ITunes library in an external HD

I'm wanting to have all my media content on an external harddrive and take it off my laptop. I've switched the library location to pull from the harddrive, but now I want to know how I can have my songs pull from there as opposed to my laptop. Is the only way to do this is rebuild my library? Also, since I have already switched it, will purchased content from the iTunes store automatically go there?
Thanks

any advice on how to consolidate two libraries on separate ibooks onto one networked external hard drive that will run itunes wirelessly? my wife and i currently switch between laptops, depending on whose music we want to hear, that play via an airport express connected to our stereo. just purchased an airport extreme and connected an external hard drive to it. set up took minutes and both laptops have access to the external drive. i started by trying to install itunes on the external hard drive and can't get past the "select destination" portion of the install. the itunes installer doesn't recognize my external hard drive, the only option i'm presented with is to install on the Macintosh HD. ideally would love for all our music to reside in one library on the external hard drive and be able to control it all wirelessly with remote on iphone. currently using the remote application on iphone to control our existing setup and love the functionality. any advice is greatly appreciated!

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I have an itunes library on an external drive I want to use on a dool boot computer. How do I set this up without duplication of files

Ok, here goes with the explanation. I am running a Mac Mini mid 2010 with mt iTunes library on an external USB drive. I dual boot the computer into Windows 7. I want to be able to use the same iTunes library in both Operating Systems. I am trying to set this up on the Windows side without accidentily erasing, moving or duplicating any files. In the past when I have tried I have ended up with multiple files. I have an iCloud also but do not want to download any files again. How can I get iTunes on Windows to simply recognise my existing storage and create a library list from what is already there rather than duplicating files?
Update: As soon as I signed in with my iTunes account iCloud picked up my playlist and now lists all my music. Right clicking on the songs give me the choice to download the files, but the files already exist oin my external USB. I simply want iTunes on Windows 7 to point to the existing files.

How is the external drive formatted?
Allan

HT1751 I am trying to backup my iTunes library onto an external hard drive but it won't complete due to 'insufficient privileges for some of the items'. Am I doing something wrong and is there a solution to this problem?

Hi All,
I am currently trying to backup my iTunes library onto an external hard drive so that I can copy it onto my new Macbook Pro. I have been following the steps posted on the Apple website however each time I get a dialogue box stating:
'The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items'.
Is this because I have items that were bought under another persons iTunes account? If so, is there a solution to this problem? Or am I doing something completely wrong?
Thanks in advance,
Sbrooks19

Go through the below forum with similar issue and follow the process mentioned by "Macjack" in the beginning.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4499820

How can i back up my itunes library onto an external hard drive?

I can seem to figure out how to back up my Itunes library onto my external hard drive. Any advise?

A quick search provides the answer, see the following:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1751 for backing up to an external drive.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1382 for backing up to optical media.

How do I move an iTunes library from one external drive to another?

I need to move my iTunes library from one external disk to another, because the original disk is about to fail. So, I went into iTunes Perferences --> Advanced, and set the library to a new, empty folder on the new drive.
Nothing changed. I expected all my music to vanish from iTunes, so that I would have to re-import it. However, all the music remained, still on the old disk. At this point, if I were to recreate the library on the new disk, I would have all of my music twice.
Is it possible to move an iTunes library from one external drive to another, or am I stuck with my original choice until I buy a new machine? If I can move it, can one of you clever folks explain how it could be done?

Paul Seymour1 wrote:
However, those are all dealing with old versions of iTunes that still contained the Advanced --> Consolidate Library command which is no longer part of the app. (I'm on iTunes 10.6.1.)
Consolidate is still part of iTunes.
It is in iTunes menu File > Library > Manage library > Consolidate.
The article you linked to is old and it is (and was) a hacky way of doing it.
Just copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to new location, hold Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) when launching iTunes.

I transferred my iTunes library from one external hard drive to another and added more music on the same day. How do I get rid of my duplicate files without going through them one by one which would take forever?

Please help. I have transferred my iTunes library from one external hard drive to another plus added additional music now I have duplicates of the same music in many albums. How do I delete the duplicates without going through them one by one which would take forever? I understand how to get the "show exact duplicate" feature up on iTunes but, because they were added to the library on the exact day I can't seperate them I'm that manner. So each duplicate is right next to eachother in the exact duplicate screen.

My DeDuper script is designed to help clean up. See this thread for background.
tt2

I can't copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive!!

this is my first time at the forum and i dont find a better way to ask, i want to copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive for have a back up, but when i try to copy it it appears this message "the item "itunes music" has 1 or more items that are in use and cannot be modified", i dont know why, then i search for help in apple support and this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751, but i do what it says and i still having my problem, i can't copy my music, that message keep's appearing and it dont let me copy my music.

forget it i discover my problem, this message gives u 2 option stop or continue i just click continue and it get copied, i think this is normal but like this is my fisrt time i dot this i get confused, i think i still used to windows, i cant believe because i have a ear with this computer. well anything is a good experience.

How can I move part of itunes library onto an external hard drive?

I have a small hard drive (160 gb) and I want to keep my music on my internal hard drive so I can take my laptop around and listen to music throughout the day, but if I want to watch a movie I can plug in my external hard drive and launch them from itunes. For example, if the external hard drive was not connected it would just say "unable to find file". Currently I have my entire itunes library on an external hardrive.
Is this possible? Any help would be greatly appreaciated.
Late 2008 Unibody Macbook
OS X 10.9.1
Itunes 11.1.3

Create a new library and transfer what you want in it from your other library. To switch between libraries hold down the OPTION key as you start iTunes. Select the one you wish to use.

How can I download my iMac iTunes library to an external drive and reload the library to iTunes on a PC?

How can I download my iMac iTunes library to an external drive and reload the library to iTunes on a PC?

Hi Niel. Can you be move specific for those of us not tech savy? 1 - Can you provide steps to back up the library? 2 - How do you organize the library? 3 - When you move the entire iTunes folder, does it include iTunes paid for music along with downloaded music from CDs? Thanks

Can i put my itunes library on an external disk?

hi,
i want to store my itunes library on and external disk but want it to work just like it does on the internal hdd. is that possible?
i tried to store it on a home server. and while i could play the contents of the library. the art-work and so-forth did not appear in the itune client.
please advise.

Yes, it's most certainly possible. The easiest way is to just drag the entire iTunes folder (the entire folder, not just the iTunes Music folder) to your desired location. Then hold down the Shift key while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location. Note that this procedure assumes that all of your content is contained in the iTunes Media/Music folder. If things are scattered around your drive, moving them becomes much more complex.
Once you get things moved successfully, be sure not to launch iTunes with the external drive not mounted or iTunes will default back to the internal drive. If it does, though, just mount the external drive and launch iTunes with the Shift key again.
Regards.

Can i store unused iTunes Library on an external Hard-drive?

Hi There,
I have 3 account on my Macbook each have an itunes library on them, the on is use all the time, but the other 2 never change and are never listed to becausethe only used of the laptop!
is there any way I can move the library on to my hard-drive so i can free up space on my laptop, but still have accesses to them if i need to update the 2 of them to put new music on there iphone and ipods?
Thanks and help would be greatly appreciated??
Tom Green

See this Apple note about moving an itunes library to an external hard drive.

How can I export my iTunes Library to an external hard drive?

How can I export my iTunes Library to an external hard drive? and once i do that how can i play the library through the external drive? I basically want to be able to delete all my music on itunes once it is on my external hard drive so i can have more internal hard drive space.

Follow this guide very carefully: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364?viewlocale=en_US
It's very easy to do....

Help! I need to open my iTunes library from my external hard drive

Hey everybody
I recently moved my iTunes library to an external hard drive. It worked great for a while; whenever I opened iTunes I made sure my hard drive was plugged in. Since then, I've used iTunes without plugging the hard drive in to sync my iPhone contacts, so there is also a local iTunes library without any files. My question: how do I tell iTunes to open the library on my external hard drive again? The hard drive is plugged in but iTunes won't open the library on the hard drive. I think there is some key I have to hold down while opening iTunes (?) it's not ctrl or option. Help! Thanks
Ryan

Yep. You're right. My problem was that I wasn't holding the option key down long enough... wow, epic fail... but thanks! I now have my music back!

How do I move my itunes library from my external hard-drive back to my MacBook Pro?

A couple of years ago I moved our itunes library to an external hard-drive to free up some space. I got a new MacBook Pro and would like to move the itunes library to it. I don't remeber how I moved it from my old laptop to the external hard-drive and have no idea how to move it to my MacBook.

See Restoring your iTunes Backup here...
Backup iTunes to an External Drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

Moving iTunes library from one external hard drive to another, playlists

Here's my question. I keep my iTunes library on an external drive. My 250GB extrernal drive is full, so I'm moving my entire library to a new 500GB hard drive.
What do I have to do so my hundreds of playlists (most mixes with dozens of songs) still function once I've moved the music over?
Do I delete everything from my old drive, then use the 'add to library' function on the entire new drive? If I do that, will iTunes be able to find the tunes in each playlist?
Thanks!

I DON'T MIND DRAGGING THINGS OVER; TH PROBLEM IS, WHEN I TRY TO PLAY PLAYLISTS AFTER MOVING STUFF TO THE NEW DRIVE, EVERY SONG WILL ASK "FILE NOT FOUND--WOULD YOU LIKE TO LOCATE IT?" WITH 50,000 mp3s, it will take forever to rebuild all my playlists. Is there a way to have iTunes search a new drive and recognize the songs as being the same as the ones on the old drive, so you don't have to do this manually?
Also, if I do use the 'consolidate library' approach-- what happens if I drag all my other music folders into my itunes folder manually on the old drive, then try consolidate--will it copy EVERYTHING over to the new drive, or only the stuff that was in the iTunes music folder on the old drive from the beginning (since everything else I used "add to library' but not 'copy to itunes music folder'.
iTunes should have some more built in utility options to allow it to find everything in the library when it moves to a new drive, even if one chooses to keep music in a different format than the 'itunes music folder' approach. .

How do I move my iTunes library from my external hard drive back to my computer?

Just wondering how do I move my entire iTunes library from my external hard drive back to my computer? It was moved to an external hard drive a few years ago, and now I'm wondering how to move it back to my iMac to increase performance.
Where does it belong in the computer?
Any suggestions?

The library itself is the /Home/Music/iTunes/ folder in its entirety. Did you also change where preference files were stored? Normally, they would be in the /Home/Library/Preferences/ folder.

ITunes library in an external HD

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