Moving iTunes music folder from hard drive to external drive

I see a couple of topics related to iTunes folder locations and losing track of where the file are. What's the right way to migrate from having the iTunes music files on my hard drive (C:) to using an external drive...without having to re-map everything manually? I'm running out of space on the C: drive!

There's actually hundreds of those topics. It gets asked daily.
Did you still have a specific question after reading several of them?
Here is a very thorough and wordy article on it
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive

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Win-7 64bit: moving iTunes media folder from default location to D drive

Dear all,
I cannot move iTunes media folder from default location on C drive to D drive on win-7 64 bit.
What I did was:
- Under iTunes> Edit > Preferences > Advanced I choosed new location for iTunes media folder on D drive
- Under iTunes > Library > Organize library > I choose consolidate fiels and then ok ( this should create a new library on new location )
Next I delete iTunes media folder on C drive and hope that on re-start iTunes goes to new location on D drive and picks new file arrangement.
But it does not happen - no matter what I do iTunes goes to its default location on C drive ....
I called apple senior advisor - and she told me that it's kind of "my fault" I have windows7 installed on PC and because iTunes is Mac oriented they will not give me support... And referred me to Microsoft ... What a lousy support!. I paid for it $25!! What for?

By the way, I followed instructions as per link http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1364 - it did not work either. Can anyone share their success stories ? My C drive is not big and my music library ~ 100gB - I really need to keep iTunes media files in another location ... not a default place under User Login

Can I copy music iTunes Music Folder from my external Hard drive to new PC?

not sure if this is possible but I copied my folders (documents/music/itunes/itunes music folder) from my local hard drive from laptop to my external (for backing up purposes) and now i have a new computer. can i just simply copy/paste this folder to my new computer and open itunes and it will be there. i know it's probably too easy but was hoping someone could help me out???? thanks.

You can by dragging them from itunes to your external drive this will copy them to it. Then do the opposite for from you drive to the new computer. Just make sure if you don't intend to keep the drive connected to your new computer. That you put copies of the songs in a folder on it before putting them on itunes or you have problems playing your songs.

Adding music folder from hard disk to itunes causes the original music to vanish

what is causing itunes to delete original music folder from hard disk when selecting add folder to itunes

iTunes doesn't have any automatic way of re-creating your directory structure in terms of folders and playlists in iTunes. You will have to drag each music folder to a playlist and then arrange these in folders inside of iTunes (which I warn you can can slow down iTunes a lot). I guess the once chance of speeding this up will be if somebody has written an Applescript to do it, but I don't remeber seeing any anywhere.

Moving iTunes music files from external to HD that already contains songs

Okay, here's my situation as best I can explain it:
I changed the location of my iTunes Music folder to be on my external hard drive a few years ago, which was where all of my iTunes music was until recently. A few months ago, I noticed that my iTunes Music folder on my laptop (my only computer) was starting to have songs in it again. I realized that with an update I did, iTunes changed the folder location back to being on my computer, so any song I had added since that date was now within the folder on my laptop's HD.
So now, I want to put all of my music back into the main iTunes folder on my hard drive to be the main folder and delete the one on the external. The problem is I can't use the 'Consolidate Library' option because I had to do a restore CD and have duplicate copies of multiple songs, and I don't want to have to go into iTunes and spend more time to fix this, which is why I've been working on this problem manually, adding songs I find on my hard drive that I want into iTunes one at a time. Point is, I don't have enough hard drive space on my computer to consolidate and then delete duplicates.
So am I going to have to create an entirely new folder and copy contents of both iTunes folders into that one? I did this so long ago, I can't remember how I did it. I know I can't just move the files to a new folder because the iTunes program doesn't recognize the new location unless you put them into iTunes directly, which is not an option because they are within folders and I'm not going to take the time to go one by one through my thousands of folders. Please help.

Okay, I've done some reading and it seems consolidating is an option if I understand it correctly. So, if I choose consolidate, iTunes will ONLY copy music files that are currently within iTunes and not currently located in the library into the library folder, correct? i.e. It will not copy songs in my Public folder that I have not put in iTunes yet, or any duplicates, right?
So that way, I could do that which will put any songs from my external into the folder on the HD, and then I can delete the iT folder on my external so that there will be no duplicates, correct? Then I could go about fixing the rest of the random songs floating on my hard drive.
Has anyone done the 'Consolidate' option and then deleted their original files? There are no adverse effects right? Then I would be free to back up the iTunes library onto my external and all will be well...

How should I copy my iTunes Music folder from my iMac to my Macbook Pro

I have copied the iTunes music folder from my iMac to my Macbook Pro using firewire and target disk mode. After all the files (for files read each individual song) have been copied I find that not all songs can be played. For those which will not play I get he error message "The song "bla bla" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I answer "locate" on this popup I'm taken to a view of finder. If I double click on the song there, the song will play on iTunes. Seems to be something to do with the structure of the folders but in get info I cannot see a difference between songs encountering this problem and those which don't.

Instead of copying only the _iTunes music folder_, copy the entire *iTunes folder.*
That's all you need to do.

Error message when moving iTunes music folder to External Hard Drive

I have followed the instructions in Apple support to move my iTunes music folder to an external hard drive. During the consolidate library step, only half of my music is transferred before I get the error message "Copying music failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."
Has anyone gotten the same message, and what was your experience correcting the issue?
15" Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

In Windows, you go through File >> Library >> Organize Library. here you can choose to consolidate your library. this should do the job.. alternatively you could take a look at this blog..
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-ha rd-drive/
Even though its step by step on mac you should be able to figure it out from there.
Message was edited by: MuldVarp3N

Ooops...I manually moved iTunes music folder to my new external hard drive

So I thought I was smart and manually moved my iTunes music folder to my new external hard drive. I've changed the location in Preferences but can't locate my music through iTunes. What do I do now? My library is on my external hard drive, but I read I should have done this through iTunes. Any advice?

Is it still possible for you to temporarily return the iTunes Music folder to its original location?
If so you should be able to see your music in iTunes again and then follow the instructions in this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.

How can I move my iPod iTunes Music Folder from C: drive to a New Drive?

Running out of space on my PC's C: drive, so I tried moving all the folder to my new E: drive ie: (E:\My Music 2\iTunes).
ALSO set iTunes (Edit/Preferences/Advanced/iTunes Music Folder location to E:\My Music 2\iTunes - but nothing seems to help!)
All of the files couldn't find the source files, unless I pointed to them one by one.
Can't move them all back because they are about 7GB+, and I now only have about 5.5 GB on my C: drive.
And when I just went to open iTunes again, all my libraries don't even show.
I'm afraid to plug in my ipod for synching until I get this straight, for fear of messing that up too.
Please advise.
Compaq Presario Windows XP Notebook.
Compaq Presario Windows XP Notebook.

To move your iTunes music to an external drive...
1 Quit iTunes.
2 Move the entire iTunes folder including music to
the external drive.
In point #2 do you mean move the entire Program File folder of iTunes or just the "My Documents" iTunes library folder?
I have a full laptop, a big iPod and an external HD, I am trying to figure out how to store my library on the HD, but access it as if it were on the laptop.
I moved my iTunes library to the HD and then in iTunes I used the "add folder to library" function, but it brought all of the song files back onto the laptop.
How do you iPod gurus configure your setup with comp, HD and iPod? I need some guidance, my methods are not working.
laptop Windows XP

Problem in moving iTunes Music Folder

I feel sooo stupid! I am using the document "iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder." I was going along OK until I came to number 5 in the second part:
"In the Change Music Folder Location window that appears, navigate to the location where you would like your new Music folder to be created. Note: By default, your iTunes Music folder is a folder named "iTunes Music" in ~/Music/iTunes/where the tilde "~" represents your home directory.
What does it mean, "....navigate to the location where you would like your new Music folder to be created." ???
I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space by moving my iTunes Music folder to my external hard drive.
Will it also take the movies, podcasts, etc??
Thanks in advance for any help. I'm dead in the water until I get this solved.

Open iTunes and at the bottom of the main window it will tell you how large in Gigs your library is - if that is larger than the space available on your ext HD then you will need a bigger ext HD - or remove some stuff from the ext HD to make space.
MJ

Missing files after moving itunes music folder

i moved my itunes music folder to my external hard drive using the directions posted here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748 to the letter. a lot of things transfered but now when i look in my itunes music folder and compare to my itunes library, i see that a lot of things are missing. i really don't want to have to go through every single artist folder and check every song. shouldn't consolidating my library have taken care of this?

I just had a very similar issue, I moved my iTunes library from a 120Gb Drive to a 500Gb and the library was a bit corrupted because the main drive was full b/c of an error, but that's besides the fact.
SOLUTION To missing files, that aren't really missing because they exist and were all copied no problems.
go to the iTunes folder in your Home folder, and move the iTunes Music Library.xml file to your desktop (with itunes closed of course)
Then re-open itunes and the library file that's not an xml doc, will re-search your files and all should be well.
You should be able to safely delete the xml doc now, because iTunes made a new one.
Cheers
PowerMac G4 Dual 1Gz Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Moved iTunes music folder to HDD, Now iTunes Can't Find it--Help :-)

I finally was able to get an HDD that actually mounted and now I have moved my iTunes music folder based on the instructions here: iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder. I printed them out and followed them step-by-step.
Before moving the folder iTunes Music from my internal HD (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music) to the trash, I played random tracks with no problem. So I moved the folder to the trashcan, then emptied the trash as instructed. Went back to iTunes to play some music, and now all of my tracks have the dreaded exclamation point in the first column. When I click on a track to play it, I get the message "The song 'blah blah blah' could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
Of course, I can select 'Yes' and go through the steps and locate the files on my HDD. This, however, is not an optimal process with over 2400 songs. Does anyone know what went wrong with my relocation?
Melissa
PowerBook G4 PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8) iPod 30G, MyBook 250GB HDD, iTunes 7.1.1

I've used that method to transfer music from one drive to another literally dozens of times and never seen it fail in the way you experienced. I'm at a loss to explain how you could have followed the instructions, successfully transfer the music to the new drive, and yet have the iTunes database still think the music should be on the original drive.
What I can suggest are two solutions: One for it you don't care about keeping your playlists, rankings, and playcounts intact. The other for if you do care.
Fast fix but loses the meta data: Quit iTunes. Open your home directory, find the music folder and open it. Trash everything you see in your music folder and restart iTunes. All your music and playlists will be gone. Open your new drive on the desktop, find the folder with your music, and drag it into your iTunes window. Your music will be imported into a new iTunes catalog and then you can create your playlists.
Keeping the metadata: After quitting iTunes, move the music back to its original location by dragging the music folder(s). Unmount the new drive and play some music. Remember the songs you clicked on and showed iTunes how to find? Do those songs all over again and once you've verified the iTunes library now points to all the songs properly, delete the songs from the new drive and repeat the steps to move them again.

Moved iTunes music folder to new HD and it won't play

I recently moved my iTunes music files to a larger external hard drive (for the third time) and now iTunes can't find any of the songs. It has worked in the past on 2 other HD's but not this time. I've selected the correct iTunes Music Folder location under <EDIT> <PREFERENCES> <ADVANCED>, have selected "Keep music folder organized", and have even "consolidated my music", but the files won't play. The files are in-tact; I can right-click on a song, click "get info", and manually locate the file to play it, but I don't want to do this for 70GB worth of music!!! Someone suggested dragging the music files into the iTunes library, but I have the library on my laptop and the actual music files on the external HD and I want to keep the library on my laptop so I don't think this will work for me. please help.
Message was edited by: brookap

I have a very similar problem. Hope I don't confuse people trying to help us since the solutions may be different.
I had my iTunes path directed to a 2nd internal hard drive. Everything was working fine - except I found that purchased Apps were still being downloaded to the Mobile Applications folder on my main hard drive instead of the 2nd internal drive. I decided to retry directing the iTunes path to my 2nd internal drive, hoping that might get iTunes to save my Apps there. Big Mistake. Suddenly, there were no Apps showing in my iTunes Library Apps window at all. I verified the downloaded apps are still in my main hard drive's Mobile Applications folder, but I cannot get iTunes to display them in my Apps Library window anymore.
I decided to try downloading a new app and, sure enough, iTunes once again downloaded it into the very same Mobile Applications folder on my main hard drive, where all my (now orphaned) original apps are, but the only one iTunes will only display in my Apps window is the new one. I read you can redownload purchased apps, but my apps are not missing. iTunes just won't display them in the Apps window anymore.

Recovering "iTunes Music" folder from Time Machine Backup (Permissions Err)

OK, long story, but stay with me.... could be an interesting one here.
So I move to a SSD hard drive in my 24" iMac. New Intel SSD drive is only 160GB, so I'm only using it for the OS, Applications, etc... all of my data is on an external FW800 disk (Western Digital MyBook). I've already relocated my Home Directory to the external drive and that seems to be working great for all my pictures, docs, movies, etc, except for iTunes.
My iTunes library comes up, but I can't locate any of the songs. I checked the preferences and it's pointed to the correct location on the external disk. So, I was trying to do the relocation, but it would appear that the MUSIC folder does not have all the data i copied into it. When I try to open the "iTunes Music" folder I get this error... "The folder "iTunes Music" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see it's content". I've checked my Time Machine drive which obviously has all the music files on it (the space is taken up), but I can't get to them to recover.
Any clue how I can get this permissions error resolved so I can get my music? I have (3) backups of the same directory... all the same story, no permissions. I even created the same user account name when I rebuilt Snow Leopard on the SSD.

I don't think you understand. I need to get my music from Time machine where it is backed up. How do i find it in time machine and how do i transfer it to a seperate HD?

When I tried to backup itunes music folder- 15.1gig- to ext. hrd drive using drag

When I tried to backup itunes music folder - 15.1gig - to ext. hard drive using drag & drop, only 5.9gig transferred to the new folder. Tried again with same result. Any ideas?

Fast backup for iTunes library (Windows)
Grab SyncToy 2.1, a free tool from MS. This can be used to copy your entire iTunes library (& other important data folders) onto another hard drive or network share. You can then use SyncToy periodically to synchronise or echo your library to the backup. A preview will show which files need to be updated giving you a chance to spot unexpected changes and during the run only the new or updated files will be copied saving lots of time.
Unlike Windows copying routine, SyncToy won't need to copy files that have already been copied successfully again and if it has problems reading any specific files these will be listed as failures, but the rest of the files will get backed up rather than the process grinding to a halt.
If your media is all organised below the main iTunes folder then you should also be able to open the backup library on any system running the same version of iTunes, regardless of the drive letter or path it appears on.
tt2

Moving iTunes music folder from hard drive to external drive

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