noticed something peculiar about data transfers

I connected my USB 2.0 external hard drive to my mbp ... and ran os x ..
now .. my external hdd is ntfs formatted... and all i wanted to do was read data... like.. watch a movie or access a file ... access some music...
now... i opened finder... went to a song folder ... and asked it to open the contents of the folder with itunes... next thing i know ... the contents of my folder have been copied onto my itunes folder in the mbp ... and the songs are running off of my internal hard disk ....
and i am sort of astonished... because... isnt this sort of action not possible?? i mean.... writing onto hfs from ntfs? ...

so.. i have this question now ... and i'm afraid of trying it out before iv gotten some vote of confidence from ppl here..
can i just copy paste folders/files from my external onto my mac hard drive? if so ... how is this exactly possible.. considering natively .. hfs can read ntfs stuff and not write to it.. and ntfs on the other hand, natively, can do neither.. and i don't have macdrive/macfuse installed either..
it's sort of sending me bonkers...
plz advise...

 

Well, since OSX can read from NTFS, you can copy files from NTFS onto HFS drives just fine (you're reading from the NTFS, writing onto the HFS drive).

As for itunes, there's an option for it to organize your libraries and auto-import to the library. In other words, if you add to your main library in itunes, it'll copy the file from wherever it is into your library folder. It won't touch the original file. The main advantage of this method is it allows iTunes greater control over organizing your library, and if you delete it from your playlist, it gives you the option of deleting the actual file too.
You can disable this option if you want.

 

hmm... thanks taelrek ... well .. this eases a a pain ... i can get all my stuff onto my mac drive...
few questions ...
1. is it a good policy to create partitions in the internal mac drive exclusively for data storage... for instance.. in my windows pc.. i do have 3 partitions ... c drive in which the os and programs/applications reside... and all my songs/videos/personal data in the other 2 partitions .. advantage being .. that if for any reason my i started facing system instabilities/got hit by a virus ... i can reinstall my OS sound in the knowledge that my data is safe ... and can be reaccessed once i reinstall the os ...
so .. does a similar train of thought hold any ground for mac?

2. compared to firewire 400 ... how fast is esata..? and are there any expresscard/34 esata cards that anyone recommends?

3. My song data is stored right now in a very organized format ... in terms of folder hierarchy ... it's .. broadly categorized into Metal, Rock, Pop and world as global heads... and each head then has data stored as - "artist name">"year-album name(s)" > "song name(s) ... ..
artist folders have artist images... album folders have album images stored in them .. so ... if i choose not to do auto import .. is this format good enough for itunes to figure out? what are the advantages of auto importing into itunes vis-a-vis the way i have my song data stored right now .... ?

help would be much appreciated for how i arrange my library now will pretty much be the way it'll be for the forseeable future ...
thanks....