ITunes :: Move A Library From One External Drive To Another?
Jun 8, 2012
I need to move my iTunes library from one external disk to another, because the original disk is about to fail. So, I went into iTunes Perferences --> Advanced, and set the library to a new, empty folder on the new drive. Nothing changed. I expected all my music to vanish from iTunes, so that I would have to re-import it. However, all the music remained, still on the old disk. At this point, if I were to recreate the library on the new disk, I would have all of my music twice. Is it possible to move an iTunes library from one external drive to another, or am I stuck with my original choice until I buy a new machine? If I can move it, can one of you clever folks explain how it could be done?
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 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?
My iTunes library has apparently filled my entire iMac (according to the computer I have over 97 days' worth of music). I would like to know 1) how to properly save my iTunes library to an external hard drive and 2) how to use iTunes so that it uses the library on the external drive.
I have a MacBook Pro and recently removed my optical drive and replaced it with an internal hard drive so that I can have more storage. My iTunes library is on the original hard drive. I am getting close to running out of space on the original hard drive and would like to move my library to the new internal hard drive.What is the best way to do this?
I'm a first time contributor so please forgive me if I seem a little "wet behind the ears"...I have a 2011 iMac (which replaced my 2006 G5 iSight model) and a 500gb Time Capsule.I have my iTunes Library (which is approximately 150gb) on the Time Capsule but, given the relatively modest 500gb on the capsule there is not enough room to back up my computer.I have been looking at 2tb external firewire hard drives and I am hoping to move my iTunes library onto one of these and then use the capsule to back up my computer with Time Machine (the Mac has an internal 500gb hard drive). I'm hoping this will be a relatively straightforward task! The downside with this is of course, I will not have a back up of my iTunes library...with the hardware that i have does anybody have any advise or better ideas!?
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Time Capsule, External Hard Drive
utilizing memory on iMac. 320gb almost used (7gb left). Think this is due to extensive iTunes music library. How can I move this to an external drive to free up memory on iMac?
If you want to do modify or upgrade a Macbook you Should first back up your music, documents, photos etc to an external hard drive. That much I did know. And lucky for me because a few later I spilt wine on the keyboard. (Computers are not wine oriented). Lucky for me it was saved by a Mac expert. The iTunes library which also includes non-Apple purchases is sitting in an external LaCie 1tb Rugged external hard drive. And what I want to do is transfer/import the iTune library Back into the Macbook. Sure it probably sounds easy to a vetran computer person or even to someone who grew up with computers but to me it's like speaking Cantonese.
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?
Since this doesn't have much storage i recently moved my entire 40Gb iPhoto onto an external drive. This worked great and love the new storage i have on my mac.
I plug my GoPro into my mac and it imports the photos onto the iPhoto on my external drive.
However the problem occurs when i try get those new photos onto my iPhone, i plug it in and go to photos on my phone in iTunes and it only shows my old iPhoto stuff, so i can't get those new photos across to my iPhone. I've tried the choose file option and chosen external drive but i doesn't seem to work?
I transferred all my itunes library to an external hard drive.I had all my songs in itunes and then went to "preferences" and set itunes to look on my external hard drive for my itunes. Then I went to "library" and then "consolidate", and it moved all my library over to my external. I can verify that my songs are all there on my externalHowever, now, itunes won't play any songs of mine. I double click on the song in itunes and it just wont play. There's no error message, there's no exclamation point, it just won't play. Any idea what is goign on? Preferences still shows that my library is directing to the external
I'm running out of space on my harddrive and am wondering. Is there a way to move some of my library to an external harddrive? Like TV shows and movies that I don't need to access all the time. I don't want to delete anything. I don't want to carry around a harddrive all the time.
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 have 2 gigs left on my ssd drive. I have attached an external usb drive 2tb. How do I migrate over something like itunes and or iphoto to free up some space on my internal drive?
I have a Mac Mini connected to a Lacie external HD that houses all of my iTunes library. I've just bought a new iMac to replace the Mini and want to keep the iTunes library on the external, just point the new machine's iTunes to the existing library on the external.
How best to do that? I don't want to restore from TM because I want to start fresh from this Mac and there really isn't a lot to keep other than the iTunes (most of it is on the external). If I point to an existing location, I don't need to Consolidate, do I? Any risk of losing the library? Do I need to unlink the library on the existing Mac?
my itunes library is on an external hard-drive. I have another external harddrive that is portable and I'd like to have this one to travel with and be able to update it from the main library on the other ext. hd. Right now I have just copied over the entire library of music - no itunes involved - but I realized that this doesn't work for me as I want to be able to update that music file with the newer stuff found on my other main ext. hd.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3), external harddrive
I have an older Mini with about 600 gigs of losses files on an external drive. I have a new mini and I want to use the same drive. Can I somehow point the new mac to the same location?
I have had a series of hard drive issues. My iTunes library is kept on an external drive. This is the second one that failed. I am unable to copy the files enmass from one drive to the other using the normal method for relocating an iTunes library (due to drive errors). However, I was able to do a folder-by-folder finder copy from the failed drive to the new external. Then, I went into iTunes preference and repointed the iTunes Media folder location to the new drive. I had the "keep organized" and "copy files to library" boxes checked. Then, iTunes wanted to update the files, which it did. However, all of my file paths in iTunes still point to the old, damaged hard drive. How do I get them to have the correct path to the new drive? I had this situation once in the past, but I cannot remember how I solved it.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 2.5 Ghz, 4GB Memory
The mini mac is full and I want to be able to use the 2 tb drive as storage and time machine. How do I get the content onto the external drive and access it it and hoe does new content get downloaded and stored to the drive not the mac? Also can I have 1 drive playing storeage and back up or do I need a second?
So, my iTunes library is getting too large for my computer's storage capacity. I'm thinking of moving some of my library to an external, USB hard drive. However, I've never done iTunes through an external hard drive before and I have some questions. Can I copy new discs (import) straight onto the external hard drive? Or do they need to go onto my computer first then get transferred to the hard drive?Can I still use iTunes Match and pull songs from the library on my hard drive and from the main computer?To partition a library between a computer and an external hard drive, do I need to activate sharing or anything special? Or will the computer/main iTunes library just consider the external drive to be a different location for some of the tracks?How would I backup the external hard drive? Would Time Machine (running off a separate hard drive) back up another external hard drive if they were both plugged in?Can you burn the entire library to data discs anymore? Or do you need to make a playlist of your entire library? If the latter, is there a way to turn off the message about iTunes in the Cloud playlists only accepting songs matched or uploaded? I have some songs that erroneously did not get matched or uploaded. If I try to put them in a playlist and burn it to a data disc for backup, iTunes won't do it.
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 want to Move the iTunes library database files to another location other then the default /User/Username/Music/iTunes.
I want it on my secondary drive. I have found countless link to moving the media files, that is not what I want. I already have them exactly where I want those.
I do not what the Library files on my Boot drive under my username. I want to place it on my secondary drive under a folder called iTunes.
I want to copy my iTunes library from one external drive (currently connected to an iBook) to a 2nd external drive (connected to an eMac). The library is almost 60GB and so can not fit on either machine's hard drive.
The music currently plays through the iBook from the first external drive.
I want to be able to play the same music on the eMac (through the 2nd external drive).
Which is the best way to go about this?
Should I:
a) Connect the 1st external drive to the eMac and manually drag and drop the music from there to the 2nd external drive, or
b)Use Silverkeeper Basckup and do a backup of the Music folder in the 1st drive to the 2nd drive, after connecting the 1st to the eMac?
or is there not much difference in doing either? Or is there a more efficient option using iTunes?
