So stuck an external hard drive on laptop to put pictures videos and music. Obviously being a laptop I don’t want the drive attached all the time.

Question is how do I access it without it going through hours of updating? Media player now has copies of each file which is a pain. Can I set it to play from the hard drive.

Bit confused. The external drive will play anything you want with no delay once you’ve copied the files on, yes you can point the media player at the external hard drive it will have its own letter. Copying the files on you can do as you get them, so a few mins each time, perhaps longer for a movie. Don’t understand why Media Player has a local copy of everything.

Windows Media Player Library isn’t another copy of the file, it’s just a way of showing all the file locations in one place. If you disconnect the drive then those files will no longer be available to play.

Or have you set it up to synchronize?