Can I delete the my music file on my computer

Question

I have over 11K songs on my i tunes and almost 30k songs on my music.  It's taking up too much room on my computer.  Can I delete the my music files just have the I tunes,   or delete the my music file and then drag the music from I tunes and put it in the my music.
I sure there are a lot of doubles in the my music file.
I also have an external hard drive.
Can you please help  me.
Thank you so much.
Sally

Answer 1

Yes... With iTunes closed move the entire iTunes folder from <User's Music> to the top of the external drive, e.g. as X:\iTunes where X:\ is the drive letter, then click the icon that starts iTunes and immediately press and hold down the shift key and keep holding until prompted to choose or create a library. Click choose then browse to and open the file X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl - your library should show exactly as before. Double check that the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced now reads X:\iTunes\iTunes Media. (I'm assuming here that your library won't be old enough for the media folder to have been called iTunes Music as it was back on iTunes 8.) Once you've checked that use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate files in case the library is connected to any files stored outside of the media folder. This brings in copies of those files.
If you think there is media in <User's Music> that was not previously connected to the iTunes library you can move this into X:\iTunes\Automatically Add to iTunes otherwise you can discard files that you know to be duplicates.
As for duplicates already within the library, or created by moving the remnants of <User's Music> into Automatically Add to iTunes, Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls. (Such as lost playlist membership!)
Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created.  If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.
Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.
(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed)
tt2