Running MusicBee on portable HDD as a Master Library - will this work please?

[WalWood]

Hi, here goes, first time caller; exhausted my minimal IT knowledge and cannot find a answer that is clear to me - please help...

I've amassed a personal mp3 music library of about 43 gB,  which is currently held in Windows Media Player in my old Windows 7 laptop.  I've carefully curated it and have added album art thumbnails and various data that WMP couldn't or wouldn't find.

The hard drive on this laptop is now pretty full and it runs slow.  Things had to change...

My company have now given me a new laptop running Windows 10, and a separate 1tB portable HDD (Western Digital 'Elements') - and advised me to back up all my data on the latter, NOT simply fill up the new laptops' hard drive.  (This would be all my documents, photos & videos, and music library).  Also better for security.

I've also been warned that Windows Media Player is being ditched by Microsoft, so I considered the alternatives, decided that MusicBee looked the best for me long-term, and downloaded it.  (I have yet to import my music collection from the old laptop, but it seems the best way is to do this is drag & drop in batches, using a USB Flash Drive memory stick...unless someone would advise me differently?)

Anyhow, the "ideal" scenario will be if I can work daily in my office on my new laptop, import new photos & videos, and occasionally rip new CD's with it, then at weekends bring it home and connect to the portable HDD (which will be kept there) and sync in all the new stuff.  

I plan to keep the old laptop at home to basically use as a player/viewer when the new laptop is left at the Office.

I'm assuming that, if I download the portable version of MusicBee onto the portable HDD and then import my music library onto it, I'll then be able to simply plug the HDD into the OLD laptop and have full MusicBee functionality for all the albums and their accompanying data/album cover art etc.  Is that feasible?

Will I definitely also need to download MusicBee onto the old laptop for this to work? Can't I just plug in the HDD, open up it's own MusicBee directory and access everything? Is there a setting I need to change or something? Because I've done a tentative trial run and that doesn't seem to work - I'm just getting a screen prompt to install MusicBee...

PS my Firm doesn't have a readily available IT person, let alone one who is familiar with MusicBee software, and in any case, my personal music access is not their concern!

[boroda]

'm assuming that, if I download the portable version of MusicBee onto the portable HDD and then import my music library onto it, I'll then be able to simply plug the HDD into the OLD laptop and have full MusicBee functionality for all the albums and their accompanying data/album cover art etc.  Is that feasible?

yes, of course.

Will I definitely also need to download MusicBee onto the old laptop for this to work? Can't I just plug in the HDD, open up it's own MusicBee directory and access everything? Is there a setting I need to change or something? Because I've done a tentative trial run and that doesn't seem to work - I'm just getting a screen prompt to install MusicBee...

for portable mb there is the pseudo-installer (actually just a self-extractable archive). tell it to 'install' portable mb to external hdd.

you might want to leave first music files where they are, then drag'n'drop them to mb 'music' node of the library or (better) to import wmp library to mb. after that you can move music files to external hdd (re-organize files) within mb.