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

Similar Messages

  • 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)  

  • 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 Photo Library to external hard drive?

    How do I transfer IPhoto Library and/or albums onto External Hard Drive? I have been selecting photos and re-creating Albums as Folders. But I want to delete photos from my MacBook Air and want all the content and information transferred with the photos, which is not currently happening. I downloaded a free trial of a program that promises to do this transfer but cannot find it/use it. Help!

    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

  • Viewing old itunes library via external hard drive

    'ello,
    I have an external hard drive that I had linked up to my old  iMac, which has now died. I bought a new Macbook pro and want to plug in my old external into my wireless router and pick up my old itunes library. I have plugged in the external hard drive into the USB port on the router. If I look in Finder I can see the o2 router and I have tried to set Internet sharing to ON, but can't do it? I am not even sure that switching on Internet sharing will resolve the issue? Any help on this would be massive.
    Thank you.

    Hi Phil,
    Why not just plug it directly into the computer over USB rather than going through the router? I'm also not sure what enabling Internet sharing would have to do with your ability to access the hard drive via the router. If anything there would be a setting on the router that you'd most likely need to enable to allow the USB content to be accessible as a network storage device.

  • How to get ITunes library from external hard drive to new PC

    have ITunes folder from dying PC saved on external hard drive. PC now dead. New PC has Windows7, and have loaded ITunes.
    Now need to know exactly what to do to get all that lovely music from the external hard drive onto the new Windows7 PC. The ITunes folder has the following inside it:
    ITunesMusic folder in it, which looks like all the music is in there.
    Album Artwork folder
    ITunesLibrary.itl
    ITunesMusicLibrary.xml
    ITunesLibraryGenius.itdb
    ITunesLibraryExtras.itdb
    What do I do, and in what order? I'm thinking I should NOT need to plug in the ipod, since everything is saved on the external drive. (I don't want to accidentally wipe the Ipod, since I'm pretty sure it is set to automatically sync.....)
    the whole point of doing frequent backups was to not lose anything. Note: did NOT use apple for backups, just regular backup program. Can see the files and folders, just need to knkow what to do.
    Thanks in advance for the help!

    Drag and drop the whole folder into the iTunes application.
    The iTunes application meaning your library once iTunes is open

  • Transfer itunes library to external hard drive?

    I've just loaded about 1000 CDs into itunes, to the point where my hard drive is pretty full. Can I just drag those files to a new external drive to clear some space on my regular drive, or do I take a chance of losing everything?
    After all that work, I'd be pretty ticked if all of a sudden, everything disappeared.
    thanks in advance
    Steve

    If you're using iTunes 7, you can copy the entire iTunes folder (at /Users/Username/Music) to the external drive and then delete it from the internal drive.
    Then launch iTunes while holding the Option-key down, until a window pops up which lets you choose the library.
    Navigate to the iTunes folder on the external drive and click 'Choose'.
    If you're using iPhoto and/or iMovie, I don't recommend this method.
    iPhoto and iMovie are looking at a specific location (as described in What are the iTunes library files?) to get music files and won't list songs with the above used method.
    Instead, use the instructions in iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder to move your music to the external.
    Hope this helps.
    M
    17' iMac 800 MHz, 768 MB RAM, 200 GB HD, DL burner   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   iTunes 7.0.2

  • 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.

  • How to transfer iTunes files to external hard disc

    how to transfer iTunes files to external hard disc

    A forum search would indicate the question has been answered in previous posts such as:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/21054789#21054789
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/8667031#8667031

  • How to run itunes off an external hard drive using the new itunes

    I have windows 8.  I installed the new itunes and I want to know how to run itunes off an external hard drive. 
    thank you for your help.

    Same way as before, hold down shift as you start iTunes, Choose or Create a library.
    tt2

  • 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 do I transfer itunes library to new hard drive running lion os

    I have a Mac Pro with 2 hard drives in it.
    Hard drive #1 has Leopard OS and my iTunes library on it
    Hard drive #2 has Lion 10.7.4 OS and this is where I want to move my iTunes library to from hard drive #1.
    How can I due this insuring that all playlists, etc. transfer seamlessly.  I will then only be using the new Lion OS
    to run iTunes (and this will also communicate with Apple TV, etc.)
    Thanks!

    Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from old hard drive to /Music/ on new hard drive.
    Start iTunes.
    That is all.
    You can also leave it where it it, hold Option, launch iTunes.
    Slect Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the Leopard drive.
    This will be your iTunes for both OS, whichever you boot into.

  • 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.

  • How to play itunes music from external hard drive

    How do I either play continuous music from my external hard drive, or make itunes recognize my external hard drive as the library.

    Hi Jim
    I've recently upgraded to a macbook Pro and I copied all data, profiles etc across from my old macbook. I have also created a second account in my mackbook Pro. I am able to play my iTunes music from the external HD in the 'old' account, but not in the 'new' account, despite trying what you've said above. On the external HD, there are two folders: iTunes music and iTunes media. I have tried selecting each of these, but both times, I get this message: "An iTunes library file could not be found in the folder "iTunes Media". Please choose a different folder." ... Please can you help?
    Many thanks in advance!

  • How to Play iTunes from a external Hard Drive?

    Is it possible to run iTunes from an external hard drive so that I dont use up the space on my labtop? For example, store all my music files on the External and run it through iTunes.

    Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
    If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
    How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
    If you are just testing, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location.
    Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
    Patrick

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