on my laptop’s HD, so it’s on an external HD.

I do this with a PC, but I’m assuming it’s similar (if not the same) on a Mac.

1) Map the drive so you get the same drive letter each time you connect.
2) Open the iTunes Music Library.xml file in a text editor (in your iTunes folder)(it’s a good idea to save a backup version at this point).
3) Use find and replace to replace the current path (your C: drive) to the external drive. Just replace everything before the iTunes folder name.
4) Sometimes I have to restart iTunes to get it to load right. I’ve also had to clear the library in the past in re-import it (save a copy of the iTunes Music Library.xml file in another location prior to doing this).

Like I said, it’s a pain, but it doesn’t take that long to do.

Daniel A. Craig
English Instructor
Seoul National University
Foreign Language Education Center, Yongon Campus”

I truly appreciate this and I will give it a chance when I get back to my school this week. Of course I need to figure out how to “map a drive” since my district technical support analysts have done this previously.