How do I use dedicated storage and iTunes?

+1 Yiorys. You can demonstrate this to yourself by setting up a subfolder on your 1TB backup drive and designating it within iTunes preferences as above.

I can't remember exactly how to do it but basically you plug in your external drive to your mac mini, and then in itunes you go to advanced settings and one of your choices for storing your music will be the hard drive. In other words your pointing your library to the hard drive, so when you load your music it will automatically be stored on your new drive. It works like a champ. Oh, and once your hard drive is recognized you can drag and drop "copy" all of the music that is already stored on your mac mini. Hope this helps.

Greg

An NAS with Itunes server built in like the one offered by western digital will be best. You won;t even need your computer to be on that way.

For the record, a minor correction to something that was said above. The Oyen Digital 1TB external drive does not utilize an SSD (solid state drive). It utilizes a conventional 5400 rpm mechanical laptop hard drive, in an external enclosure.

At this time, 1 TB SSD's continue to be VASTLY more expensive than the price of that Oyen unit. There are some hybrid drives, though, which contain both a small SSD and a large HDD, that are available at reasonable prices. I'm doubtful, however, that they would provide any advantage in an audio application relative to purely mechanical HDD's.

Regards,
-- Al

Adding to my previous post, some of the smaller Oyen drives utilize SSD's, but not the 1 TB drive. As indicated at OyenDigital.com, the largest SSD they offer is 480 GB. And, per their website, that lists at $410 in its cheapest version!

At Newegg.com, the least expensive raw SSD (without an enclosure) that approaches 1 TB is a 960 GB drive selling for $1,000. Some others sell for much more than that.

Regards,
-- Al