Moving music collection

[BLOWERS]

Yes! I do this too - keep all my music on an external HD. Take a note of the drive letter your external HD is (always the same, presumably) on your main PC. If it is always drive "F" (for example), you can make it always "F" on your laptop, and that should solve your problem. I use XP Home - it may be a slightly different procedure in Vista, but just look for help in assigning a letter to a drive. The way I do it is:

1. Plug your external HD in to your laptop.
2. Right click on 'My Computer'- select 'Manage'.
3. Open the Storage > Disk management window.
4. Your external drive should be listed in the right-hand window - right click where you see it (let's say it's down as drive "G").
5. Select "Change drive letter and paths". When the window comes up, change the drive to "F" (if that is what the HD always is on your main PC), follow the instructions, and it will ALWAYS then show as Drive "F" on your laptop.

Basically, just make sure the external HD will always have the same drive letter regardless of which computer it is plugged into. One more thing to remember, though. If you have altered your templates in any way that requires OCD to look for other files, make sure OCD is looking for the right drive letter! I have to remember that my laptop's main drive is "E", and not "C". Using daxedit (a programme that you'll find in the OCD main directory), I open my template and, under each different tab, I run a 'search and replace'. I look for C: and replace all instances with E:. That way, any icons I have set will appear on my laptop OCD installation. This bit might not affect you - it's just that I have custom icons that appear next to tracks to identify things like 'favourite', 'guitar solo' etc etc!

Hope this helps...

[BLOWERS]

Oh - one MORE thing! The instructions I just offered were made on the assumption that you were wanting to play music files stored in folders on your external HD via the OCD interface. The other thing you might want to do is make sure that your CD/DVD drive on your laptop has the same drive letter as the one you use on your main PC. Just follow the same procedure as I outlined before - it should be straightforward!