So... my wife has been the one playing around with iTunes and LW for the past 3 years. I just got a new phone (HTC Eris ) and would like to put some music on it. I noticed that the size of the dedicated music folder on our PC (WinXP) is 16.5GB . When I opened it and searched through ALL the music I noticed that my wife had made an itunes (7.25 GB) folder as well as a Limewire (8.25 GB) folder. Here are my questions:

1. Is it really necessary to have a dedicated music folder for both itunes and limewire if I only use LW for my music downloads?

2. Do I have to keep a separate Limewire downloads folder in order for iTunes to recognize the original music file OR can I just have my LW downloads transfer directly into my iTunes library upon completion of download?

My computer is running really slow and Im pretty sure 16 GB of music isn't helping much. If anyone has a simple solution for transfering all my music to one area for all programs (Limewire and iTunes mainly) to use I would appreciate it. Thanks for the help.

Depends on whether your wife is just playing files thru iTunes, or using iTunes to transfer files to an iPod. If she just plays the files thru iTunes, then she can use the 'her name's LimeWire Tunes' playlist which shows up in iTunes if you've got iTunes sharing enabled within LW.
If you don't see the shared 'LimeWire Tunes' playlist in iTunes, let me know which version of LW you have & I can give you more info!

In that case she wouldn't need to have the songs added to the iTunes library (and so saved on your HDD, within My Music)... LW's playlist would be enough.

If she's using iTunes to add files to an iPod, the songs have to be added to iTunes library first. And that means the files will be saved to your HDD (My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music) for iTunes.

Hope that answers your question (& I haven't confused you). If not, post back

Thanks for the help Birdy. My wife does use iTunes to transfer files to her ipod. All of our music is mainly downloaded using Limewire. I do have an external hard drive that I use for storing pics and stuff. Is there a way that we could put all of the itunes music on the external HD and still be able to transfer and use music? I have the new version of LW. Thanks.

I have found a couple of free programs for transferring music to/from iPods.
At least one of them can be stored on the pod and then run from there when connected to a computer using any OS (Mac, Linux, or pc). These programs are far less bloated than iTunes.

You should keep iTunes for when you need to update the firmware.

Is the external drive permanently connected?
Storing the iTunes Library on an external drive can be done but can be hazardous also. You need to be extremely careful you do not open iTunes if the external drive is not connected or active.

You can go to iTunes preferences settings via Edit menu. Click on Advanced tab. Click Change button to change location. Copy files to iTunes Library when adding to iTunes option should also be checked.
I can't remember if iTunes manually copies the library to the external drive or you need to do this manually. iTunes will keep a library data file that keeps track of location either within your user preferences or within the iTunes music library folder on the computer. This file must remain there.

If you do change location to an external drive, be careful at each step of setting it up & about the warnings I gave above. It's been several years since I last did this so I cannot recall the specific details. Nowadays on my new computer I use a partition specifically for iTunes Library (ie: using 1 TB HDD's split into specific purpose partitions. My iTunes partition is 450 GB which would be overkill for most people. I've only used half of this so far.)