How do I make my external hard drive the primary itunes library

I want my iTunes library to store in an external hard drive instead of computer hard drive.  How do I make this happen?

This forum is for questions from those managing sites on iTunes U, Apple's service for colleges and universities to post educational material in the iTunes Store. You'll be most likely to get help with this issue if you ask in the general iTunes for Windows forum.
Regards.

Similar Messages

  • I am using a T61 ThinkPad with an external hard drive and my itunes library keeps disapearing but remains on the external drive. Any idea how to fix this so my music doesn't disapear all the time? It's a real drag pulling music back into iTunes each week.

    I am using a T61 ThinkPad with an external hard drive and my itunes library keeps disapearing but remains on the external drive. Any idea how to fix this so my music doesn't disapear all the time? It's a real drag pulling music back into iTunes each week

    In iTunes 11 uncheck the preferences setting in in the iTunes Preferences panel "Advanced > Copy Files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library"

  • I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library.  When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found".  need help

    I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library.  When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found".  But when I have my external hard drive plug in the song will play with no problem.  What do I need to do to play my music without having the external harddrive plug in ????????  Please help

    Because the location for each song in your library is on your hard drive.  If the hard drive isn't there, how can iTunes play it?
    You'll have to move/copy the music from your hard drive to your computer's hard drive.
    Basically, EASIEST way to do all this, if you don't care about your play counts, etc...
    -Delete EVERYTHING from iTunes, so that your library is now empty.
    -Go to "Advanced" inside of the "Preferences" window, found in the "Edit" drop-down.  You can also access Preferences by pressing Ctrl+, (Press Ctrl and the comma key)
    -Change your iTunes Media Folder Location to something simple, but on your computer. I use C:/iTunes.  Make sure "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" and "Copy files to...." are both checked.  You can close Preferences now.
    -Now, drag and drop your music from your hard drive into your iTunes library.  iTunes will automatically add the music to your library, as you would expect, and also creates a copy of each file to place into that iTunes Media Folder you just created.
    Shouldn't have any more problems...

  • How do I get my external hard-drive recognised by iTunes?

    I have 2 external hard drives, but now iTunes 12 will only recognize 1 of them. When I plug in the second for a back-up, it doesn't show up on the screen. This just happened with the latest upgrade to iTunes 12. I have a MacBook with OS X Version 10.7.5. 

    So there is no itunes 12. You must be having this problem in the future LOL
    So you library is on the external? Make sure itunes is set to look on that drive for it, after checking to be sure the drives have different names, do into the prefs/advanced and set the location of the itunes library file/folder
    I ran itunes on an extrernal for years its always been very reliable.

  • How do I make an external hard drive available to all users?

    Hi,
    I have the following situation. I have an external hard drive that is conected to Airport Extreme. I have a MacBook Pro with 2 users and would like to make this drive availble to both. For user A, I went into Login Items and added the drive as a Volume. When I log in as user A, the drive is auto mounted with no problems. However, if I switch to user B, the drive has already been mounted under /Volumes/Elements with permissions for user A, so obviously user B can't access it, nor is it possible for this user to try and mount it. Is there a way to auto mount the drive so that its availble to both users?

    You're trying to use the drive as a server but as "ds store" implied, it's not a server nor is it a NAS drive, so it cannot handle more than one user at a time. You might be able to do what you want if you install Mac OS X server software on it, but I can't be sure of this as I've never used that software. I understand that the Lion version is supposed to be fairly easy to configure.

  • How can I make my external hard drive writable?

    I have a 60GB external hard drive (half used, so got about 20 free GBs on it)
    It is writable by Windows and Linux, but is "read only" on Mac.
    Is there a way I can partition part of it to be writable with Mac?

    So FAT32 then?
    Ok, so in the future if I ever buy a new external hard drive, I should format it right away to FAT32... that's good to know
    I was thinking of buying a 500GB drive, so maybe I'll wait (rather than partition the 60GB one) and format it to FAT32.
    When I got the 60GB, it came already formatted as NTFS.

  • How do I make my external hard drive show up in devices even when the external discs box is checked in preferences?

    External hard drive not showing up in devices, even after troubleshooting and checked in preferences.

    OK I solved my own problem. My iPhone was plugged into the other USB port in addition to the external hard drive. I took out the iPhone USB and switched the external hard drive USB to the other USB port. The drive showed up in my devices!

  • How do I use External Hard Drive for my iTunes Library?

    I have a Mac Mini that my iTunes Library has outgrown.  I want to use my Mac Air as my primary iTunes "sync" computer using an external hard drive. How do I move my iTunes library to the external hard drive? How do I get MacBook Air to sync iDevices?

    Easy method 1:
    Move or Copy entire working library from current location to the root of your external drive. Press & hold down shift (option on a Mac) as you click the icon to start iTunes. Click Choose when prompted, then browse to ..\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl on the external. If you copied the library across then test your new library works properly after renaming the original folder, before deleting the original folder to recover space.
    Easy method 2:
    If you haven't really started to build your library. Press & hold down shift as you click the icon to start iTunes. Click Create. Browse to the root of the external drive. Drag your media into ..\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes.
    Complex method:
    Required if you've already tried other things and now have media & library scattered around. See the post make a split library portable.
    tt2

  • HT1751 i bought a new, larger external hard drive. copied my itunes library from the old drive to the new one, changed the libarary location in Edit/Preferences/Advanced to the new drive. iTunes will not start or run unless old hard drive plugged in.??

    I bought a new, larger external hard drive. I have my iTunes library on the external drive instead of C: drive, Using Windows 7.
    I copied my itunes library from the old drive to the new one, changed the libarary location in Edit/Preferences/Advanced to the new drive.
    iTunes will not start or run unless the old hard drive is plugged in.
    If I disconnect the old drive iTunes shuts down.
    Any ideas. ??

    Hello kskip,
    Thank you for providing so much information about what is going on.  It sounds like you have setup iTunes to save new content to your new external hard drive in iTunes>Preferences, but it sounds like iTunes is not opening iTunes Library.itl file on the new external drive.  You have one last step to take to have iTunes point to your new external hard drive rather than your old one:
    Steps to create or choose a different iTunes Library file
    If iTunes is running, quit iTunes.
    If you are using Windows, hold down the Shift key and from the Start menu and choose All Programs > iTunes > iTunes.
    You should see the following screen:
    Additional information
    If you do not see the screen above, then you did not hold the correct key at the correct time. You may want to try again. Note that if you pinned iTunes to the Start menu programs, and open it that way, it may not work.
    Once you select "Choose Library," you will need to navigate to the iTunes Library.itl file on your new external drive. 
    You can find the full article here:
    iTunes: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1589
    Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
    Best,
    Sheila M.

  • My computer was totally destroyed & I do not have backup or external hard drive with my iTunes library. Will I be able to access my iTunes library when I purchase a new computer? It was the only computer authorized to play library.

    My computer was totally destroyed & I do not have backup or external hard drive with my saved iTunes library from it. That was the only computer authorized to play library. I do not have an iPod or iPhone with any of that library (which has over $2K in music purchases & over 5K in songs I ripped). Will I be able to access my iTunes library when I purchase a new computer?

    You should be able to access your past iTunes purchases. You'll need to re-rip your CDs See: HT2519 - Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store.
    See also this backup tip so you don't get caught out again.
    tt2

  • External Hard Drive for large itune library

    Every time I click a song I have to "locate." Is there any way to have resolve that in one step without having to do it on each song?
    TRacy

    How do I do it?
    My external hard drive is connected to one computer. It gets turned on first. Then the other two. They are connected by a LAN. I have the external hard drive set to mount on the other two at startup. Now the external hard drive is connected to all three at the same time. iTunes on all three point to it, but the Library.xml file for each computer is on it's own startup disc. Only the music files are shared.
    If you are happy with the location of your files and you don't care about playlists and play count etc., open iTunes WITH THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE DISCONNECTED and delete everything in the library and close iTunes. Them turn on and mount the external hard drive, open iTunes and do File/Add To Library and point to the external hard drive.
    Moving the files by hand instead of letting iTunes do it in the first place is one reason iTunes can't locate them now.

  • How can i make my external hard drive be the scratch disk with 1 FW input?!

    Hello! I use firewire with my external HD AND my camera...however i only have one firewire input...i set my scratch disk for final cut to work with my external HD but when i am importing footage to my computer with my camcorder, i can not have my external HD plugged in, thus the scratch disk has to be set to something else to continue working. So how can i work around this problem?! Should i just change the settings back after i import the footage and it all goes to place?

    I don't understand the need to daisy chain. I have one Firewire port on my MacBook Pro, and I use a Firewire hub. I've been connecting two 1TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition hard drives (one for FCE and iMovie projects; one for the media files I create via export), and a Canon NTSC ZR200 miniDV tape camcorder, or a Sony Digital8 tape camcorder, or sometimes a Canopus ADVC 110, without issues. Why not use a Firewire hub? . . . except to save the small expense.

  • The external hard drive with my iTunes library on it died, but I have it backed up on another drive. What's the best way to make iTunes switch to the new drive for reference?

    I've been through similar problems before and used the .xml file to restore the library, but is a better way of just changing the drive pathways in iTunes so it doesn't have to rebuild everything from scratch? I'm using a PC with Windows Vista.

    Change the drive letter of the backup drive so it matches the one that died. If necessary move/rename the backup folder so that it matches the old path of the media folder.
    tt2

  • I recently moved some of my older tv series purchases to an external hard drive as my iTunes library hard drive was getting full.  Now, when I connect my iPhone and iPad to iTunes, I get the message that my iphone is synced with another library! Help!

    I didn't rename my iTunes library or anything.  How can I sync with iTunes without erasing all my apps, app data and settings/messages etc on the iPhone/iPad?

    If you moved your iTunes library by simply copying it to another drive, you may not be able to access your music even if you reconnect to that library, you may get a lot of "not found" errors because the music is not where the library thinks it should be. First thing to do is put it back where it was.  Then reconnect it. Then follow the steps in this link:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364

  • How can i make an external Hard drive default for iphoto

    I have maxed out my memory on my MacBook with iPhoto 09.  I have been trying to export photos to an external HD and then make the external HD my default drive for future photo downloads from my camera.  Also, I need to clean off space on the internal HD, but not sure of the safest way to do this and make sure I don't loose any photos.  Any tips to move forward?  I am a Mac novice to say the least.  
    Thanks

    Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    1. Quit iPhoto
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
    3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
    4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
    Regards
    TD

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