iTunes makes a local copy

[Flatline]

Hey Guys,

A little background:
I've had an iPod for the past 6 months and loved it so much I got an ibook.
I decided to ditch my PC and go 100% apple. Since I made the switch I ran into a little snag. With my PC I mapped my mp3 server as a regular drive, I would add the music to my iTunes library and everything was great, it would take a little longer to add music to the iPod since it had to copy the song via network.

The problem:
When I add a CD or song to iTunes it copies the entire song over to the local hard drive. I have my mp3 server mapped to my desktop via samba. Is there a way to have iTunes use the mp3 server rather then the local drive?

Thanks for any help on this!
f

[dmmorse]

It sounds like you just need to select the proper preferences in iTunes. Look under Preferences -> Advanced. There are a couple of radio boxes here, one to keep iTunes music folder organized and a second to copy songs added to your library to your iTunes music folder. Deselect both and give it a go.

[CAlvarez]

There's an option in the preferences, in the advanced section I think, which you can turn off to prevent this. It baffled me for a while too. Can't remember what it's called, but it was something like "Copy music to local library."

[waked1]

You can also change the location of your iTunes music folder. This would mean that the actual mp3/aac files are stored on a server partition but your actual iTunes music library information is in your music folder.
For example, I have my music folder set as /Volumes/Shared/MP3s and I have this drive set to mount at login.