Moving iTunes Library to USB Drive

Hi!
I used to sync my iPad 2 64 GB with my Windows Vista Laptop. After my Windows Vista Laptop crashed, I replaced it with a MacBook Air 128GB. Now, I sync my iPad 2 64 GB with my MacBook Air.
On MacBook Air 128, real estate is at a premium! And my iPad has a very large volume of content, hence my iTunes Library also is huge and occupying a significant amount of HDD on the MacBook Air.
I am meeting my real estate requirements on my MacBook Air with a clutch of USB drives.
Is there any way I can transfer my entire iTunes Library (music, video, photos, apps, podcasts et al) to a 64 GB USB Drive? Thereafter, whenever I sync my iPad, iTunes should pick data from this 64 GB USB Drive, without using HDD space on MacBook Air itself.
If possible, please advise how to achieve this.
Regards

Copy /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external.
To use this folder, hold Shift and launch iTunes.
Select *Choose library*.
Select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
Make sure the external is connected and ready before launching iTunes.
When you get your new computer, copy the entire iTunes folder from the external to /Music/ on the new computer.

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Moving itune library to mapped drive.

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I am afraid I found your last post difficult to follow.
If I understand you correctly your music is NOT all in your iTunes Music folder.
Do you want to keep your current folder structure?
If you do, life is difficult. The problem is that the iTunes library stores the full path to music files and if this changes, it can no longer find the files. It can cope with the iTunes Music folder being moved, but not other music folders.
The simplest thing is to just copy everything onto the external drive and start a new library, then add the folders to the new library. This loses all meta data and playlists.
Another alternative is to edit the iTunes Music Library.xml file to correct the paths with a text editor using search and replace. Then rebuild the library from the xml file. If this works, you keep playlists but still lose metadata.
It would be better to move everything into the iTunes folder on the external drive and let iTunes organise it. The way to do this is to follow my instruction for moving the iTunes folder. Then go to Edit>Preferences>Advanced>General and make sure "Keep iTunes Music folder Organised" is checked. Then consolidate your library, which is an option on the advanced menu.
This will copy all the music on your c: drive that was in you library but not in your iTunes Music folder into your iTunes Music folder on the extrenal drive. This way you keep all your meta data but lose control of how your files are organised. iTunes uses a basic Artist/Album arrangment.
Finally something to consider, if you are using a network drive, you might be better off keeping your library files on your internal drive and just moving the music files to the network drive from a performance point of view.
If you want to do that, the procedure is very simple but you have to sacrifice your folder structure and allow iTunes to organise your music. This Apple article tells you how:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
If you want others to have access to your music it needs to be in a shared folder which all users can access.

Have itunes library on usb drive

I have a MBA and I have my music on a USB drive. How can I add that folder to itunes and have itunes only play from that USB drive? I do not want to add the music to the MBA hard drive (small HD so need to conserve space).
Thanks.

As for space, what and how were you trying to move? If you used this drive before, did you empty the trash when it was connected?
A 32GB drive? Sounds like a flash drive to me. I don't know I'd trust one of those, and certainly not without regular backups.
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the option (alt) key (shift on Windows) so you get a prompt to select a library, then guide it to the 'iTunes Library.itl' file in the moved iTunes folder.

Transferring iTunes library from USB drive to new laptop. Many issues.

First off, I usually can only listen to my music if I plug in the USB drive with the original music on it.
Now, iTunes is telling me that some of my music "cannot be found." Please help!

Hello TNCGRCT,
It sounds like the library was successfully transferred to the new computer, but the songs were imported into a new iTunes library. If you still have access to the external drive, or better yet the previous computer, we will want to transfer the iTunesLibrary.itl file and open it with iTunes:
iTunes: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589
More helpful information...
Where are my iTunes files located?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1391
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Thanks,
Matt M.

Moved itunes library to ext drive now i cannot find music

i have moved my library to an external hard drive and then deleted content from my computer, now itunes cannot locate library when drive is connected, how do i make itunes work again? i even copied from ext drive back to computer and still no luck, im totally lost

There is exactly one way to move your library to an external HD.
If you try it any other way, you will be greeted with exclamation points and other hassles.
The one way is: Go to preferences and point your iTunes Music folder to the new location. Then run Consolidate Library.
Also, once you have your library on the external, never start up iTunes without the external being turned on and accessible. Otherwise, iTunes reverts the location to the local drive.

Moved iTunes library to external drive

NOTE: I have the most recent version of iTunes (as of 14 DEC 08).
I moved my iTunes library to an external hard drive. The music videos I purchased shows an exclamation icon next to them. Is there a way I can reference all those videos to their new location on the external hard drive? Or is the only way to do it is one at a time? Thanks!

No longer an issue.

Moved iTunes Library to external drive- now can't move iPad purchase to Mac

I moved my iTunes Library to an external drive because I didn't have enough internal HD space to move a movie purchased on the iPad to my Mac. Now iTunes won't sync my iPad - and wants to reformat it - because it says it was formatted on another Mac.
I've tried Aiseesoft iPad Manager but the movie - a iTunes+ movie, so I assume it is a package of some sort - doesn't show up in the movie pane.
This is a really crappy position to be put into. If I could re-download the movie I'd just reformat my iPad and be down with it. Unfortunately, this is not an option.
Help!

As a best practice, you should move your content to an external drive and import references to into iTunes rather than moving the whole database and app files. In iTunes > Preferences > Advanced, uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". This will keep all your music and movies on the external drive, but iTunes and all references to the content on your desktop.
I know that's not what you wanted to hear as a fix, but this is how I have my MacBook Air setup and it works fine with the iPad. My son tried to move the whole app and database to a hard drive and we had endless problems with it.

Moved itunes library to external drive..now issues..

Hi, I recently picked up an external hard drive and needed space on my macbook so I dragged my folder onto my external drive. Next time I launched Itunes my library was wiped out. I still have the original library on the external but is there anyway I can direct Itunes to pull up the library instead without having to import everything a second time and end up with duplicates? I don't want to lose my purchased apps and songs.

I am having the same problem. - everything was fine, and I thought I had figured it out, It looks like I messed up on a step though. I copied the ENTIRE folder to my external drive. Then when I opened Ituned while pressing the option key, I think I selected the wrong thing (pretty sure I selected "create library" , when I should have selected "choose library".
Now, when I open the itunes folder in my computers (macbook) hard drive OR on the external hard drive, looking for that "itunes library.itl" file, it is blank - just a white icon, and says it was created today.
When I open Itunes from my desktop, there is NO music in it - which is not the end of the world because the files are on my external drive, but all of my playlists and customized itunes stuff is gone. Is there any way to recover this?!?!

Moved iTunes library on external drive. All songs say missing.

Okay So I just copied my iTunes library to an external harddrive, and I set my music folder in my iTunes preferences to be the new music folder on my external drive.
If I play a song now in iTunes it says it can't find it and asks me to manually locate it, which I do. It seems like if I find one, iTunes would be smart enough to find the rest but NO! I have to find EVERY single song, even if they're on the same album.
There has to be a way around this. I have a 50gb+ library and would hate it if I had to find every single song.
Thanks a lot!

Simply copying the iTunes library to your new drive may not be enough. If, when you added your recordings to the original library, you didn't have the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checkbox checked in the Preferences->Advanced tab, or you did not do a "Consolidate Library" action before copying the library to the new drive, your actual recordings are probably still on your old drive.
To fix this, you'll need to copy these to your extermal drive and then add them to the library that is also on your external drive.
Tom Hesley

Back up itunes library to usb drive instead of cd or DVD-how do I do this?

I just got a great deal on a Seagate Free Agent 500gb drive. I've formatted it for Mac, now, I want to backup my iTunes library to it and still use iTunes on my laptop-I don't want to burn a zillion cd's or dvd's to do it-that's why I bought this drive. Can anyone help me? I am just not able to figure this out, maybe because I was raised on PC.

If you don't want to run iTunes from the EHD & you are simply backing up, just copy the whole iTunes folder onto the Seagate.

I have moved itunes library to external drive as per support article. Every time I know open itunes I have to re-direct it to the new media location on the external drive. Is there a way to retain the location?

I followed the instructions on the support website exactly to transfer my media to an external hard drive (a network attached storage device), it worked immediately. When I quit itunes and re-open it, the library location has reset to the old location, I can change it to the new location and it works but the next time I log in its back to the wrong place.
Has anybody got any idea how to prevent this from re-occurring?

i also just move my library to a NAS. i suggest you do this:
launch iTunes and point iTunes media folder location to the volume/shared folder on NAS. quit iTunes.
copy the iTunes folder from <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music to the NAS.
launch iTunes while holding option (⌥) and click on choose library when prompted. select the iTunes folder you just moved to the NAS.
you must make sure the volume/shared folder on the NAS is mounted on your desktop before launching iTunes but from now on the media folder location should stick (it does for me).

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I moved all my music and photos to an external drive.
You used teh menu Advanced Consolidate, correct?
If you didn't iTunes won't see your music, even if you point it there.
You will need to File -> Add folder to library and select the music on the external drive.
but now it doesn't see my iPod when I plug it in to sync it.
See this -> Windows confuses iPod with network drive or hard drive and may keep iPod from mounting or songs may seem to disappear

Moving iTunes Library to External Drive

Hey there,
I would like to free up 25GB of space on the hard drive of my computer by moving my music library to my external drive.
I tried once to have iTunes consolidate the library onto the external drive, and by doing that iTunes had difficulty locating the music on the hard drvie and the external drive. I had iTunes reload all of the songs off of my main computer and in doing so, I managed to lose all of the information from each song. Album art, lyrics, comments, some dates and genres were all wiped out. So now I had a huge collection of tunes that had none of that information and they all had the same date of being aquired. I have since repaired the blank-out by readding all of the information. I would still like to have my music folder on the external drive and I want to keep all of the information as well.
I currently have the music files on the external drive as back up incase something happens to my computer. I just dragged and copied the I Tunes music folder onto the hard drive icon.
I am wondering if there is a way that I can have my music library on the external drive, without the danger of having all of the additional information wiped out?
Thanks for your time with helping,
IslandB
Cicero Windows XP

iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
The above article includes moving the folder to an external drive.
Patrick

ITunes library on usb drive

I have transferred my library to an external 300 GB drive. I cannot get iTunes to work from this new library!! Have tried starting iTunes with shift key and indicating where the new library is?
Thanks

WHen you say you transferred the "library", what exactly did you do?
Did you copy&paste the entire itunes folder over there, as opposed to cutting & pasting (moving it)? Or did you just "transfer" the itunes music files? Did you use the itunes consolidate command anywhere in this, or do everything outside of itunes using Windows Explorer?

Moved itunes library from external drive, now i have two of everything

Moved all my music from an old computer to an external HD and onto a new computer. I was able to make the move, but now all the songs have double. How do I correct this?
I am on a PC w Vista, crappy I know.

Thanks!

Moving iTunes Library to USB Drive

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