Moving iTunes on external hard drive

I have my (very large) iTunes library on an external hard drive. I just got a new computer and want to move to it. Do I just plug in to new one, then point iTunes to the new location of the hard drive and deauthorize the old one.

Is the whole library on the external drive or just the media folder? See make a split library portable for details/siggestions. If the library is split but you don't want to go through that process then you can copy over your existing library folder and assign the same drive letter to the external drive on the new machine.
tt2

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Moved iTunes to external hard drive, iTunes can't find location of music

I recently moved my iTunes and library to an external hard drive as my laptop was running too slowly.
Suddenly I can't play any music (only some podcasts) directly from my iTunes. Those selected in my iPod Selection folder will play on my iPod.
There is an exclamation mark icon in the column next to the name. I've looked in the library and all the songs are there in .m4a format.
Does anyone know what I can do??????
Cheers
Kate

Windows will change the letter of the external drive you moved your stuff to inadvertently. If you go into control panel, computer management and drives. you will see the drives listed. Try changing the drive letter back to the original drive letter when you moved the files, right click on the external drive and change it back to f: or g:, making sure to unplug any other usb sticks/memory sticks drives you might have used since the last time you moved your files to the external drive. Do this a couple of times if it happens again and xp will remember to reserve that drive name for you.

Moved itunes to external hard drive - Keep getting ipod recovery/ restore

I moved itunes to an external hard drive and have had problems ever since. My itunes application seems to be fine but it keeps telling me that I cannot use itunes until I restore the ipod. I've followed the instructions to both restore AND change drive but nothing is working. Any suggestions anyone? Thx!

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me. I followed the instructions in the post, and was able to recover a substantial part of my library in iTunes. But now I'm worried that when I synch my iPod to iTunes, it will reduce the content on the iPod to match iTunes. I searched more in the discussions, and see that I might be able to use 3rd party software to copy from iPod to iTunes. any advice if I go that route? Thanks again!

Moved iTunes to external hard drive, now library is empty

I moved my iTunes ver 7 from my full hard drive to an external hard drive. It worked fine, was able to synch iPod. Then I upgraded to ver 8.0.2 and when I open iTunes the library is empty. I changed the "path" in the Preferences/Advanced window but it didn't help. I know my music is still there- the folder shows 38.0 gb, but how do I get iTunes to find it? Thanks for any help.

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me. I followed the instructions in the post, and was able to recover a substantial part of my library in iTunes. But now I'm worried that when I synch my iPod to iTunes, it will reduce the content on the iPod to match iTunes. I searched more in the discussions, and see that I might be able to use 3rd party software to copy from iPod to iTunes. any advice if I go that route? Thanks again!

Moved Itunes to external hard drive & now Ipod not showing up in itunes?

I recently installed an external hard drive and moved Itunes and all my music to it. Now when I plug in my Ipod, Itunes doesn't recognize it. And it doesn't show up in my computer, but the pod says its "connected". It does show up in the USB devices and so does the hard drive, but they are listed seperately. But both devices are plugged into the same USB spliter.
what is happening?
help!!!

Hi, BreezerSB2.
It sounds like you may not have followed the instructions described in this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.
If that's not possible - or you don't want to do so - and the music files are in fact on your external drive, you can add them to your iTunes Library by referring to this article 's Add to Library section.

Moved Itunes to External hard drive and Itunes can't find them

I went to the Apple Store at the Grove on Friday. An employee there printed out these instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
I followed the instructions. All my music is on my external hard drive now (My Book). When I open Itunes all the songs in the entire library have a circle with ! in them.
It says the song could not be used because the file could not be found. When I search My Book the song plays and the ! is removed. I have several thousand songs. Do I have to do this with each and every one?
Also, I can't import new cd's now.
Can anyone help?
Thanks, Vicki

Try this -> iTunes Track CPR v1.3

Moved itunes to external hard drive problems

Hi
I am trying to clean up room on my laptop and followed directions on how to move my iTunes music to an external hard drive.....I did that and they are on that hard drive, but when I open up iTunes on my laptop, nothing is there and none of my lists, favorites, etc. are listed, just blank. I need to find out how to change it back, and start over I suppose.....if anyone can help and explain it in a really basic way, I would really appreciate it.....
thanks kindly

Limnos wrote:
I believe it is shift key on Windows, option key on Macs.
Indeed you are correct!
Thanks for the correction, forgot I was in the Mac forum...
tt2

Moved iTunes To External Hard Drive... What's Next?

Hiya!
I own a 20-inch 250GB iMac and a 320GB Western Digital External Hard Drive. I recently began running out of room on my Mac, mainly because of all that I have on iTunes. Out of my 250GB I am now down to about 18GB. With this in mind, I went out and picked up a 320GB drive to pluck all my iTunes fluff on.
I have changed the iTunes Media Folder location in the Advanced Tab to that of my new drive a la Volumes>[Dj22091] iTunes>iTunes. I have also consolidated the library and have successfully copied all of my media to that of my new external drive.
Now, the problem. When deleting the material off of my Mac what am I going to pull into the trash bin exactly? I read here @ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449 that I am to leave the library files alone and to delete all the media out of the Music>iTunes folder but...I don't see anything other than my music listed. If I am to get rid of everything and free up space I would need to delete my TV Shows, Movies, etc. but they are nowhere to be found. I am still left with only about 18GB left on my Mac, so I know that they are around here somewhere.
This image @ http://twitpic.com/14myzk shows the current state of my external drive.
This next image @ http://twitpic.com/14n1hd shows my current Music>iTunes folder on my Mac.
This other image @ http://twitpic.com/14n1ni depicts a song from iTunes that shows the new location of the song file (other files such as videos check out well also).
Any help would be appreciated!
Message was edited by: dj22091
Message was edited by: dj22091

After some digging I found what I was looking for. After pulling what I needed to the Trash Bin and opening iTunes everything fell into place. Music is playing fine and space is now freed up on my Mac. [:-D

Moved itunes to external hard drive now library not showing up

I tried to move itunes to an external hard drive to free up space but now I can't get my library to come up. What do I do?

Hi, BreezerSB2.
It sounds like you may not have followed the instructions described in this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.
If that's not possible - or you don't want to do so - and the music files are in fact on your external drive, you can add them to your iTunes Library by referring to this article 's Add to Library section.

Moving iTunes from external hard drive to new iMac

I will be receiving a new iMac soon. Currently my iTunes is on an external hard drive.
What are the steps I take to move the iTunes from my external hard drive to my new iMac's hard drive?

The PC to MAC move complicates a few things, but this article seems to solve them.

Moving itunes from external hard-drive to another and using another comput

Hi,
This has probably been posted before but i couldn't find it.
My itunes works on another computer, with the library (Edit->Preferences->Itunes location as g:\itunes), this includes the xml files for the library.
I've now got a new laptop and external hard-drive and want to move the library onto the new hard-drive and use it on the new laptop.
I think i can copy the itunes folder from old hard-drive onto new one, then point the itunes install on the new laptop to the new harddrive and it should pick it up?
Any ideas?
Matt

Welcome to AD!
+this includes the xml files for the library.+
Does this also include the important itunes database file, the one with the ITL file extension?
If so, your idea should work. Use Windows Explorer to copy the ITL & music files/folders over to the new exHD.
Connect the new exHD to your laptop and make sure Windows sees it as drive G:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844
That is a very important step. Otherwise, iTunes will lose all the paths to the music.
Now start itunes on the laptop by pressing *and holding* the shift key. Tell it to use the ITL file on the G: drive. Then set your iTunes preoferences to have any future additions go to the G: drive music folder.

Moved itunes to external hard drive and now cant import music

I am unable to import any CDs to my itunes, and my itunes does not seem to recoginze my ipod either. I get an error message that reads "error occurred while converting the file...(name of CD).... The required file cannot be found." I think the problem may lie in that I recently transferred my itunes folder onto an external harddrive to save room on my internal hard-drive. In doing so, I inadvertently moved the itunes library folder to the recycle bin, in addition to the itunes music folder. I recovered it and it seems I only lost my playlists, but I'm wondering if there was something else lost in the transfer that now prevents me from importing any data.

Try this -> iTunes Track CPR v1.3

Help moving itunes to external hard drive

Just purchased external drive to hold itunes, music, video and pictures. What is best way to transfer itunes and library from laptop to new external drive without losing anything?

Choose Consolidate Library from the Library section of the File menu, find the iTunes folder in the Windows Explorer, drag it to the external drive, launch iTunes with the Shift key held down, click on Choose Library, and point it there.
(45714)

Moving Content to External Hard Drive and Using New Computers

Before doing this, I want to make sure I know how to do all of it:
We are going to buy two new laptops, and retire the old one. I want to move all of my iTunes content from the old laptop to an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme. I then want to be able to share the content between the two computers. I know how to do this, and plan to move the library data base files to the external hard drive, as well.
However, I also want to be able to continue synching all of the content to the Apple TV. To what should the Apple TV be synched after the content is moved to the external hard-drive and the old computer is replaced by two new computers? How is that done under the circumstances? And, in the meantime, will the Apple TV lose all of its content and need to be re-synched entirely from scratch, or will it continue recognizing the current iTunes library as moved to the external hard drive?
Thanks!

This is an option, although as a note of caution; depending on how regularly you modify your library this could become a little bit of a chore. The option is likely a good one in many cases but not all.
In my own case I considered using an old mac as my media server in the sense mentioned by tmartine. (I do a bit of experimental stuff and need to restart my mac quite often, I also have 5 Apple tv's and a library which is too large to do anything but stream, my family don't take too kindly to my frequent restarts and I find myself waiting until the early hours).
However I also modify my itunes library on a daily basis, I buy quite a bit of stuff and also add my own movies regularly, as well as make several recordings a day through my eyetv, all this new content would need to be manually added to my (server) library (and deleted manually), I felt this would be too many extra things for me to do and so my personal preference is to have my itunes library on my main computer as the primary library.

HT1660 How do I run itunes from external Hard drive?

How do I run itunes from external hard drive. I only have ssd on PC and media is too large to fit

You do not.
iTunes, like all programs is installed on the C drive.
You can store the media on another drive.
Assuming you are moving an existing library from another computer:
Move or Copy the ENTIRE iTunes folder from the old computer to the new computer and put it where you want it.
Install iTunes using the default options.
Hold <SHIFT> while launching iTunes. It will prompt to create a new library or locate an existing library.
Select the option to locate an existing library.
Point iTunes to the iTunesLibrary.itl file in the iTunes folder that was moved from the old computer.

Moving iTunes on external hard drive

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