ITunes For Mac :: Move Media And Libraries To External Hard Drive / When Keep Organized Deselected
Jun 29, 2014
step by step directions for moving the actual media ‘files’, ie the mp3s, as well as the necessary library files, to an external drive, when ‘keep media organized’ and ‘copy files to media folder’ are NOT SELECTED?I am running OS X 10.6.8 and iTunes 10 [and prefer a solution which does not require updating software. I prefer to maintain my own customized folder and file structure for my mp3s; and have therefore deselected
1] Keep iTUnes Media folder organized and 2] Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. All the directions in the various posts seem to require selecting these options. Is this critical for success?
From the many posts I have read, it seems there’s more to it than just drag and drop, that I need to ensure that iTunes is ‘pointed’ to somewhere? Not the mp3s themselves, but to a ‘library” [is that yet another copy of the mp3s? somewhere on my hard drive?].
Additionally, over the years I have moved about 45GB of mp3s to ‘storage’ external hard drives to create more space on my laptop. Not ideal interim solution. I am again low on space and have decided to buy new external drive for holding all of my mp3s, ie the 45 GB in ‘storage’ and the remaining 75 GB from my laptop. Ideally, I would like to also keep all my artwork, playlists and ratings and the like [which I guess are in the ‘libraries’???]
Am I correct, that I will need to also move to the new external hard drive that folder which holds the .itl and .xml files and which is named ‘iTunes’??? and then there is another step to link the ‘media’ to the ‘library’ to ‘itunes’?
I have two computers, a PC and and Mac. Each has an itunes library. I want to combine both those libraries on an external hard drive that I keep plugged into my mac, and I'm running into some snags. I went out and bout a 2tb hard drive and was able to succesfly "consolidate" my PC itunes library to it. My plan was to plug the hard drive into my mac and do the same thing (consolidate my Mac library to the same folder that I had consolidated my PC library to). However, I quickly found that since the PC is formated as Windows NTFS, MAC can't write to it. It appears that it can read the drive, but not write to it. What format do I need to make the 2tb hard drive so that my MAC can read/write to it, but also that my PC can recognize it so I can transfer all my PC library to it? Is my methodology correct to rech my desired end?
a. consolidate PC itunes library to external hard drive b. consolidate MAC intunes library to same folder c. then repopulate my itunes on my MAC with the new itunes library on the external hard drive. Does that sound right?
I have a 3TB USB 2.0 "media" external hard drive attached to my iMac. I use it to store all itunes media only, since I have over 300 movies. I also have tv shows, music etc. I just got a new 2TB thunderbolt LaCie Big Disk external drive. I want to transfer all stuff in "media" USB hard drive to new thunderbolt drive. Reason for doing this, sometimes current USB "media" drive lags on responding when I come back to use itunes from sleep or inactivity. I'm thinking about just dragging all content from old drive to new drive, eject old drive, name new thunderbolt drive "media", and relaunch itunes. Would that work successfully? I'd like my itunes to remember my play count. If my content play count is lost, does iMatch remembers play count and once I update my iMatch with new thunderbolt drive installed, will my play count be updated to my itunes?
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 27", 3.4 GHz, 12GB RAM.
I had all of my iTunes music files stored on an external HD, which I used whenever I used iTunes. Maybe 200GB worth of tunes.I now have a new MacBook Pro, and I would like to import all of those music files to the internal HD of this laptop.So, without fishing around in the ancient old system for the Library file... I'd like to start fresh. I have no interest in keeping any ratings or play counts of the tunes. Do I simply go to the Add To Library command under the File menu, and select the iTunes Music folder on the external HD? Will this copy over my entire collection, and build a new Library file? Will my music library appear the same as it was before, in the iTunes application window? I imagine that this operation will take a bit of time. I seem to recall doing something like this, years ago, and noticing that the copying process missed entire albums etc.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.6GHz, 8GB RAM
I have recently started using a Time Capsule with an external hard drive attached. I have moved my music and video to the external hard drive to free up space on my MacBook Pro hard drive. I have set up iTunes to play from the external hard drive (which works fine), however, although I have changed the location of the iTune media folder in Preferences it keeps reverting to the iTunes media folder on my Mac's hard drive.
I've followed several tutorials on how to get this done, as it seems so simple but it's not working on my end. I've moved the iTunes folder from the /music/ to an external hard drive. I'm opening iTunes, going to Preferences, Advanced, and replacing the iTunes Media folder location to the correct one /Volumes/Volume E/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media
I'm checking Keep iTunes Media folder organized & Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library, clicking on the "OK" button, and nothing happens.
Funny enough, Spotify finds it in seconds and I can play my music from that player instead.
I want to get a mac but one thing that concerns me is my itunes. I have a massive library and if I get a mac I will need to copy the library to my external hard drive from my pc then copy it again to the mac. How could I do this without losing my playlists, rating etc? And also if you have all your photos in iPhoto can you access them without opening iPhoto? If you can how? Because I have played around on Macs in the Apple Store and couldn't see where they would be!
I'm trying to set up our home network so that everyone can access our large music library through a hard drive attached to apple extreme, but manage all of their other iTunes media files (apps, podcasts, etc) on their own devices. Is it possible for iTunes to have this type of split personality?
My iTunes library got too big so I moved it to my external hard drive and now that I have space for it on my macbook, I want to move it back but cant. It keeps stopping saying that it cant move certain files then it stops the transferring process altogether. I've tried moving it several times but it keeps failing on me. Anyone have an idea as to why it keeps stopping the transfer on me?
I recently moved my music library to an external library by changing the pathway in Edit/Preferences/Advanced and then consolidating the library. Everything worked for a while but now when I open itunes it is not able to find all the files. Bizarrely for a lot of albums it can find one or two of the songs but the rest all get the "Unable to locate original music file" error message. The music is all there on the hard drive but I don't want to have to manually locate each one. Does anyone know what is causing this or have a script to locate the rest of the music automatically?
I recently purchased an external hard drive to store my Final Cut Pro projects, and what I would like to happen is that I see projects stored on my computer when the drive is not plugged in I would like to see the projects stored on my computer. If this is not possible I would at least like to be able to see the project stored on my drive and edit them Final Cut Pro. I only see the projects on my computer in Final Cut Pro even when the hard drive is plugged in and it has projects on it. I basically want to store my Final Cut Pro projects and be able to edit them on my external drive. (final cut pro 10.1.3 latest build of Yosemite)
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
How do i play media files from my external hard drive without transferring the files to my mac hard drive? I have a lot of media files and want to be able to play them soley from my external hard drive.
I just bought an external hard drive for our airport extreme. Would it be a good idea to have our iphoto and itunes libraries on that hard drive, so that the various computers that we are using can access the libraries wirelessly?
If you think it is a good idea, how would you go about moving the itunes library? I think it's easy enough for iphoto, but itunes seems a bit more complicated?
I have about 250GB of music in my iTunes Music folder, too much for any of my player devices with the exception of the computer itself. The "iTunes Music" folder is located on an external drive. I want to create multiple libraries to simplify syncing with individual devices, named something like "Nano silver 16", "classic 160", "iPhone", "iPad", etc. I know how to create the new libraries from info at: [URL] Questions:3) Is there a way to switch the "iTunes Music" folder to sort by album, (instead of by artist, then album, which lists each individual song of a compilation (Greatest Hits of...". "soundtrack", "duets..., etc. in separate folders with one song each). Royal pain! 2) How do I populate the individual libraries from my media folder once I have created them? I can't find any info to do this. Am I right that these just reference the real files, and don't duplicate them in a new location/folder? I don't want to increase the space taken up by new library files. 3) Where should all of the library files live to make it easy to find and switch from one to another? At present, I have to check/uncheck individual files to sync onto separate devices, and this becomes impossible with so much to begin with. --WWmac mini, OS 10.7.4, iTunes 10.6.1
I am running out of room for all my music, movies etc, so have purchased an external drive for all my media.
All files are currently under the "shared" portion of the hard drive. It is set up so that different users are accessing different files in their libraries (eg my husband has his music, I have mine), but none is accessing everything. We had it like this to make it easier to manage our individual iphones, ipads etc, without having tracks that we both use duplicated in the hard drive. And its been great.
My problem is that I now want to move all the media to an external drive, and everything I have read recommends doing this through the itunes library. I am concerned that only one persons stuff will be moved by doing it this way, leaving the other missing files. If I simply move the folder, will it work to just point each library to the new destination? Some things I have read indicate that this won't be successful and that itunes won't find the new files.
Also, a small(ish) thing, while I am at it I would be quite keen to implement the new file organisation system with Music, Movies etc all on the same level. But not sure when or how to go about that with this setup.
Am I best to set up a new user, and import ALL folders into itunes, then move it within that itunes? Or should just moving the folder and pointing each itunes to the new location work?
My collection of iTunes music and movies has outgrown my internal hardrive. So I uncheck Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to library. What does not make sense to me however is the check box above. "keep itunes media folder organized". This really confuses me because if I am not moving the files into the media libary why would it want to rearrange the files? So does that mean for example that on my external hardrive its going to move the original source files?
I have a new Mac Pro, OS X version 10.9.5, running FCPX version 10.1.3. I have copied all of my data from a 1T external hard drive to a new 4T external hard drive, but FCPX doesn't recognize my media files unless I rename the new drive to that of the old one. The problem is I want to continue using the old one. Is there an easy way to relink my files and keep the original name of the new drive?
Info: Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), FCPX 10.1.3
I've searched through all of the threads pertaining to this issue and i've yet to find a solid, good answer. Basically, I have a macbook pro retina machine with 250 GB. I have over 100 movies purchased in iTunes as well as multiple TV shows that if I were to attempt to download onto my local disk the shear size would make my HDD .
I have a 1TB external drive and am just wanting to make hard copies of all of my videos and music on my external. Is there a specific way to use my external disk to not only backup my computer via time machine, but to also use it to backup all of my videos and music. I don't mind watching all of my content via the iCloud but I'm having difficulties creating a library on my external and then using that to download all of my movies. As I can't download all of them on my local disk and then transfer a copy, I need to figure out a way to set up my library on the external disk and then download everything to the external.Just to clarify my questions to you powers at be:
1. I need to set up a library on my external drive that I can download all of my media to.
2. I want to still be able to use itunes on my macbook and just watch all of my media/music on the icloud
3. Can I still use the same drive that has all of my backed up media as a backup through time machine as well?
I've scoured all of the forums and really all I could find was how to set up libraries on an external disk. None of them ever mention whether or not I can basically use my itunes library locally however I want, knowing that everything I've ever bought is backed up on my external.
I just got a second hand macbook pro which came with a full Adobe Suite. I very much want to keep all the programmes, but dont want them taking up space on my internal hard drive. Can I simply move them over to my 500GB external hard drive? Or would this damage the application? and would I be able to run them just the same from the external HD location?
I moved mail from an exchange server to my computer to get around using to much space at work. I then dragged that folder to my desktop which created a .mbox file. When I try to move the .mbox file from my desktop to an external hard drive it wont move. a grey circle with an exclamation point appears. I tried doing it with Entourage close as well and got the same issue. Does anyone know the proper way for me to move the .mbox file from the desktop to the external hard drive?
When I import photos from my iPhone to iPhoto I created a folder for photos that I want to move to my external hard drive. I hooked up my external hard drive to my MacBook Pro and tried to copy and paste the pics from that folder to my external hard drive and its not letting me copy anything to the external hard drive and I have no idea why. How come I can't cut and paste to my external hard drive?
I have an iMac (Mid2011). I have too many files on my hard disc and am trying to move some over to an Elements Hard drive I have connected but when I try and move them over nothing happens and it just gives a can't do sign.
