C: drive is full - move only iTunes Media folder contents to another drive without consolidating?
My iTunes library contains a combination of music/movies/etc that I've purchased or downloaded from the iTunes Store as well as music I've purchased from Amazon and my own ripped CDs (not ripped via iTunes...other software). The Amazon and ripped files have always lived on my D drive (for easier sharing betwen family members, without opening up permissions on our User folders), while the Store files all live under my User profile on C.
I'd like to move the iTunes Media folder contents off of C and onto D. All the instructions that use "consolidating" and "keeping the media folder organized" will not work for me, since I do not want all my files under the iTunes Media folder...I like them where they are now in D:\Music\Amazon and D:\Music\CDCollection.
Do I have to resort to moving the files myself, adding them into the library again, then cleaning up the orphaned library entries that are pointing to the old location?
Thanks!
Copy the entire iTunes folder from your music folder to D:\iTunes.
Click the icon to start iTunes and immediately press and hold down the shift key. Keep holding until asked to choose or create a library.
Click Choose and navigate to the file D:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl
Check the library is working properly.
Use the option File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files to import any stay files to the new library folder.
Delete the old iTunes folder on the C: drive.
Ideally you will also backup this library to another drive.
tt2
Similar Messages
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Moving iTunes Media folder to second internal drive fails
The whole story is:
I never really used the iTunes media folder system. All my music is on extrenal drive and I was only importing it into iTunes manually to keep my own folder system, for example once a week Ive created a folder with a date of creating and there I had all the releases from that week (some in their own folder or separately but all in this one folder named by a dat eof creation). So on my ext. drive I have lots of these folders by date. And the names of folder always correspond with the date added to iTunes as well
My ext. drive is full now. so Ive decided to take a next step and put out the dvd-rom and put another internal drive (1TB) into my macbook pro which will be used for music and movie data only (the system stays on the old one).
What I want to do now is somehow move all these music folder to my new internal drive, so they can be accessed from iTunes without reseting all its features.
Ive read that one solution can be creating the new iTunes Media folder on that new drive and Consolidate all music from iTunes to this location. Problem is I cant even try it, because when go to iTunes Preferences to change the location of Media folder a hit Create after selectin the new location (new internal drive) after fee seconds the progress freezes and Activity Monitor says that iTunes are not responding. Ive tried to leave it for about half an hour and no changes, even tho theres not much to copy/move cause the Media folder has no music in it, only playlists etc.
So question number one is - why its freezing?
Question number two - any other way to trasfer all my collection and keep its organiation as it is without loosing the iTunes list and be able to use it after transfer?
Thanks in advance for your help and tipsNot sure about question 1...
What I think you should do is try to copy the existing iTunes library folder from <User's Music>/iTunes to <1Tb Drive>/iTunes then hold down option as you start iTunes. You should be asked to choose or create a library. Click choose and browse to the library file at <1Tb Drive>/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl (BTW if the the .itl extension is missing you should probably add it match the current format, but it will work either way).
The new copy of the library should work just as before, but check a few random things first, you can always revert to the previous library with option-start-iTunes if it doesn't work.
Under iTunes > Library > Orgainze Library if the option is available tick Reorganize files in the folder <Media Folder>. This will make sure the new version of your library is as portable as possible. Next under preferences > Advanced make sure that the media folder is given as <1Tb Drive>/iTunes/iTunes Media. If needed you can change this value. If you change the folder at this point iTunes should offer to copy your existing media into this new location. That ought to work, thought it will take some time. Alternatively you decline the offer and then selectively consolidate the library in batches, e.g. by selecting the tracks of all Artists beginning with A, and consolidating just those tracks, then repeasting with, B, C etc. followed by other types of media. If iTunes didn't prompt, or the folder was already correct, you can decide whether to try in batches or use iTunes > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate files.
tt2 -
If I move my iTunes media folder to the Shared folder....
Hello
I'd like to share my music libary with my wife's user account on our MacBook Pro so she can get some of my music onto her iPhone. I've read the article on the Apple site as well as similar articles from other reputable Mac user websites and it seems simple enough.
I move the iTunes media folder into the shared folder and then redirect iTunes in the two separate accounts towards the new library locations whilst unticking the box 'Copy to the iTunes Media folder when adding to library' and then the same library is used by iTunes for both user accounts.
My question is: what are the implications for Apps when doing this? This method allows us to share music which is simple enough because she doesn't have any so the new library will just be my music.
But we both have our own collection of apps bought and downloaded through our individual accounts. Her apps are in the iTunes Media folder in her own account whilst mine are in mine. If we share an iTunes media folder as our shared libary, how does the storage and synchronisation of apps function?
Thank you for any help..Sorted - worked it out myself.
In case it's of any use to anyone else, I moved my iTunes Media folder into the Shared section of the drive and let iTunes know this which has had absolutely no effect on my library or my access to my media.
My wife's iTunes simply has access to my media and she can add it to her own library (which already contains her own apps) without moving the media from my shared folder because I deselected that 'copy to itunes when adding to library' box.
Now she has her own media folder and library but can access my stuff... -
My win8 pc hard drive failed. After the hard drive was replaced, I copied iTunes Media backupfiles from external hard drive (Karen's Replicator backup software was used). ITunes does not recognize these back up files even though the location is the same as cloud & recently burned music that does show- help! The backup files consist of 34,000+ songs; almost all burned from my own CD collection. I do have most of the songs on an ipod classic but hesitate to try to restore from that. Can someone tell me how to get these 34,000 songs to show up in iTunes? Thanks!!
This diagram shows how a typical iTunes library ought to be set out (click on it to enlarge)
The red outline highlights the media folder and its contents, the various subfolders are only created if that kind of content is in your library. The right-hand side shows the files that should be found in the iTunes library folder; sentinel is normally hidden so may not be visible. The core of your iTunes library is the file iTunes Library.itl, you need to restore this, the other library files and the Album Artwork folder, as well as the media folder, to restore your library.
tt2 -
ITunes Media Folder Location on External Drive
Setting up a new Mac. I already have my iTunes media from my previous Mac on an external drive. Went to Preferences and selected the external drive and iTunes Media folder and the files are not showing up in iTunes. Any ideas?
FrustratedAJM3 wrote:
Setting up a new Mac. I already have my iTunes media from my previous Mac on an external drive. Went to Preferences and selected the external drive and iTunes Media folder and the files are not showing up in iTunes. Any ideas?
That simply tells iTunes where to put new files.
It does not add anything to iTunes.
You should keep the entire iTunes library (iTunes media and all library files) in one location.
Do this...
Connect external to old computer.
Copy /Music/iTunes/ folder from internal drive to external drive.
On the external, move the iTunes media folder into the iTunes folder you just copied to the external.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
Everything should work fine.
Quit iTunes.
Connect drive to new computer.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
Everything should work fine.
This is all you need to do.
This will bring all your playlists, ratings, comments, everything from old computer.
You do not need to change the iTunes media folder location in iTunes prefs.. -
Running Win7. I moved my entire Itunes library to an external drive to free up space on my laptop. Itunes recognized the change and all was well. That worked fine and I have synced several times from the laptop with the library on the external drive. Now the laptop is in the shop (sigh, not Itunes related a dead network card). I connected the external drive to my desktop, made sure my software was up to date. opened ITunes went to edit/preferences/advanced. Went to change Itunes media folder location and navigated to the proper folder on my external drive and clicked OK. None of the music, videos, etc, that are in that folder show up in iTunes on the desktop. Restarted ITunes, no help, reboot computer, no help. Have I done something wrong or left out a step. I could copy all the media onto the desktop individually and build new playlists but that seems like something that should not be needed? One of the reasons I moved my Itunes media folder to the external drive was so I could use the laptop for iTunes while travel and the desktop for iTunes while at home. Do I have to copy the entire folder to my desktop and take up space there? That would be counterproductive to using the external drive. I searched and saw a hint to hold down shift while starting ITunes but that did not change anything. Any help would be most appreciated!
Jim in WVThank you for your prompt response - I did as you said and did a drag and drop into the iTunes window - it imported and got my album art from the net. When I started Itunes with the shift key down I was prompted to choose a library but since I copied over the media folder and not the library folder I was unable to select that so I guess I will have to create a new library and add in all the music, videos, etc. unless I wait for my laptop and export the library or at least that seems to be the case? In short, all my data (iTunes media folder) is on my external drive and can be added to the blank iTunes screen but I can not choose a library folder. Is there anyway around completely making all those playlists again? I am not sure my laptop will survive the shop with data intact and really hate to start over on those.
In an unrelated question - I collect old TV shows from the 1950's. Can I make playlists within the home video folder somehow? In other words like one for Quiz shows, one for comedies, one for police and detective shows, etc. while I am remaking all my playlists for my music if I end up having to go that route?
Once again thank you for helping me out. I am not too Itunes savvy and really appreciate you taking the time to answer. -
I can find all my music in the iTunes media folder on my c drive, but not in the iTunes library.
Hi-
First time here - thanks in advance for any help!
Last year, I loaded a lot of music from my CD collection into iTunes 10 on my PC (running Vista). Now, much of that content does not appear in the iTunes library, but I can find all of it in the iTunes media folder on the c drive. I upgraded to iTunes 11 today and the same problem persists.
Can anyone tell me why the content doesn't show up in the iTunes library?
Thanks again!
JohnSee this post.
tt2 -
Hi all....I have spent weeks tidying up my music collection. I moved it all to Itunes media folder. Since I don't like how Itunes manages this folder I manually organised it myself so that albums where together etc. I am wondering if there is a fool proof way to move my media folder to an external hard drive without letting itunes manage and consolidate files as this will reverse all the work I did in organising. Im not sure if Im posting to the right place but fingers crossed:)
Thanks in advanceJust one more thing puhlease:) This is the list of things that are in my iTunes folder. Album artwork, Automatically add to iTunes, iTunes media, Mobile apllications, podcasts, previous itunes libraries, voice memos. Then it has files itunes preferences, itunes libary extras, itunes libarry genius, itunes libraary, itunes music library......Is there stuff in there that doesnt need to be there as some are repeated in itunes media folder which contains....automatically add to itunes, books, downloads, home videos, mobile applications, music, podcasts, tones, voice memos and itunes preferences. Any thoughts on deleting some folders??? Thankyou so much for your time on this
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To be precise, I've moved my iTunes Media Library to the same external hard drive where my TM backups are stored, although there's plenty of free space on that drive for both.
As I write that, however, it strikes me that if that external drive fails, I've lost my entire iTunes media directory AND my TM backup. So I suppose I should use a separate external HD for each, right?
But my main question is whether or not TM will still back up that iTunes media folder even if it's no longer located on the same boot drive as my main machine, which is a Mac Mini.
The whole reason I'm doing this is because my MM has a 250GB solid-state drive that is rapidly filling up because my iTunes library is 150+GB.mende1 says:
I recommend you to store the library on another partition on the external disk and keep the first volume only for Time Machine backups.
and you say:
As I write that, however, it strikes me that if that external drive fails, I've lost my entire iTunes media directory AND my TM backup. So I suppose I should use a separate external HD for each, right?
From what people report here I'd say more people lose collections through whole drives failing and not just individual volumes becoming corrupt. A drive failing will take out all volumes on that drive.
Whatever the scenario, you will need multiple external drives. For convenience you could do as mende1 suggests and partition the TM drive. Keep TM on one part and your library on the other. This would be convenient because then you would only have one external connected to your Mac most of the time. However, then you should do as you observe and back up the partition used for iTunes to another external drive as often as you deem necessary. Basically you always want two copies of everything on two different drives, but they don't all have to be on the same two drives. Your TM drive acts as the backup for your computer and the primary for iTunes. Your computer acts as the primary for what's on TM and the second external acts as the backup for iTunes. -
How can I move my iTunes media folder from users/shared back to one user account?
I shared my music with multiple users on one macbook pro.
Like on the Apple support discussions described I changed the iTunes media folder to users/shared. My question is how to reverse that action? Once I reset the media folder location it tells me /users/name/music/itunes/itunes media, that would be right but the files remain in users/shared?Tell us what the underlying objective is in all this. You came here asking how to move a media folder but now we're getting into user libraries and moving things back and forth to their original locations. Why move it in the first place if you are just putting it back? Maybe you don't need to move things.
Read these to learn more about how iTunes works. If you move the wrong things you can end up breaking links. This goes double for moving things to other drives.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
It is almost certain that nothing you are doing will require removing the iTunes application itself. Asking that tells me you are doing something relatively complicated with insufficient background -- kind of like somebody asking me how to use a power saw. I can tell them, but when it sounds like their project is painting a room one begins to wonder if they are going about things correctly. That said, organizing/consolidating copies files. Open iTunes, get info on a track, look at summary and see where the file is now located iTunes uses to play the track. It should be in the moved location and it is okay to delete the others. -
ITunes Media Folder Renameable on External Drive (mac)
I have a 1TB collection of music in a folder on an external drive within a folder that is NOT called iTunes Media, but which until now had behaved as if it were.
I just switched to a clone of my old 1TB drive on a 1.5TB drive. After 11 hours of locating my 157000 tracks, I was able to find and use every track. However, when I added a new track, apparently I lost the ability to add new music tracks within the Music folder. Instead, a new iTunes Media folder was created within the folder which SHOULD have been called iTunes Media.
In the (new) iTunes Media folder there are a few folders containing the music I added after the switch. In the Music folder (below, but higher hierarchy) there is 1TB of music, which means it cannot be copied into the (new) iTunes Media file on the 1.5TB drive (not enough space).
Even though it would entail 100+ hours of new clone-backup time, the most logical solution would be to discard the embedded iTunes Media folder, rename the top-level folder iTunes Media, then let iTunes relocate the tracks again (over another 11 hours) and reload the few tracks loaded since the switch.
However I do not know if iTunes will allow this to work, and if so, what needs to be done in order to make it work.
Can the top-level folder be renamed? Do I need to untick and tick the Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized button?
Thanks
Mac OSX 10.6.8, iTunes 11.4I am getting a bit lost on what was done and exactly why you did it that way. It looks to me like you use iTunes with standard preferences settings and you didn't so much move your media folder to the external drive as your whole iTunes library (everything in the top level folder including all the media files). This should have been done simply by copying the iTunes folder from the old drive to the new one, renaming the AllMyiTunesMusic folder if you so desire, then starting iTunes while holding down the option/alt key and selecting that folder as the iTunes library to now start using. Apart from the copy time when you could go away and drink a pot of coffee the actual labor time would be about 2 minutes. I think you must have done something different which has kind of messed up your library and resulted in duplication of files. Some of those folders such as Movies and the neighboring Music folder should be in the media folder, but don't move things about in Finder or iTunes may lose track of them and things will get worse. If you can go back and do things properly then I recommend you do so, otherwise we can see what we can work with here.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847 - plus supplemental information about organizing to new structure https://discussions.apple.com/message/26404702#26404702
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7392 and making an iTunes library portable. -
I moved my itunes media folder to an external drive
Now i'm not sure how to delete the old media folder to free up space on my internal drive?
i have all the computers pointing to:
Multimedia>iTunes>iTunes Media
in the iTunes Media folder there are the following folders:
Automatically Add to iTunes
Books
Movies
Music
TV Shows
i do NOT have the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" box checked. i read on another site that this box should remain UNchecked when storing your iTunes library centrally. what is it exactly checking that box does? does anyone know of a good article explaining how to get multiple users to be able to access a centrally located iTunes Media folder?
by that i am not talking about Home Sharing or whatever it is called. i want to be able to access the central iTunes Media Library and have my kids be able to sync their iPads and iPhones and any other A4 devices they have from their own computers. all family members are setup with Network Home Folders being handled by an Intel xServe.
all help is appreciated.... -
How do I move my iTunes media folder to an external hard drive on my iMac with OS 10.6.8?
I am running out of space on my iMac hard drive so I bought an external hard drive. I want to transfer my iTunes music library onto that drive. I think I have to do it through iTunes, but I can't even see the hard drive on iTunes like I can see other devices. The drive is definitely connected. I can transfer files on my iMac drive directly to the external drive using the Finder.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /MusiciTunes/ folder from internal drive to external drive.
Hold Option & launch iTunes.
Selelect Choose library... and select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
After you make sure everything works, you can delete /MuusiciTunes/ folder. -
I have moved all of the iTunes data to the drive, but can't seem to find the .itl folder when trying to make external drive the location for my music for a new computer.
Can anyone please assist on letting me know where the .itl file would have been copied to or whether, if I copy the .itl folder separately, would it keep play counts and ratings?
ThanksMany people confuse moving their media folder with moving their library. A library is everything inside the iTunes folder. Unless you have a specific reason for not wanting to move the entire library it is best to do that rather than just media.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847 - plus supplemental information about organizing to new structure https://discussions.apple.com/message/26404702#26404702
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7392 and making an iTunes library portable.
If you move only media then the main library files remain on the computer. If you want to move the whole library:
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the option (alt) key (shift on Windows) so you get a prompt to choose a library, then select the copied iTunes folder.
If this is to a new computer and you put the copied iTunes folder in the default location of Macintosh HD > Users > *User Name* > Music then you don't even need to start with the option key held down, iTunes will automatically look for it there. (Make sure there isn't anything already in the iTunes folder there that you want to keep since you will be replacing it with the one you are moving.) -
due to lack of memory space i moved my itunes media library,only now i think i have lost most of my library as the i tunes page comes up empty,no playlists,no music, no music videos,no tv shows. can anyone help?
Hong Kong,
I don't think it is lost. I think it is on the other hard drive where you put it.
There are better and worse ways to move a library. If possible, put it back the way it was, and then move it by following this guide: iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder
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