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Moving iTunes to an External Hard Drive

February 6, 2008 by debbie T | Mac Software • iTunes

I decided that I really MUST do something about the growing lack of space on my MacBook Pro. So, my iTunes library was a good place to start.

I found a detailed tutorial over at iLounge (Google search for “how to move iTunes library to external hard drive“) so I was all set, right? Yeah, but one problem is, I didn’t read the instructions very closely, and decided to improvise. LOL. Not good, but thankfully I had a couple of backups of my original iTunes library files and folders.

Important rule #1 - Before you do ANYTHING, backup backup and then backup. Don’t take it for granted that it will work perfectly the first time. Backup your whole iTunes directory onto an external hard drive. This saved my silly mistakes!

Okay, here is the condensed version of what to do, you will want to read over their instructions too:

  1. Keep your original files right where they are! Don’t move or copy them to the new location. (This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t backup the original files. But the backup should be located in a different folder or location.)
  2. Change the path to your content files in iTunes Preferences>Advanced - Choose a brand new (empty) folder/directory. This will not change where your iTunes database files are. You know, the files that actually ‘organize’ iTunes. The metadata, and stuff like that. Your external hard drive will only store the content (files from the “iTunes Music” folder), so it is very important to know what you are deleting later.
  3. Once you change the location of your content, iTunes will configure all the necessary files, referencing the new location. It might take a few minutes. This step will not add any files to the new location.
  4. Next, choose Advanced>Consolidate. This is when all the content files (from the iTunes Music folder) are copied over to the new location.
  5. Check to make sure the content looks okay on your external hard drive. Again, there will be no “library” or “database” files. Only the content from the iTunes Music folder.
  6. So the point of keeping your icontent on an external hard drive is to save space on your hard drive, right? So the old content files need to be deleted. DO THIS VERY CAREFULLY! Do not delete your whole iTunes folder! This is when your backup comes in handy. :) If you do delete the wrong files in error, you can just drag over your backed up iTunes folder and start all over again, which is what I did at least three times!
  7. Don’t delete the files using the iTunes app, you need to use Finder to delete these files. Find the iTunes>iTunes Music folder on your hard drive. This is what you need to delete. Once it is deleted, check iTunes to make sure your music is still intact. If so, then bravo, you did a good job!!!

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