Do I have any control where iTunes saves the music I download and import? I want to have the files saved on a different hard drive, but still have the organization that iTunes enables.
I know I am able to add any folder I want to the library, but it seems that I cannot get iTunes to save to that same folder by default.
Any ideas?
Are you using OSX or Windows?
You can designate any folder you want, on any drive, to be your library folder. Create the folder on your drive, then go into iTunes’ preferences to set it as your music folder. (The default location on OS X is ~/Music, but I don’t know what it is on Windows.)
Note that iTunes also has a preference to let you turn on/off whether or not it auto-organizes your music files for you. If you turn it on, it will file your music according to the songs’’ Artist/Album tags. I like it myself – I just throw everything at iTunes and let it do the grunt work – but some folks prefer arrange things themselves.
I’ve never bought anything from iTunes, but when I use it to rip from CDs under Windows XP, it defaults to My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music
Here’s the step-by-step procedure from the Apple site. I’ve followed it and have my iTunes library on a volume separate from my startup volume.
You didn’t ask, but: Here’s the process for backing up all of your music to CD-Rs.
Under prefrences you can click the advanced tab and there are check boxes for ‘copy music to iTunes folder when adding to iTunes library’ and ‘keep iTunes library organized’. There is also an option to select where the iTunes folder is located, mine is the default, same as cckerberos. If you right click on a track in iTunes one of the options is show song file (IE location of the actual file).
If you start moving songs around in folders iTunes will not be able to find them.