How to back up iTunes Library on external hard drive & computer, after purchasing new music?

I keep my iTunes library on my computer's hard drive and also backed up on an external hard drive. I have added more music to my library since my previous back up, and I want to back up the new music to my external drive.
What's the best way to do this?

The first time I backed up my iTunes on an external drive, it took a 1 hour +. Do I basically need to start over on my external hard drive? Or is there an easier/faster way?
Yes there is a faster way.
Check this out -> Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy
Don't change the library location or hold Option to update the backup on the external.

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Re: Best Way to (Continuously) Back up iTunes Library to External Hard Drive

Hello friends :
My iTunes music library is getting rather large and I feel it's time to "properly" back it up to an external hard drive.
I understand that you can back up your iTunes music folder to an external hard drive by the simple old "click and drag" approach using Windows Explorer.
What I'd like to know is ... after intially copying the entire iTunes music folder onto the external drive, how can I achieve regular back-ups where only the files, playlists, etc. that have changed since the last back up are then added to the external drive . . . rather than having to copy the entire rather large folder all over again (and again)?
Hopefully, you know what I mean! Thanks for your help.

The first time I backed up my iTunes on an external drive, it took a 1 hour +. Do I basically need to start over on my external hard drive? Or is there an easier/faster way?
Yes there is a faster way.
Check this out -> Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy
Don't change the library location or hold Option to update the backup on the external.

How to transfer my ITunes library from External Hard Drive to Mac Book Pro

I recently had an issue with my Mac Book(OS X Yosemite) Had to take it to the store and they fixed it (replaced graphics mother board or something like that) Before that I backed up the whole laptop on an external hard drive. When I connect the external hard drive I can open all my files, not sure how to transfer it, I see the External hard drive and can drag it but where do i drag it because on my Mac Book I can't find Music. Should I drag it to the desktop and then drag it to the music when I disconnect the external ? Thanks

Choose Home from the Finder's Go menu, double-click the Music item, and drag it there.
(123001)

How do I transfer iTunes Library from external hard drive to another drive?

I have filled by 160GB drive with my iTunes music library so I am purchasing a 400GB external drive. I want to transfer the entire library to the bigger drive. Can I simply drag via fire wire then entire libarary to the new drive and then "tell" by iTunes Mac where it is? Any step by step would be appreciated.
Thank you.

I just posted this to another topic, but it applies here as well. Hopefully there's no prohibition on cross-posting on this board, my apologies to all if there is:
"I haven't read the whole thread, so someone could have already mentioned this, but I did the same thing, move my music library to an external drive. The Help articles are helpful, but only up to a point. When that didn't work, I called up AppleCare support up, and they took me through all the standard steps, and got stumped at the same point I did. Finally she suggested trying something, and that ended up doing the trick. So here in brief is what you do:
1) Copy over your "iTunes Music" folder to the external hard drive
2) Go into Advanced preferences to have iTunes look for the "iTunes Music" folder in the new location. If you're like me, your music won't appear in the Library.
3) In iTunes, go to the Library window (which is probably blank), then in a Finder window, find the icon for the "iTunes Music" folder in the new location. Drag that icon onto the Library window.
You should now see a progress window pop up showing all the songs that it's populating the Library window with."
20" Intel iMac 14" iBook G4, 233 MHz Beige G3 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Backing Up iTunes Library On External Hard Drive

Iv'e just bought and installed a LaCie Hard Drive for my mac.
As I have a library of 62gig I want to make a back-up just in case something went wrong and I lost the lot!
Does anyone know if there is an easy way to transfer the files to the hard drive, I have tried to highlight and drag the files to the hard drive folder but this will take forever, if you highlight too many items the computer just freezes.
Any help would be great, Brian.

The link William provided is about Windows computers. It will tell you the principles and the importance of backing up specific files.
If all your music is on your internal HD in the 'iTunes Music' folder (default setting), just drag the iTunes folder (in ~/Users/YourUsername/Music to the external HD.
This way, also your 'iTunes Library' file is copied.
If your ext. HD has a Firewire connection, it will copy about 1GB/min.
To make regular incremental backups, you have to use a 3rd party backup application.
M

Backup and restoring itunes library from external hard drive?

is there a way to backup and restore my itunes library to external hard drive and not through the internal itunes backup utility cos i have over 20gbs of music and i want to keep my album art and renamed songs etc. because i will be reformating my pc and dont want to go through painful task of manually adding stuff again.

Try this...
*Fast backup for iTunes library (Windows Only)*
Grab SyncToy 2.0, a free tool from MS. Use it to create a backup copy of your iTunes library & any other media folders onto another hard drive or network share. After making the initial backup copy use SyncToy to periodically synchronise the backup copy with your library and only the changed files will be copied saving lots of time.
When the time comes to reformat your PC, do a final sync, then open iTunes & deauthorise the PC, reformat & rebuild Windows, copy the backup folders back to the same location as they were previously, install iTunes and it should all work perfectly.
tt2

How Can I Put iTunes On My External Hard Drive?

How Can I Put iTunes On My External Hard Drive? I would like to free up space on my laptop's hard drive by moving iTune onto my external hd. Thanks, Dave

Click here and follow the instructions to move the library. The iTunes program itself cannot be moved.
(39940)

How do I transfer itunes library from one hard drive to another.

I want to transfer all my itunes music from one external hard drive to another. How can I do this without disrupting itunes. Thanks.

How would I transfer iTunes from one external hard drive to another external hard drive with iTunes 8 since I do not see the consolidate option? During previous attempts with version 7 I received the following error: The song __ could not be used because the original file could not be found.

ITunes Library to External Hard Drive...and iTunes Match???

So, my iTunes library is getting too large for my computer's storage capacity. I'm thinking of moving some of my library to an external, USB hard drive. However, I've never done iTunes through an external hard drive before and I have some questions.
Can I copy new discs (import) straight onto the external hard drive? Or do they need to go onto my computer first then get transferred to the hard drive?
Can I still use iTunes Match and pull songs from the library on my hard drive and from the main computer?
To partition a library between a computer and an external hard drive, do I need to activate sharing or anything special? Or will the computer/main iTunes library just consider the external drive to be a different location for some of the tracks?
How would I backup the external hard drive? Would Time Machine (running off a separate hard drive) back up another external hard drive if they were both plugged in?
Can you burn the entire library to data discs anymore? Or do you need to make a playlist of your entire library? If the latter, is there a way to turn off the message about iTunes in the Cloud playlists only accepting songs matched or uploaded? I have some songs that erroneously did not get matched or uploaded. If I try to put them in a playlist and burn it to a data disc for backup, iTunes won't do it.
Please help!

I recommend you keep everything inside the iTunes folder.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from internal to external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
This is all you need to do. Everything will work normally.
You can delete now /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal.

Backing up itunes library to a hard drive

I want to back up my entire itunes library to my hard drive but can only find instructons on backing up to cds, i have a very large library and dont want to lose any of my songs, please help
thanks

The instructions you saw are for using iTunes to back up to CD or DVD. You do not need them for backing up to an external hard drive. Just close iTunes. Make sure the hard drive is connected to the computer. Go into Windows Explorer, or "My Computer." Copy your entire "My Music" folder to the hard drive, along with anything else that you wish to back up.

How do i uninstall itunes from an external hard drive?

I have itunes and all associated programmes stored on an external hard drive. I have recently bought a new lap top and when trying to open itunes on the external hard drive, i get the 'error 2' message. Help!!!

Hi there lorboakes,
You should be able to use the information in the article below to uninstall iTunes.
Removing and reinstalling iTunes and other software components for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1923
-Griff W.

How to back up iTunes Library to external drive so it can be restored

I recently moved my iTunes Library from a firewire Lacie external hard drive to a Western Digital USd hard that is now having problems (It keeps unmounting itself and I don't think that's good). It was not easy to move my iTunes folder and make it work again. I do not want to send 3 weeks plus using my spare time relinking songs or recreating playlists. I had to re-link 6,000 songs one by one. I iTunes will make a backup on CDs or DVDs why not an external device? Why would I want to copy 80 plus gigs to CDs?
If I simply copy my iTunes folder to the LaCie drive like apple recommends and the WD fails, I will lose all my playlists, track info, art work. I just got it all back. There must be some type of back up program I'm not seeing.
Please, some one help me. I am very disappointed that this solution is not on here.
I'm going to copy the file for now but it's really a poor solution.
Message was edited by: CindyLoo

I want to back up every thing, but I can't find a way to do it. That is the problem. Apple recommends if you are backing up to an external drive to copy folder the music folder to the drive via drag and drop. But I know when you do this that if you try use the backup you will only have the songs as if they were first added to iTunes.
I was able this time to move my music folder successfully (Last time the problem wasn't immediately apparent as it didn't affect my iPod, so I hope I'm not jinxing it). For now, my music is back on the Lacie drive, but it's still not backed up. If the LaCie drive were to fail I'd be faced with reimporting all my music and re-purchasing the TV shows and movies. (I almost always make a CD of new iTunes Purchases. which is why I have no desire to have a second huge stack of CDs.) My computer will not burn DVDs.
I want to backup everything so that it could be restored and be like it is now, but I don't see a way to do it. And I am not backing up all 80 plus gigs to CDs. My computer would crash and burn.

How to populate iTunes library on external hard drive onto new MBP.

I have a Powerbook G4 that is slowly dying. I have a new MBP that I want to populate my iTunes library onto without moving my music off my external hard drive. I've tried holding down the OPTION key while launching iTunes and selecting the iTunes Library file, but it seems to only load songs that were added in 2006 or later.
How do I get a current iTunes Library file that will populate all the songs?
Or am I going about this the wrong way?
Thanks!!

i want to keep the music on the external HD, and I have linked the MBP iTunes account to the external HD (as in where to look for music), but I just can't get the whole library to populate into the new iTunes account.
Thanks!

How to transfer itunes library via external hard drive?

How do I transfer my entire itunes library to a new pc via an external hard drive? I want to also keep the library on my old pc. Because my library is about 30gb I thought that getting an external hard drive would be the easiest way to do this. Are there any other options?

Start by consolidating your library. When you consolidate, any songs in the iTunes Library that are not in the iTunes Music Folder are copied to the Music Folder and the Library is updated to point to those new files. Files already in the iTunes Music Folder have no changes made to them: Consolidating your library - Windows
Then copy the iTunes Folder to your external drive. Copying the whole folder brings with it the iTunes Music folder and also the iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl in Windows) database file which holds all the information about your songs (Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts, Last Played, Date Added, etc). You'll get more information including the Folder/File structure in this article: What are the iTunes library files?
Disconnect your external drive and connect it to your new computer, copy the iTunes folder to the new pc. When you copy the iTunes folder make sure you put it into the default location on the new computer. On a PC this is \Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Music\ (or C:\Username\Music\ in Vista). You should also use the same version of iTunes on both computers.
Once you have copied everything over hold down the Shift key in Windows when opening iTunes. In the resulting dialogue you will get the option to create a new library or navigate to an existing one. Navigate to where you placed the copy of the library file and open it up: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file
If you have any iTunes purchases in your library don't forget that you'll need to authorise your new computer to play them. Also if you are disposing of the old one remember to deauthorise it so you don't use up one of your allowances: About iTunes Music Store Authorisation and Deauthorisation

How best to add music to new iTunes library on external hard drive?

I just created a new iTunes library on my external hard drive and would like to add songs that I already have stored in a folder on the external hard drive. Should I simply select all of the songs and drag them over the iTunes library folder or drag them into a specific part of the library folder? Or, should I open the new iTunes library and use the import function? I do not want to get the two libraries (powerbook and external hard drive) intermingled.
Also, should I "keep iTunes library organized" turned on?
Many thanks!
RB

You could leave keep library orginised selected - all it does is rename and reorganize files in your music directory to artist-album-track#-songname format.
Since you want to do this, and still keep your libraries separate, here is one option.
Change the itunes music library to a directory on your external disk.
Then anything new you add will go into the library on the external disk.
When you want to add something to your laptop disk, just change the
music library location back to where it was.
iTunes can be a little confusing. There is the itunes "library" file, which is actually more like a catalog file. Then there is the itunes "music library"
which is where itunes puts music if you have "copy to library" selected.

How to back up iTunes Library on external hard drive & computer, after purchasing new music?

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