Saving iTunes Movies/TV Shows to an external hard drive

Question

I need to free up space on my dell laptop so I would like to move my iTunes movies/tv shows to an external hard drive while keeping my music on my internal hard drive. So I would like to have two different libraries, one for music on my internal and one for movies/tv shows on my external. What is the simplest way to do this without wiping out my movie collection?

Answer 1

You can create multiple libraries with a shift-start of itunes.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesWin/8.0/en/15502.html
Press AND HOLD the shift key while starting itunes, and create a new library on your exHD.
Name it something like Movies - don't take the default itunes1 name which will not make sense later.
The new library will be blank. Before you do anything, change the itunes preferences > Advanced tab.
The "Copy to itunes Media Folder" and options needs to be turned ON.
You need to change the itunes media folder location to your exHD.
Now, go to your internal HD to the Movies folder using Win Explorer. Drag that Movie folder and drop it onto iTunes (the source list over on the left, onto the word LIBRARY).
Another way to do it is itunes menu > File > Add folder to library
Repeat for the TV shows folder.
This will copy the files to your exHD, since you already changed the preference to "Copy to itunes Media Folder"
Make sure you can play a few seconds of several movies/TV show to satisfy yourself that it all went well.
Double-check the file locations in iTunes by doing a right-click > show in Windows Explorer.
They should be on your exHD.
The files will still be on your internal drive. You can either delete them using itunes or Win Explorer.
If you use Win Explorer, you'll get ! file not found marks in your original music library.
Things to remember about using multiple libraries:
1) iTunes always uses the last library it opened. You have to remember to shift-start between libraries.
2) Every time you do a shift-start, double-check the iTunes preferences advanced to make sure the "itunes media location" and "copy to itunes" is set how you want.
3) It is easy to forget which library you last had opened, so train yourself to always use a shift-start.