Connecting my mac laptop to a external hard dirve

[what..the?]

Hello its an old powerbook g4 about 5 years old, and I ran out of memory on it due to my huge itunes,iphotos,and imovies.

External hard drive bought : Freecom 3.5"/USB 2.0/win&mac

So not knowing much about hardrives, I've just connected it to the lapop and the laptop finds the external drive well. But when I for example save my itunes files across to the extrenal hard drive when I then click on the itunes icon on the mac desktop it does not find the files on the external drive and open them, it just opens an empty itunes, and doent know I have any music?

Tha same happens with other applications, How do I save stuff to the external drive but allow them to talk and connect?

Thanks in advance

[ajmmac]

i am not quite clear which icons u r clicking--i assume if ur ext hd is recognised by ur mac then u have an icon for that on ur desktop--what do u get when u click on that?

[fo3nix]

iTunes: go into prefereces -> Advanced, and change the location of your iTunes library to your external hard drive.

[Milvus]

Your problem is that you need to tell your applications where the new folders are, especially if you used drag and drop rather than Move to put your data onto the hard disk. For iTunes go into preferences, then advanced, you will then see a box saying iTunes folder location, press change and your finder will pop up. Navigate external disk under devices, find the new itunes folder, highlight it and click open at the bottom. Job done. If you have moved other things like photos the same happens in iPhoto etc. If you get stuck post the problem an the application

[what..the?]

great great great, thanks guys that sounds like what I'm missing, it makes sense what you are saying!

I will print what you say off and take it home with me tonight where the laptop is and try it out.

Thanks again I will post back tomorrow. I 'm actually really excited to get this fixed i'm all giddy, you've made a technophobic very happy lol

[what..the?]

Well it's not going well I struggled last night to get the itunes location moved and then it would not except my music files some how I managed to lose the itunes application all together, so I have brought the laptop into the office today where I have the internet and so I can reinstall itunes. I have found I can only install older itunes like 7.5 due the fact my operating system is quite old at 10.3.9

Anyway now it won't let me download the old version from the apple website.

I have tried to move other applications to the external drive like 'garage band' but it has no clickable change location button. And with all files and applications I cannot see that any of them have a 'move folder function'

Plus when I do try to drag and drop certain applications and folders it tells me it cannot move everything because some items within the folder/application have too longer names or have icons that cannot be transfered?

[what..the?]

update

got a older itunes, itunes (6.)something i could not download it on the laptop direct?? so I had to save it to a memory stick from another pc and then transfer it acros, it started to install off the stick on to the laptop, but the snag it said where would you like the itunes saved? it said no to the external drive as it said it had to be a start up disk or something, and the mac HD is said was too full.

I cannot get anywhere without freeing up space but I can't seem to move anything, it doesnt give me the options?? as I said in the last post.

[Milvus]

Well a bit of a pickle.
First thing when we are talking about moving things to the hard drive we are talking about the data files (music, photos etc., ) not the applications. They are best left just where they are in the application folder on the main hard disk.
Second, you can get a copy of iTunes 7.7.1 for OS10.3.9 from the main apple website, go downloads, choose apple from the left box, then Ipod and iTunes. Itunes 7.7.1 is on the first page.
Rather than try to take you through each application and how to move its data file (iPhoto Library, iTunes Music, Garageband etc.) Go to this page http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search& src=support_site.home&locale=en_US&q=Move%20fo lder.
This gives the instructions for all the main iLife applications.
Have a look through these and let us know your results.
Alternatively I am in the MK post code area, are you close?

[what..the?]

Thanks so much for your help, I will look into it all and get back on this thread soon. Things have come up this end and I prob wont get to look at this until first thing next week.

I have noted u say leave the applications in the applications folder, thanks for that.

Will check out the apple website, until then cheers.