How do I listen to music files on my external hard drive without putting them back on my computer?

Question

I got an external hard drive to hold all my music, because the 25 gig was taking all the space on my Mac laptop. I have the SimpleTech - Signature Mini 250GB. I thought that I could listen to the files when the hard drive was plugged in, and still keep all my free space on the computer, but when I click on a file on the hard drive, it downloads it back onto iTunes instead of playing it. Do all hard drives do this, or is there a different hard drive that someone can suggest? If it's just going to re-download it, I might as well delete all my music and forget about the hard drive. Someone help me, I don't know anything about technology!!!

Answer 1

you said that word ...i-tunes....this is why it is downloading if they were all mp3s and you used a mp3 player like winamp.... others are avalible it would play your music from the source

Answer 2

I used to have this problem...

Its the program your using, iTunes has a setting to put songs played in your library onto your computer.

To fix this,

In iTunes go to Edit, then Preferences, then Advanced.

Under Advanced change your library location to where the music is stored on your External Hard Drive. Uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library"

This should fix your problem